Memories and Portraits is a collection of essays by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1887. Contents I. The Foreigner at Home II. Some College Memories III. Old Morality IV. A College Magazine V. An Old Scotch Gardener VI. Pastoral VII. The Manse VIII. Memories of an Islet IX. Thomas Steven...

In this moving short story from Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of The Secret Garden, a French family finds its social status zooming upward due to a daughter's marriage into an upper-class clan. But the salt-of-the-earth friends and neighbors of the Giraud family are deeply skeptical of what they s...

This is the account of the perilous mission of Michael Strogoff, courier for Czar Alexander II, who is sent from Moscow to the besieged city of Irkutsk, where the governor, brother of the Czar, has taken his last stand against a Tartar rebellion led by the fearsome Feofar-Khan. When telegraph lines ...

“Call me Ishmael” is one of the most famous opening lines in American literature. With these words, opens one of the strangest and most gripping stories ever written about the sea and sea-faring. Moby Dick by Herman Melville is today considered one of the greatest novels written in America but parad...

The Eagle seeks its daily bread. How aptly fact to fact replies: Heroes and eagles, hills and skies. Ye who contemn the fatted slave Look on this emblem, and be brave.

Written around the middle of his career, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare's great festive comedies. The men are back from the war, and everyone is ready for romance. The dashing young Claudio falls for Hero, the daughter of Leonato, governor of Messina, and his friend Don Pedro helps him...

The Mudfog Papers was written by Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens and published from 1837–38 in the monthly literary serial Bentley's Miscellany, which he then edited. They were first published as a book as 'The Mudfog Papers and Other Sketches. The Mudfog Papers relates the proceedings of the...

Fans of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Secret Garden will relish this charming anecdote that further expands upon the robin that features in that book. In response to a reader's letter, Burnett reminisces about her love of English robins -- and one in particular that changed her life forever.

The Mysterious Island is another exquisite novel written by the master of adventure writing, Jules Verne. The novel has been seen as the sequel to two other famous novels written by the same author: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaway. The story revolves around five ...

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. It is a mystery indeed; the serial novel was just half completed at the time of Dickens’ death – leading to much speculation how it might have ended. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, one of the characters, but it mostly tells the...