Darwin consolidated a lifetime of work in On the Origin of Species, compiling his discoveries from the voyage of the Beagle, his experiments, research and correspondence.

According to the great horror writer H.P. Lovecraft The Ghost Pirates . . . is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils.

Published in 1901, M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud is an early last man science fiction novel.

Lady Audley's Secret was one of the first and most successful sensation novels of the late 19th century. A young gentleman of leisure, Robert Audley, is spurred into action when his friend Geroge Talboys goes missing from Audley Court.

The young orphan Pollyanna is sent to live with her stern Aunt in a dour New England town.

Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy follows a young Englishman, Frank Osbaldistone, to Scotland, where he travels to retrieve a debt.

You, my love, will be poor, so as to be more like all other women. In order for us to live together I shall work all day and so be your servant.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge opens with the story's hero, Peyton Farquhar, hanging bound from a bridge, awaiting hanging.

Agnes Grey is the daughter of a minister who faces financial ruin.

My Antonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works.

A Swedish family migrate to Nebraska at the turn of the 20th century.

The Secret Sharer contains many of Conrad's favorite motifs.

A daughter inherits her father's miserliness, which stifles her relationship with her cousin, making love an unsatisfying experience.

Pierre and Jean is a short realist novel by Guy de Maupassant.

The fifth book in the popular Barsoom series, The Chessmen of Mars is a 1922 science fiction novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

On the eve of his coming of age, a young Lord begins to see the truth of his parents' lives.

Adam Bede follows the lives of a fictional rural community.

Thomas Hardy's final novel Jude the Obscure explores notions of class, religion, marriage and modernization through its protagonist Jude Fawley, a working-class man who dreams of being a scholar.

One of Henry James' greatest novels, The Ambassadors is a dark comedy from 1903.

British writer John Buchan's Greenmantle is the second of five adventure novels to star Richard Hannay, a man with a remarkable knack for getting out of sticky situations, and indeed getting into them in the first place.