Whether Mother Goose was a real person or a myth, the songs that are attributed to her name are what we remember from our childhood. Some of these nursery rhymes are complete tales in themselves. There are others which are mere suggestions, leaving the imagination to weave in the details of the story. Many of the rhymes’ origins even at the time of this books writing, could be traced back decades or centuries. L Frank Baum in 1897, while living in Chicago, collected the rhymes and created short stories around them which add context and understanding for children who are drawn to the familiar melodies. (Summary by Westwinds12)...

Children, Fairy tales

This delightful novel begins when a family of five children moves from London to the English countryside. While playing in a gravel pit soon after the move, they discover an ancient and rather grumpy sand-fairy known as the Psammead, who agrees to grant one wish of theirs per day. The children’s wishes send them on adventure after adventure, but rarely turn out as expected. (Summary by Kara)...

Adventure, Children, Fantasy, Fiction

Angèle, une jeune fille orpheline recueillie par deux charmants Québecois, rentre chez elle un soir et tombe sur un jeune homme ensanglanté qui s'est évadé de prison. Jacques Bourgeot, qui est amoureux d'Angèle, soupconne quelque chose. Angèle et Alphonse parviendront-ils à échapper aux policemen et à trouver le bonheur ensemble? Angèle, a young orphan, adopted by two lovely French Canadians, comes home one night and finds a young man covered in blood on her doorstep. He has escaped from jail. Jacques Bourgeot, who is in love with Angèle, is getting suspicious of something fishy. Will Angèle and Alphonse manage to escape the policemen and find happiness together? (résumé par Nadine Eckert-Boulet)...

Adventure, Romance

La Chasse-galerie (The Hunt of Gallery) also known as The Bewitched Canoe is a French Canadian tale of voyageurs who make a deal with the Devil, a variant of the Wild Hunt. In Quebec, the legend of the chasse-galerie, or the bewitched canoe, is a favourite. Its most famous version was written by Honoré Beaugrand (1848 - 1906?). (From Wikipedia) Il s'agit de l'histoire de bûcherons de la Gatineau qui font un pacte avec le diable afin de faire voler un canot pour qu'ils puissent rendre visite à leurs femmes. Il devront cependant éviter de blasphémer durant la traversée, ne point heurter le canot aux clochers d'une église et être de retour avant six heures le lendemain matin. Dans le cas contraire ceux-ci perdraient leurs âmes. La version la plus connue est celle écrite par Honoré Beaugrand. (de Wikipedia)...

Adventure, Fantasy, Myths/Legends

Trois jeunes et riches Allemands ont disparu sans laisser de trace. Paris est en émoi après l'evénement de la pêche miraculeuse. La jeune Angèle soupconne son René, père de leur enfant, d'être tombé amoureux d'une autre femme. Une vampire rôderait-elle sur les bords de la Seine? (résumé par Nadine)Three young German noblemen have vanished. Paris is upside down after the fishing up of a treasure from the Seine. Young Angèle is suspicious that René, the father of her child, is having an affair with another woman. Is there a she-vampire erring on the riversides? (summary by Nadine)...

Horror/Ghost stories, Mystery

Scaramouche is a romantic adventure and tells the story of a young aristocrat during the French Revolution. His successive endeavors as a lawyer, politician, actor, lover, and buffoon lead his enemies to call him Scaramouche (also called Scaramuccia, a roguish character in the commedia dell'arte), but he impresses many with his elegant orations and precision swordsmanship. The later film version includes one of the longest, and many believe, best swashbuckling sword-fighting scenes ever filmed.The novel has a memorable start (Book I: The Robe, Chapter I, 'The Republican'): He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillacs had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. (Summary by Gord)...

History, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Romance

The idea was to write a whole novel in the month of November, based on the guidelines of the http://www.nanowrimo.org/ National Novel Writing Month . The twist is that there are up to 30 people writing together, instead of one toiling alone. Each writer signed up to do one section of 1,700+ words, in English. Plot and particulars were agreed before the start. Each writer also recorded his/her own chapter, which can be downloaded here. The resulting novel is in the public domain. (Summary by Gesine)...

Mystery, Science fiction, Comedy, Fantasy, Adventure, Spy stories

These are the last four Cantos of his mock epic that Byron completed in the year before his death at the age of 36 in Messolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to fight for the nationalists against the Ottoman Empire. Juan, now in England, is invited to spend the autumn with a hunting party at the ancient country seat of Lord Henry and Lady Adeline Amundeville. There, he meets the most intriguing of the Byronic heroines, Aurora Raby, and is visited by a ghost with ample breasts (!). That is the narrative outline but hardly the focus of the last Cantos. Byron is more interested satirizing the frailty of faith, the fecklessness of the English aristocracy, the futility of English pastimes and the fawning of elected Members of Parliament over their middle-class constituents. Booze, banquets, belles and bishops are given the Byronic treatment, while his spleen is reserved for his critics and for tyranny. (Summary by Peter Gallagher)...

Adventure, Fiction, Myths/Legends, Poetry, Romance

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo ) is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It is often considered, along with The Three Musketeers , as Dumas's most popular work. The writing of the work was completed in 1844. Like many of his novels, it is expanded from the plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. It is primarily concerned with themes of justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness, and is told in the style of an adventure story. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Romance, Adventure

Pride and Prejudice, first published on 28 January 1813, is the most famous of Jane Austen's novels. It is one of the first romantic comedies in the history of the novel and its opening is one of the most famous lines in English literature —It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. [From Wikipedia]...

