In the era of Rembrandt, Spain has its own great painter, Diego Velázquez. His assistant is Juan, an African slave who becomes an artist himself. Self-taught by watching his master's technique, Juan is torn between the need to keep his secret—for the creation of art is forbidden to slaves—or revealing his own talents.

In the 1880's in southern Africa, Allan Quatermain, a hunter and guide, joins forces with a sea captain and an English nobleman to find the latter's missing brother, who disappeared while searching for King Solomon's legendary lost diamond mines.

An abridged version of the misfortunes that plague a prominent New England family because of greed and a two-hundred-year-old curse.

The Trumpet-Major is a novel by Thomas Hardy published in 1880, and his only historical novel. It concerns the heroine, Anne Garland, being pursued by three suitors: John Loveday, the eponymous trumpet major in a British regiment, honest and loyal; his brother Bob, a flighty sailor; and Festus Derriman, the cowardly nephew of the local squire. Unusually for a Hardy novel, the ending is not entirely tragic; however, there remains an ominous element...

Ann Veronica is a New Woman novel by H.G. Wells. Ann Veronica describes the rebellion of Ann Veronica Stanley, "a young lady of nearly two-and-twenty," against her middle-class father's stern patriarchal rule. The novel dramatizes the contemporary problem of the New Woman. It is set in Victorian era London and environs, except for an Alpine excursion. Ann Veronica offers vignettes of the Women's suffrage movement in Great Britain and features a chapter...

Mr. Britling Sees It Through H. G. Wells - A moving novel of one Englishman's experience as his country goes to war, from the author of who gave us The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. Mr. Britling considers himself an optimist. But as the Great War begins, he finds himself forced to reassess many of the things he thought he was sure of. As refugees from Belgium arrive in the town of Matching's Easy, telling frightening tales of what they have...

Stowe's only historical novel set against the backdrop of Girolamo Savonarola's 15th century controversial reform efforts in Italy.

Set during the French Revolution, this novel of swashbuckling romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual's role in society-a story that has become Rafael Sabatini's enduring legacy.

A black family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand.

This 1862 novel follows a young girl's life and her struggles to fit in on the raw New England coast populated by sea folk .