Americanlibrarybooks.com - Free american library - Read book online and e-book in other languages

Description After the conviction of two prominent politicians for sedition, Dumas’s story focuses on the trial of an accused collaborator: one Cornelius van Baerle, whose only wish is to grow his tulips in peace. His crowning achievement is set to be the impossible black tulip, a feat worth one hundred thousand guilders from the Horticultural Society of Haarlem, but before he can sprout the bulb he’s imprisoned with only the daughter of the prison warden to give him a glimmer of hope. Set a few

Description Set in 12th-century England, Prince John rules while his brother King Richard is away during the Crusades. During his reign, Prince John and others of Norman nobility abuse their power over the Saxons, forcing Saxons off their lands and many Saxon nobles into serfdom. Ivanhoe, a man disowned by his own Saxon father for going to war alongside the Norman King Richard, returns from the Crusades in disguise and appears in a tournament at Ashby. After revealing himself, Prince John and

Description This work by H. G. Wells was first published in 1910. In contrast to Wells’ early speculative fiction works like The Time Machine , this is a comic novel set in the everyday world of the late Victorian and early Edwardian era in England. Despite the less than happy life-story of Mr. Polly, it is an amusing book, enlivened by Polly’s inventive attitude towards the English language. Alfred Polly’s mother dies when he is only seven, and he is brought up by his father and a stern aunt.

Description King Solomon’s Mines was published in September 1885, becoming an immediate best seller by tapping into people’s excitement for the unknown: in this case, the unexplored regions of Africa. Haggard wrote the novel in a very short period, between six and sixteen months, on a bet with his brother to try to match Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island . In the process he created a new literary genre known as the “Lost World” genre, which would later influence other writers like Arthur

Description In this first full-length Arsène Lupin novel the gentleman-thief remains a shadowy figure for most of the novel, working two steps beyond the law with a hidden aim. To fight against this anti-hero, Leblanc introduces Isidore Beautrelet, the prodigious school-boy detective. Also making an appearance are old foes Detective Ganimard and (in yet another copyright-defeating name change) Holmlock Shears. The battle of wills that ensues pulls Isidore through rural France as he tries to get

Description “This shop is haunted” reads the sign on the front of the bookshop; not by the ghost of a person from the past, but by the ghosts of all great literature which haunt all libraries and bookstores. The owner of the bookshop is so focused on his books that he cannot see the unusual things that are going on in his shop. It takes a young advertising salesman who is seeking new business and the daughter of a rich client who has been sent to earn a living for herself in the bookshop to