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When Arsène Lupin disappeared at the end of The Hollow Needle the public and police assumed he was dead; but it turns out he was just biding his time…
Read free →Public Domain Books
Browse our collection of 271 free public domain books, sourced from Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks. Each title is hosted on Laterpress and free to read.
A Christmas Carol
Published in 1843, this classic has been adapted many times for film, theater, radio, and more. Ebenezer Scrooge is confronted by three spirits at…
Read free →A Confession
Leo Tolstoy wrote this short meditation on sadness and the meaning of life when he was middle aged. He had already completed his masterworks, Anna…
Read free →A Damsel in Distress
An American composer, George Bevan, falls in love with a mysterious young lady who takes refuge in his taxicab one day. He tracks her down to an…
Read free →A Gentleman of Leisure
After inheriting a fortune, and just back to New York from a cruise on which he spotted an intriguing young woman, Jimmy Pitt is drifting. So after…
Read free →A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Published in English in 1871. Professor Otto Lidenbrock believes there are volcanic tubes that reach the center of the earth, and sets of to explore…
Read free →A Man Could Stand Up—
A Man Could Stand Up— opens on Armistice Day, with Valentine Wannop learning that her love, Christopher Tietjens, has returned to London from the…
Read free →A Modest Proposal
A satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729, which suggests poor Irish might ease their economic difficulties by…
Read free →A Prefect’s Uncle
A new term is beginning at Beckford College, and “Bishop” Gethryn seems to have it all: He’s the head prefect of his schoolhouse, a top athlete on…
Read free →A Princess of Mars
First serialized from February to July 1912 in the pulp magazine All Story Magazine. It is the first volume of the Barsoom series, starring John…
Read free →A Study in Scarlet
Published in 1887, this novel marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
Read free →A Tale of Two Cities
Published in 1859, the novel is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. It chronicles the 18-year imprisonment of Doctor…
Read free →Alice Adams
Alice Adams is Booth Tarkington’s second novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, just three years after his novel The Magnificent Ambersons won it. The novel…
Read free →Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Published in 1865. Alice falls through a rabbit hole and enters a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. In over 150 years, the book has never…
Read free →An Antarctic Mystery
An Antarctic Mystery follows Mr. Jeorling, a wealthy American naturalist whose research has led him to the remote Kerguelen Islands, located in the…
Read free →Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is certainly somewhat unhappy in her life, but presents a strong and vivacious character when called in to smooth over a major crack…
Read free →Anne of Avonlea
Published in 1909, this book is a sequel to Anne of Green Gables, and covers Anne's life from the age of 16 to 18.
Read free →Anne of Green Gables
Published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of Anne Shirley, and 11-year-old orphan sent to live with older siblings on their farm in the…
Read free →Anne of the Island
The third book in the Anne of Green Gables series, published in 1915. It follows Ann Shirley from age 18 to 22, as she sets off for Redmond College…
Read free →Anne's House of Dreams
Published in 1917, Anne's House of Dreams is the 4th book in the Anne of Green Gables series, by publication date. It covers Anne's life from ages…
Read free →Arms and the Man
Set during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War, comedy showcases the futility of war and the hypocrisies of human nature.
Read free →Around the World in Eighty Days
Published in English in 1873. Phileas Fogg wagers half his fortune that he can circumnavigate the world in 80 days.
Read free →Arsène Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes
Arsène Lupin takes on his most fearsome opponent yet in this second collection of his larcenous adventures. More a loving homage than a straight…
Read free →At the Earth’s Core
At the Earth’s Core, published in 1914, is the first of a series of science fiction novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs set inside a hollow earth…
Read free →Beowulf
An epic poem believed to have been written between 975 and 1025. Author unknown. Beowulf comes to the aid of the king of the Danes, Hrothgar, to help…
Read free →Black Beauty
Published in 1877, the novel is told as a first person autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse, Black Beauty. Author Anna Sewell wrote it…
Read free →Bleak House
First released as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853, and revolves around a court case involving several conflicting wills.…
Read free →Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment tells the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, an ex-student who plans to murder a pawnbroker to test his theory of personality. Having…
Read free →Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, was George Eliot’s last novel. It deals with two major characters whose lives intersect: One is a spoiled young…
Read free →David Copperfield
Published in 1850, the details David Copperfield's adventures from childhood through maturity. The book could be considered an autobiographical…
Read free →Doctor Dolittle's Post Office
The third Doctor Dolittle book is told in an episodic format. Dolittle organizes a post office in Africa, using birds to carry mail from continent to…
Read free →Domnei
The story follows Perion de la Forêt, fugitive leader of a mercenary troop, and his unbridled passion for his newly-wed and newly-distant lover, the…
Read free →Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
The 4th Oz novel, published in 1908. Dorothy and her cousin Zeb are swallowed up by an earthquake, and with the Wizard's help, travel underground to…
Read free →Dracula
Published in 1897, this iconic novel has been adapted for film many times, with its characters becoming archetypes used in other media since entering…
Read free →Dracula's Guest
Published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death. The book collects nine stories. Six of them were first published between 1891 and 1896. Dracula's…
Read free →Dubliners
A collection of fifteen short stories about life in Dublin.
