Stanley Edward Lane-Poole (1854 - 1931) was a British orientalist and archaeologist. ‘The Moors in Spain’ is a comprehensive history about the Moorish conquest and rule of the Iberian Peninsula, until the Spanish took back the land. It includes chapters on the last Visigothic kingdom, El Cid and the fall of Granada.

The published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s. Strong sled dogs were in demand, and that’s how Buck the St Bernard cross Scotch Shepherd ended up in the wilds of Alaska.

John Bunyan’s book ‘The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come’ is regarded as one of the most important works of religious literature in English. In this Christian allegory, the devout everyman Christian abandons the City of Destruction and sets off to find salvation. He meets characters like Worldly Wiseman and Goodwill, is beset by trials like the monster Apollyon and the giant Despair as he journeys through the Slough of Despond, the Delectable Mountains, and the ...

The King in Yellow is a book of ten classic short stories about the supernatural. The first four mention ‘The King in Yellow,’ a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those exposed to it. The tales have a macabre undertone, focusing on characters that are inhabitants of the demi-monde.

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913) was a Methodist minister and devotional writer. Addressed primarily to preachers and pastors, ‘Power Through Prayer’ has also been popular among lay people for over a century. The book expounds the idea that prayer is the life-giving force behind the ministry. He states that believers depend on God just as much as he depends on them, and that, although the relationship is simple, it requires a lot of communication. Bounds discusses the essentiality of pr...

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to Patrick Henry, from his speech to the Second Virginia Convention on 23 March, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. Henry spoke without notes, and no transcript of his exact words have survived. The only known version of his speech was reconstructed in the early 1800s by William Wirt, a biographer who corresponded with various attendees of the convention.

The Allegory of the Cave appears in Plato’s Republic and compares the effect of education and the lack of it on human nature. It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother and Socrates, who tells of people that have been chained to the wall of a cave their whole lives. They see shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. Socrates explains that the philosopher is like a prisoner who has escaped the cave and realizes that the shadows on the wall a...

'Ethan Frome' is a 1911 book by Edith Wharton, set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. In this haunting tale, Wharton’s characters are not of the upper class, but ordinary townsfolk. The prologue opens with an unnamed male narrator who’s spending a winter in Starkfield while on business, describing a limping man with a compelling demeanor. The narrative is characterized by frequent flashbacks, and mainly involves Ethan’s sickly wife, Zeena, and Mattie, a cousin who helps t...

Common Sense, a pamphlet by Thomas Paine, was published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence. It is an impassioned call for America to free itself from British rule and set up an independent republican government. Paine criticised hereditary kingship and urged his adopted country to embrace personal freedom and social equality.

‘Heart of Darkness’, the famous novella by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1902, reveals the disgust at the cruelty that the author observed when he worked briefly in the Belgian Congo. Although no territory is named in the text, the story is based on a journey that Conrad took up the Congo River in 1890, during King Leopold II of Belgium’s abusive rule of the area. The main narrative follows the journey of the ferry-boat captain Marlow in his job as an ivory transporter on the river. Ma...

Besides the boy Mowgli, the characters are animals or rather human archetypes in animal form. The stories, set in a forest in India, have themes like abandonment followed by fostering, law and freedom, respect and obedience.

A story by Edgar Allan Poe, about a black cat, or rather two black cats. The narrator relates his own story, about how he deteriorated from a man who loved animals, to a cruel abuser. He thought that he had gotten away with murder, but the second black cat exposed his crime.