The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal youth. As Basil Hallward, an aspiring artist, puts a few touches on a portrait of his handsome young friend Dorian Gray, Gray wishes that the portrait might grow old while he remains forever young. While Dorian Gray spends his life pursuing fresh experiences and new sensations, his looks do not change. However, the portrait, secretly hidden in the attic of his residence and with which he has grown increasingly obsessed, does.

No writer is more identified with the modern idea of Christmas than Charles Dickens. In some ways, Dickens helped define the holiday that we now celebrate by immortalizing it as a time of warmth and sharing, with an emphasis on family and friends.

In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a tenderfoot in the Wild West. Roughing It is a hilarious record of his travels over a six-year period that comes to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales. Twain reflects on his scuffling years mining silver in Nevada, working at a Virginia City newspaper, being downandout in San Francisco, reporting for a newspaper from Hawaii, and more.

This remarkable tale of the devastation and horrors of an international war was written in 1908—six years before the start of World War I. It describes the results of aerial attacks on New York and other cities in terrifying detail. It is provocative and sadly, prophetic in many ways. In the end, we can only agree with Wells that "it should never have begun".

One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur's Camelot. The 'Yankee' vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks" and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn't long before all hell breaks loose!

The United States government is given a warning by the preeminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.

Betty Zane is the story of the first settlers in the Ohio Valley, and their fight for survival during the Revolutionary war. The British have organized and incited the various eastern tribes to attack American 'Rebels' in this lesser known theater of the war.

The Chuzzlewits are a family divided by money and selfishness; even young Martin, the eponymous hero, is arrogant and self-centred. He offends his grandfather by falling in love with the latter’s ward, Mary, and sets out to make his own fortune in life, travelling as far as America - which produces from Dickens a savage satire on a new world tainted with the vices of the old. Martin’s nature slowly changes through his bitter experience of life and his enduring love for Mary.

This collection of 25 Hercule Poirot adventures is compiled from short stories written by Agatha Christie for The Sketch magazine in 1923 from March to December. In these stories, including "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim", "The Veiled Lady", and "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb", the eccentric private detective slowly and surely solves mysteries involving jealousy, revenge, and greed. These stories were well-received at the time and cemented Christie's reputation as the worthy successor to Arthur Conan Doyle.

Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."

A great evil has awakened in the land of Corona, a terrible demon determined to spread death and misery. His goblin armies and fearsome giants ravage the settlements of the frontier, and in the small village of Dundallis their merciless attack leaves behind two shattered orphans: Pony and her lifelong friend, the youth Elbryan. Taken in by elves, Elbryan is raised to become a formidable ranger - a fateful role that will lead him into harrowing confrontation.

Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island was an instant success when first published in 1719, and it has inspired countless imitations.

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it", This volume presents eight of L'Amour's ever-popular short stories - history that lives forever.

In "A Little Journey," published in August 1951, we meet an elderly woman in search of enlightenment who buys a ticket on a rocket. Like other more famous Bradbury's stories, "A Little Journey" demonstrates the author's characteristic blending of the sentimental and the transcendent, the homely and the mystical.

Meet Mulder and Scully, FBI - the agency maverick and the female agent assigned to keep him in line. Their job is to investigate the eeriest unsolved mysteries in modern America, from pyro-psychics to death row demonics, from rampaging Sasquatches to alien invasions. These are the cases the Bureau wants handled quietly but quickly, before the public finds out what's really out there...and panics - the cases filed under "X".