Read free →Emily of the New Moon
First published in 1923. Like Anne of Green Gable, this novel from L.M. Montgomery depicts life through the eyes of a young orphan girl. Montgomery…
Read free →Erewhon
In a desire for better sheep-farming land on an unnamed British colony, Higgs decides to traverse the distant mountain range. On the other side he…
Read free →Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome is a young man whose nascent ambitions were thwarted by illness and privation. Now his daily toils wring only the most meager living from…
Read free →Facing the Flag
In another science-based entry in his Voyages Extraordinaires series, Verne takes us on the journey of Simon Hart, an engineer who poses as a medical…
Read free →Far from the Madding Crowd
Hardy described Wessex as “a merely realistic dream country” and so it is in Far from the Madding Crowd, where an idyllic view of the countryside is…
Read free →Fifty-One Tales
Lord Dunsany earned literary fame through his otherworldly short stories. This book compiles fifty-one of them, without a seeming theme except that…
Read free →First Lensman
Against the backdrop of a secret war between two all-powerful alien races, Virgil Samms of the Triplanetary Service is selected by the seemingly…
Read free →Five Weeks in a Balloon
Five Weeks in a Balloon tells the tale of three Englishmen who attempt to cross Africa, from east to west, in a balloon. Dr. Ferguson is the rational…
Read free →Four-Day Planet
Reminiscent of old whaling stories, Four-Day Planet follows the story of Walter Boyd, a scrappy 17-year-old reporter working for his father at the…
Read free →Frankenstein
Told in epistolary form, Frankenstein tells the tale of Victor Frankenstein, who creates a living creature through his unorthodox experiments.
Read free →From the Earth to the Moon
In search of an occupation after the end of the Civil War, the Baltimore Gun Club undertakes the design and construction of a cannon capable of…
Read free →Golf Stories
P. G. Wodehouse’s short stories are often set in the salons and townhouses of England, but he also wrote about golf, returning again and again to one…
Read free →Great Expectations
Published in 1861, Great Expectations is a coming-of-age story for an orphan nicknamed Pip. The novel tackles themes of wealth and poverty, social…
Read free →Greenmantle
Greenmantle is the second of John Buchan’s novels to feature Richard Hannay, a Scottish intelligence office in the British army, and as such is the…
Read free →Grimms' Fairy Tales
Sixty-one tales inspired by German folklore.
Read free →Gulliver's Travels
Swift wrote this 1726 novel to satirize human nature, as well as the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre that was popular during that time. The…
Read free →Hadji Murád
In this short novel, Tolstoy fictionalizes the final days of Hadji Murád, a legendary Avar separatist who fought against, and later with, Russia, as…
Read free →Hard Times
Published in 1854, Hard Times satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. It is the shortest of Dicken's novels, and the only one not to…
Read free →He Who Gets Slapped
A mysterious gentleman arrives at Papa Briquet’s circus, and applies to be a clown; unable to do a backflip, and with the circus unwilling to accept…
Read free →Heretics
G. K. Chesterton was an English writer, journalist, philosopher, poet and lay theologian. He delighted in standing conventional wisdom on its head in…
Read free →His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes
The collection features 7 Sherlock Holmes short stories, published between 1908 and 1917. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, The Adventure of the Red…
Read free →Hudibras
The knight-errant Hudibras and his trusty (and somewhat more grounded) squire Ralph roam the land in search of adventure and love. Never the most…
Read free →In Search of the Castaways
Following the clues found in a bottle cast into the ocean, Lord and Lady Genarvan set off for South America and Australia in their ship Duncan to…
Read free →Indiscretions of Archie
The eponymous Archie is Archibald Moffam, a gaffe-prone but affable Englishman who has found himself living in New York City after the end of the…
Read free →Invaders from the Infinite
In the year 2129, a doglike alien race asks the scientists Arcot, Wade and, Morey to assist them with defending their solar system from an enemy…
Read free →Islands of Space
Though better known as the editor for authors such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, John W. Campbell also wrote science fiction under both his…
Read free →Jacob’s Room
In her third novel, Virginia Woolf departs from conventional narrative and explores storytelling through discordant scenes and impressions. Jacob…
Read free →Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre experienced abuse at a young age, not only from her aunt—who raised her after both her parents died—but also from the headmaster of Lowood…
Read free →Jeeves Stories
Jeeves Stories is a collection of humorous short stories by P. G. Wodehouse that feature the adventures of his most famous characters, Jeeves and…
Read free →Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure was first published in its complete form in 1895, just after finishing its serial run in Harper’s Magazine. At the time, its…
Read free →Jungle Tales of Tarzan
The sixth Tarzan book based on date of publication. Jungle Tales of Tarzan features twelve loosely connected short stories. The stories take place…
Read free →Jurgen
Jurgen is James Branch Cabell’s most famous novel, and a highly influential one in the fantasy genre. The novel is a witty, parodic send-up of the…
Read free →Just So Stories
This collection of short stories for children was first published in 1902. The tales serve as origin stories of various animal species, detailing how…
Read free →Kidnapped
First serialized in Young Folks magazine from May to July 1886. Kidnapped is set around true 18th-century Scottish history, with many of the…
Read free →Kim
Published in 1901. Kim is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who makes his living begging in the streets of Lahore, India. After joining a Tibetan…
Read free →Leave It to Psmith
Psmith, down on his luck, takes out a newspaper advertisement to undertake a job, and the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, younger son of Lord Emsworth,…
Read free →Little Fuzzy
Little Fuzzy is a science fiction novel set on the planet Zarathustra, a world rich in natural resources being exploited by a huge chartered company…
Read free →Little Lord Fauntleroy
Published in novel form in 1886. Cedric Errol lives in poverty in New York City. Following the death of his father and his father's brothers, Cedric…
Read free →Little Women
Originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, the novel is a coming-of-age tale for the four sisters of the March family. It's loosely based…
Read free →Lost Face
A collection of seven short stories by Jack London, published in 1910.
