First published in 1917, “Summer” is one of only two novels by Edith Wharton not set in the upper-class society of New York. It is instead set in New England and was very controversial at the time it was published as it is the story of the sexual awakening of a young woman, named Charity Royall. Charity, the daughter of mountain moonshiners, was abandoned by her poor parents and adopted by her small town’s most learned person, Lawyer Royall. Cha ...
First published in 1865, “From the Earth to the Moon” is Jules Verne’s fantastical tale of an ambitious plan to fly to the moon. Set at the end of the American Civil War, Verne’s novel is a forward-looking and modern tale of space adventure. With the war over and no other pressing tasks to occupy them, the members of the Baltimore Gun Club, at the urging of their President, Impey Barbicane, decide to build a gun large enough to propel a projecti ...
First serialized in 1905, “The Railway Children”, by English author and poet Edith Nesbit, is the entertaining and heart-warming story of three siblings, Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis. The children and their mother move to “The Three Chimneys”, a house near a railway, when their father, who works for the Foreign Office, is wrongly accused and falsely imprisoned for selling government secrets to the Russians. The children pass the time by watching ...
A sequel to the “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, this 1904 book by L. Frank Baum delves once more into the Land of Oz after Dorothy’s return to Kansas in a story that follows the adventure of a boy named Tip. In “The Marvelous Land of Oz” the reader is introduced to Tip after he escapes the witch Mombi. Tip travels the lands of Oz with a group of friends and has numerous adventures, including encountering an army of wild women, escaping violent cre ...
An imaginative work first published in 1902, L. Frank Baum’s “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” tells the story of Claus, an orphaned boy raised by various immortal creatures in an enchanted forest. When he reaches adulthood, Claus is told to live among mortals; he is disheartened initially by poverty, war, and other negative aspects of humanity. He becomes well-known for his kindness to children, and this enthusiasm leads to the invention ...
The first novel of Trollope’s “Chronicles of Barsetshire” series, “The Warden” introduces the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and many of its clerical inhabitants. Originally published in 1855, the story centers on Mr. Septimus Harding who has been granted the comfortable wardenship of Hiram’s Hospital, an almshouse from a medieval charity of the diocese. Mr. Harding, a fundamentally good man and an excellent musician, conscientiously ful ...
First published in 1919, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Rainbow Valley” is the seventh novel chronologically in the “Anne of Green Gables” saga, though it was published fifth. This installment of the timeless series finds Anne Shirley happily married to Gilbert Blythe for 15 years, busy raising their six children. Soon the family has an unusual neighbor when the new Presbyterian minister John Meredith, a widower, moves into an old mansion nearby with h ...
First published anonymously in 1678, Madame de Lafayette is generally believed to be the author behind “The Princess of Cleves”. Set between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France, the novel is concerned with Mademoiselle de Chartres, a sheltered heiress who is brought to the court by her mother to find her a proper husband. This soon to be princess will find herself caught between her duty as a wife and her unti ...
First published in 1869, “An Old-Fashioned Girl” is the charming novel of a young country girl learning to navigate sophisticated city-life by celebrated American author Louisa May Alcott. Appearing a year after the publication of her most famous work, “Little Women”, Alcott’s “An Old-Fashioned Girl” centers around the contrast between the title character, the country girl Polly Milton, and her wealthy friend from the city, Fanny Shaw. Polly goe ...
