In The Island of Dr. Moreau a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life. While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells's prediction of the...

In Peru in 1714, Franciscan Brother Juniper inquires into the lives of five travelers who died when a bridge collapsed, in an attempt to prove that this was not an accident but part of God's plan.

In mid-twentieth-century England, fourteen-year-old Velvet Brown, determined to turn the unruly horse she wins in a raffle into a champion, learns that she needs more than hard work and dedication to achieve her goal of riding her horse in the Grand National steeplechase.

The sixth and final novel in Trollope's "Palliser" series, this 1879 work begins after the unexpected death of Plantagenet Palliser's beloved wife, Lady Glencora. Though wracked by grief over his loss, this Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister must now become more involved in the lives of his three grown children. He soon discovers that this will be quite the challenge, for his son and heir Lord Silverbridge has been sent down from Oxford, his...

The Home and the World (1916) is a novel by Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore. Written after Tagore received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, the novel dramatizes the Swadeshi movement for Indian independence from British rule. Through the lens of one family, Tagore illuminates the conflict between Western culture and Indian nationalism while exploring the complex relationships of men and women in modern India. Concerned for his wife, who spends...

This is the story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, an ex-military man, who lives alone in a hut in the woods with his faithful dog Aesop. Glahn's life changes when he meets Edvarda, a merchant's daughter from a nearby town, with whom he quickly falls in love. While they feel strongly for each other, they do not truly understand the other's perspective and tragedy soon befalls the lovers. Edvarda is not entirely faithful to Glahn, and he is profoundly affected...

Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...

Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her first husband - a reprobate from Louisiana - appears at the school gates, a dreadful secret is revealed and the county is scandalized. Ostracised by the community, the pair seem trapped in a hopeless situation - until the combative but warm-hearted headmaster of the school, Dr Wortle, offers...

The story is subtitled "Landlords and Tenants" and does not betray its implied promise. The ennobled O'Kellys under the leadership of Lord Ballindine are distantly related to the Kellys, consisting of the mother, who keeps a small town inn and her son and daughters. Both fall in love and run into troubles pressing their suits: Lord Ballindine is rejected by Fanny Wyndham's guardian, Lord Cashel, for being a spendthrift (and that while Cashel's son...

The fifty empty freights danced and rolled and rattled on the rough roadbed and filled Jericho Pass with thunder, the big engine was laboring and grunting at the grade, but five cars back the noise of the locomotive was lost. Yet there is a way to talk above the noise of a freight train just as there is a way to whistle into the teeth of a stiff wind. This freight-car talk is pitched just above the ordinary tone-it is an overtone of conversation,...