Read free →Love Among the Chickens
Wodehouse once described his writing as “musical comedy without music,” and Love Among the Chickens is one of the earliest examples of his trademark…
Read free →Man and Wife
Man and Wife is the ninth novel by Wilkie Collins, and was published in serial form in 1870. Like many of his other novels it has a complex plot and…
Read free →Martin Eden
Martin Eden tells the tale of an author working to overcome publisher rejection and establish himself amongst the literary elite, as only through…
Read free →Memoirs of Arsène Lupin
In the process of writing his memoirs, Arsène Lupin takes us back to his early twenties and his first love: Clarice d’Etigues. Although forbidden by…
Read free →Michael Strogoff
Jules Verne is perhaps best known for his science fiction stories, and Michael Strogoff breaks that mold. It’s a true-to-life tale of the titular…
Read free →Middlemarch
Published in eight installments between 1871 and 1872, Middlemarch tells the intertwined stories of a variety of people living in the vicinity of the…
Read free →Mike
Mike Jackson is the youngest son of a family of excellent cricket players and the most promising batsman of them all. At Wrykyn, the public school…
Read free →Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories
A short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1846, containing 11 stories. Most of the tales are allegories focusing on the negative…
Read free →Mr. Standfast
Published in 1919, Mr. Standfast is a thriller set in the latter half of the First World War, and the third of John Buchan’s books to feature Richard…
Read free →Mrs. Dalloway
Probably Virginia Woolf’s best-known novel, Mrs. Dalloway, originally published in 1925, is a glorious, ground-breaking text. On the surface, it…
Read free →Mrs. Warren's Profession
George Bernard Shaw's play about a former prostitute turned madam was written in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. It depicts prostitution…
Read free →Murder in the Gunroom
Jeff Rand, a private detective, is skeptical when he is employed by Gladys Fleming to evaluate her recently acquired gun collection, which happens to…
Read free →My Ántonia
Written in the style of a memoir, My Ántonia chronicles Jim Burden’s friendship with the daughter of a Czech immigrant family. Recently orphaned, he…
Read free →National Avenue
National Avenue, originally titled The Midlander, is Booth Tarkington’s final entry in his Growth Trilogy. Dan Oliphant and his brother Harlan are…
Read free →Night and Day
Although known for her later experiments with style and structure, Virginia Woolf set out in her early novels to master the traditional form. Her…
Read free →No More Parades
No More Parades is the second in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End series. The book, released just a few years after the close of the war, is based on…
Read free →No Name
No Name is set in England during the 1840s. It follows the fortunes of two sisters, Magdalen Vanstone and her older sister Norah. Their comfortable…
Read free →Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground is a fictional collection of memoirs written by a civil servant living alone in St. Petersburg. The man is never named and is…
Read free →O Pioneers!
Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! was first published in June of 1913 by Houghton Mifflin to high praise. Told in five parts, O Pioneers! follows the…
Read free →Oliver Twist
Published as a 3-volume book in 1838. Orphan Oliver Twist is sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker, before escaping a meeting a gang of…
Read free →On the Origin of Species
Published in 1859, Darwin's book introduced the concept of evolution -- that species could change over generations through processes of natural…
Read free →One of Ours
Claude Wheeler is the son of a successful Nebraskan farmer and a very devout mother. He’s sent to a private religious college because his mother…
Read free →Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy is G. K. Chesterton’s response to his critics’ assertion that his earlier collection of essays, Heretics, had “merely criticised current…
Read free →Our Mutual Friend
The final novel written by Charles Dickens, published in 1865. When a rich, misanthropic miser dies, conflict arises over what to do with his estate.
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