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The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells. The protagonist of The History of Mr. Polly is an antihero inspired by H. G. Wells's early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his "innate sense of epithet",...

"After more than a decade, Rosellen Brown, author of ten celebrated books, is back with a gritty, absorbing, and deeply felt novel. The Lake on Fire is an epic narrative that begins among immigrants on a failing Wisconsin farm. Chaya and her strange, brilliant, little brother Asher depart for Chicago only to discover that the Gilded Age is as empty a façade as the beautiful Columbian Exposition attracting thousands to Lake Michigan's shore. They...

A simple country vicar's faith sustains him through the trials and tribulations that beset his loved ones.

This "jewel at the heart of English comic literature" chronicles the daily fortunes and misfortunes of a middle-age, middle-class clerk (William Trevor, The Mail on Sunday). Since its original publication in 1892, The Diary of a Nobody has become a much-loved classic. It is a fictional man's dissection of the everyday drama of his life as an office worker in a London firm. With dry wit, the authors step into the character of Charles Pooter as...

Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully written Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his parents, all but rejected by his wife, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It's only when America enters the First World War that Claude finds...

On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabitated by several of Huxley's most outlandish characters--from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by "getting in touch" with his "subconscious," to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive history of chrome. Denis's stay proves to be a disaster amid his weak attempts to attract the girl of his dreams and the ridicule he...

Penrod sat morosely upon the back fence and gazed with envy at Duke, his wistful dog. A bitter soul dominated the various curved and angular surfaces known by a careless world as the face of Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude, that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere defensive...

"Can Such Things Be?" is a thrillingly creepy collection of short stories from one of the 19th century's masters of horror. Sit yourself by a campfire or candlelight and enjoy these 24 eerie stories, told in Bierce's witty, clear prose, filled with ghosts, apparitions, doppelgängers, grave robbers, death omens and other strange, inexplicable occurrences. The story of "The Damned Thing" has appeared in the tv show "Masters of Horror", while "Haïta...

A young Englishman traveling on the Continent with the mysterious Lord Rutven comes to realize that his companion is an evil and murderous vampire.

Dystopian Plague Classic! The year is 2072, and the earth has been depopulated by a plague epidemic that struck in 2013. The victims of the scarlet plague are dead within an hour or less of the first symptoms appearing. The plague is so swift that research laboratories are wiped out even as scientists are racing toward a cure. As panic spreads, order breaks down and looting and carnage reign. Broadcast stations fall silent. Aircraft fall from the...