Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

Captain Blood

Peter Blood, an Irish physician and former soldier is happily settled, in the 1680's, as the doctor in an English town, when the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth catches him by accident. He saves a man's life, as a doctor must try to do, but the man is a rebel and the hanging Judge Jeffreys sentences him to ten years as an indentured slave in the Caribbean colonies.

BBC's top 100 Big Read Novel

BBC's top 100 Big Read

In April 2003 the BBC's Big Read began the search for the nation's best-loved novel, and and three quarters of a million votes were received by the end of the series.

Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by W. H. Hudson

Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest

First published by Duckworth in 1904, this prophetic classic is the haunting tale of an ill-fated love. European Abel seeks refuge from war in the virgin forests of southwestern Venezuela. There, in the 'green mansion' of the title, Abel encounters the wood-nymph Rima, the last survivor of a mysterious aboriginal race. The bird-girl's ethereal presence captivates him completely, but the love that flowers between them is soon blighted by cruelty and sorrow.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

'He was constantly harassed with the idea, that the next time he lifted his eyes, he would to a certainty see that face, the most repulsive to all his feelings of aught the earth contained.' A nightmarish tale of religious fanaticism and darkness, this chilling classic of the macabre tells the tale of Robert Wringhim, drawn in his moral confusion into committing the most monstrous acts by an evil doppelganger.

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

A Journal of the Plague Year

'A Casement violently opened just over my Head, and a Woman gave three frightful Skreetches, and then cry'd, Oh! Death, Death, Death!' Purporting to be an eye-witness account, A Journal of the Plague Year is a record of the devastation wrought by the Great Plague of 1665 on the city of London. Defoe's fictional narrator, known only as 'H. F.', recounts in vivid detail the progress of the disease and the desperate attempts to contain it.

Selected Journalism 1850-1870 by Charles Dickens

Selected Journalism 1850-1870

A testament to the energy and creativity of a writer and journalist without equal, Charles Dickens's Selected Journalism 1850-1870 is edited with an introduction and notes by David Pascoe in Penguin Classics.
Throughout his writing career Charles Dickens was a hugely prolific journalist.

The Understory by Elizabeth Leiknes

The Understory

Story Easton knows the first line of every book, but never the last.She never cries, but she fakes it beautifully.And at night, she escapes from the failure of her own life by breaking into the homes of others, and feeling, for a short while, like a different, better person. But one night, as an uninvited guest in someone's empty room, she discovers a story sadder than her own: a boy named Cooper Payne, whose dream of visiting the Amazon rainforest and discovering the moonflower from his favorite book, Once Upon a Moonflower, died alongside his father.

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Lost Lake

From the author of New York Times bestseller Garden Spells comes a beautiful, haunting story of old loves and new, and the power of the connections that bind us forever… The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival by Louise Murphy

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival

In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest.

Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel."

Collection of 54 Pulitzer Prize Novels (1918-2011)

The Pulitzer Prize, started by New York World publisher, Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), is awarded each year for books published the previous year and is administered by Columbia University in New York City. In 1948, the name of the category was changed from Novel to Fiction. During some years (1917, 1920, 1941, 1946, 1954, 1957, 1964, 1971, 1974, 1977 and 2012), no awards were given. 

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding.

For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office building.