The tale of the hunchback bellringer of medieval Notre Dame, Quasimodo, whose love for the gypsy dancer, Esmeralda, has tragic consequences.

After a condemned man cursed Colonel Pyncheon from the scaffold during an execution for witchcraft, the Colonel's fate seemed to affect all of his descendants in the crumbling mansion until "young Phoebe Pyncheon from the country breathed fresh air and sunshine into the mouldering lives and rooms."

A Timeless Classic of Societal Customs, Cultural Disputes, and The Cost of Non-Conformity Henry James' novella Daisy Miller, features one of his greatest heroines. At first glance it seems to be a simple story of a lovely young, independent American girl traveling through Europe. But her flouting of social conventions has the potential to lead to catastrophe as she disrupts the rigid social rules of the Old World, attracting and scandalizing all...

The dead arise from their sleep in the cemetery of a small town to tell their individual stories about an entire community caught in a web of scandal, sin, and vice in the early twentieth century.

Captains Courageous is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. The book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which starts, "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt". Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers,...

This edition of Edgar Allan Poe's A Collection of Stories includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by S. T. Joshi.

"At the Back of the North Wind" is a classic children's story first serialized in England in 1868 and published into a book in 1871 by the Scottish author George MacDonald. This enchanting fairy tale follows Diamond, a sweet, innocent, and joyful young stable boy in Victorian London who goes on adventures with the majestic North Wind. The North Wind is personified as a lovely and mysterious woman, both severe and kind, who teaches young Diamond about...

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it...

This edition of Moll Flanders includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Nancy Springer. The conditions of Moll Flanders' birth could not have been more depressing. Her mother was a petty thief who was caught and sent to the notorious Newgate prison in London. It was in that prison that Moll was born. Deemed an orphan, Moll was later sent to apprentice as a servant with a respectable family. Moll has designs on a life better than serving...

It was so cold that his spit froze in the air before it hit the ground. He was so far above the Artic Circle that the sun never rose. Seventy below zero, and there was nothing but whiteness in every direction: ice and snow. No trees, no houses, no wood, no warmth. He had only a few matches and a handful of frozen fingers. And yet, to survive, he had to build a fire... Jack London's tales of adventure were unsurpassed because London was there. From...