Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for novels such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air and under...

Explorers in a hot-air balloon land on an island, figuring that they must be the only inhabitants. However, they discover a bullet inside a wounded animal--one which must have been fired within the previous three months. The men propose to build a canoe so they can survey the island in search of oth...

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN EMIGRANT BETWEEN NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO MONDAY. - It was, if I remember rightly, five o'clock when we were all signalled to be present at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. An emigrant ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday night, another on the Sunday morning,...

Claudius Bombarnac, a reporter is assigned by the Twentieth Century to cover the travels of the Grand Transasiatic Railway which runs between Uzun Ada, Turkestan and Peking, China. Accompanying him on this journey is an interesting collection of characters, including one who is trying to beat the ro...

An old carpenter carves a little wooden puppet from a mysterious piece of wood that seems to have the ability to talk! He begins to love the little creature like his own son and names him Pinocchio. But the mischievous fellow runs away from his loving father as soon as he learns to walk. The Adventu...

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1058-1111) is one of the most important religious figures in Islamic history. He is particularly noted for his brilliant synthesis of mysticism and traditional Sunni Islam. Ghazzali's "The Alchemy of Happiness", written toward the end of his life, provides a succinct ...

In this seventh volume of his Celebrated Crimes, Dumas tells the three tales: of the brutal excesses of Ali Pacha; the tale of the Countess of Saint Geran;and of Murat, whose courage became a legend in the days of the French revolution. Few men have understood themselves better or been on better ter...

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversatio...

Over this chaotic region the travellers were now sweeping, as if borne on the wings of a storm; the peaks defiled beneath them; the yawning chasms revealed their ruin-strewn floors; the fissured cracks untwisted themselves; the ramparts showed all their sides; the mysterious holes presented their im...

Despite its optimistic title, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well has often been considered a "problem play." Ostensibly a comedy, the play also has fairy tale elements, as it focuses on Helena, a virtuous orphan, who loves Bertram, the haughty son of her protectress, the Countess of Rousillon. ...