Fiction : Classics

Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and change forever the course of the Western world--as literature as well.  Virgil's Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of arms and heroism--the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty, human feeling and the force of fate--that has influenced writers for over 2,000 years. more...

Price: $5.95

Conceived by a shy British don on a golden afternoon to entertain ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have delighted generations of readers in more than eighty languages. more...

Price: $3.95

Anna Karenina is a novel by Leo Tolstoy that was first published in 1877. The novel initially appeared serially in the periodical Ruskii Vestnik ("Russian Messenger"), but Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over issues that arose in the final installment. Consequently, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered this book his first true novel. It is believed that the character of Anna was inspired by Maria Hartung (1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy started reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.Although most Russian critics panned the novel upon its first publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion is seconded by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style" and the motif of moving train, which is subtly introduced in the first chapters (the kids playing with a toy train) and inexorably developed in subsequent chapters (Anna's nightmare dream), thus heralding the novel's majestic finale.Summary from wikipedia.org more...

Price: $4.99

Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by his friends at the Reform Club. The story starts in London October 2, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a wealthy British gentleman who lives unmarried in solitude at 24 Saville Row. Despite his wealth, which is of unknown origin, Mr. Fogg lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematically precisely. As is noted in the first chapter, very little can be said about Mr. Fogg's social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 degrees Fahrenheit rather than the regular 86, Mr. Fogg hires the Frenchman Passepartout, of around 30 years of age, as a replacement. Later that day in the Reform Club, he gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph , stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. This calculation does not take into account practical matters like trouble finding transportation, but Fogg is sure that with his superbly calculative mind he can actually do it. He accepts a wager for £20,000 [equal to £2,500,000 today] from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by his manservant Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8.45 P.M. on October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21. [Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days_%28book%29] more...

Price: $3.95

Short stories include portraits of a young sailor's clash with authority, the extreme passive resistance of a law clerk, and a mutiny on a slave ship. more...

Price: $4.95