The story, whether you call it a romance, a historical novel or a horror story - comprising as it does a young woman being offered as a prize in a bowling match, a wife-burning, highwaymen and buried treasure - is of course wholly fiction.

When the Gentleman, Rudolf Rassendyll, leaves behind his quiet English life for a little vacation, he has no idea was he is about the get involved in.'The Prisoner of Zenda' (1894) may on the surface look like your classic story of the young brother of a king plotting the disappearance of his older brother to get to the throne. But this is where comparisons end. Because when King Rudolf gets drugged on the eve of his coronation, his half-brother fails to consider that a distant cou...

The eight-year-old Princess Irene is lonely in her castle that sits on a mountain. She has only her nursemaid, Lootie, for company. She discovers a a secret, and soon she overhears a fiendish plot by some goblins. Can she foil their plans? George MacDonald's fairy tale "The Princess and the Goblin" is one of the first books in the modern fantasy genre.

'Rupert of Hentzau' (1898) picks up three years after 'The Prisoner of Zenda' ended with Rudolf Rassendyll sadly leaving behind his love, Queen Flavia. Now unhappily married, Flavia writes Rassendyll to reconcile, but the letter is stolen and before long, Rassendyll once again finds himself forced to impersonate the king. Only this time, the ploy promises to leave behind several fatalities.A decidedly darker sequel, this novel once again asks the question, Duty or love? And the ans...