Romance, Literature, Fiction

The Zeppelin’s Passenger is a tale of German espionage in England during World War I. Dreymarsh is a fictional “backwater” area in England with no apparent military value. The story begins with Dreymarsh residents discovering an observation car from a German zeppelin along with a Homburg hat near Dreymarsh. The mystery is further complicated when an Englishman, Mr. Hamar Lessingham, presents himself at Mainsail Haul which is the residence of Sir Henry Cranston. Lessingham bears with him, hand-carried letters from Major Richard Halstead, and a British prisoner of war in Germany. He presents them to Halstead’s sister, Phillipa and Helen, Halstead’s fiancée who have had no word of Richard’s fate and are deeply concerned. Phillipa, Sir Henry’s wife, is smitten with Lessingham, after Sir Henry appears to her to be a coward since he will not become involved in the war effort. Lessingham appears to be the perfect gentlemen but he is not who he pretends to be. Eventually, Phillipa and Helen discover that the delivery of Halstead’s letters come with a price. All becomes clear near the end to discover the secret of Lessingham, Sir Henry, and ...

War stories, Spy stories

Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero; a courteous, pious and swashbuckling outlaw of the mediæval era who, in modern versions of the legend, is famous for robbing the rich to feed the poor and fighting against injustice and tyranny. He operates with his seven score (140 strong) group of fellow outlawed yeomen – named the Merry Men. He and his band are usually associated with Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. The Victorian era generated its own distinct versions of Robin Hood. The traditional tales were often adapted for children, most notably in Howard Pyle's Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. These versions firmly stamp Robin as a staunch philanthropist, a man who takes from the rich to give to the poor.(Summary from Wikipedia)...

Children, Adventure, Teen/Young adult, Historical Fiction

Some have a slight historical value; some are useful as giving point to certain great moral truths; others are products solely of the fancy, and are intended only to amuse. Some are derived from very ancient sources, and are current in the literature of many lands; some have come to us through the ballads and folk tales of the English people; a few are of quite recent origin (Excerpt from text)...

Children, History, Fairy tales

This much-loved story follows a group of animal friends in the English countryside as they pursue adventure ... and as adventure pursues them! The chief characters - Mole, Rat, and Toad - generally lead upbeat and happy lives, but their tales are leavened with moments of terror, homesickness, awe, madcap antics, and derring-do. Although classed as children's literature, The Wind in the Willows holds a gentle fascination for adults too. The vocabulary is decidedly not Dick and Jane, and a reader with a love of words will find new ones to treasure, even if well-equipped for the journey. Parents will appreciate the themes of loyalty, manners, self-restraint, and comradeship which are evident throughout the book. When the characters err, they are prompt to acknowlege it, and so a reading of this book can model good behavior to children, who will otherwise be enchanted with the many ways in which the lives of these bucolic characters differ from modern life. This book was so successful that it enabled the author to retire from banking and take up a country life somewhat like that of his creations. It has been adapted for screen, stage, a...

Animals, Children, Fantasy

Journey to the Interior of the Earth is an 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne (published in the original French as Voyage au centre de la Terre). The story involves a professor who leads his nephew and hired guide down a volcano in Iceland to the “center of the Earth”. They encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy. (Summary from wikipedia.org)...

Adventure, Fantasy

There are certain names which are familiar, as names, to all mankind; and every person who seeks for any degree of mental cultivation, feels desirous of informing himself of the leading outlines of their history, that he may know, in brief, what it was in their characters or their doings which has given them so widely-extended a fame. Consequently, great historical names alone are selected; and it has been the writer's aim to present the prominent and leading traits in their characters, and all the important events in their lives, in a bold and free manner, and yet in the plain and simple language which is so obviously required in works which aim at permanent and practical usefulness. This volume is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. (Summary from the preface of the book)...

Biography, Children, History, Teen/Young adult

Christopher Kit Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564―30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. The foremost Elizabethan tragedian before William Shakespeare, he is known for his magnificent blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his own untimely death. The Jew of Malta (1589) is an original story of religious conflict, intrigue, and revenge, set against a backdrop of the struggle for supremacy between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. The Jew of Malta is considered to have been a major influence on William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice . The play contains a prologue in which the character Machiavel, a Senecan ghost based on Niccolò Machiavelli, introduces the tragedy of a Jew. Thomas Heywood: The well-known dramatist of the time has included Prologues and Epilogues both for the court and the Cock-Pit theatre ...making choice of you unto whom to devote it; . (summary by David Lawrence)...

Play, Fiction, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Tragedy

With no written language, Native Americans living in the Lake Superior region passed their cultural identity down through the generations by way of stories. Far more than mere tales to amuse children, they passed along the collective wisdom of the tribes. In the 1830s, government Indian Agent and ethnologist Henry R Schoolcraft learned the language of these people and went out to collect and preserve their stories before the tribes disappeared under the westward rush of American civilization. Though these stories were recast as children’s fairy tales in the 1920s, they contain much of the old wisdom of a culture which has largely disappeared. (Summary by Chip)...

Fairy tales, Children, Short stories

Cette édition de 1742 nous rapporte les contes de ma mère l'Oye adaptés par Charles Perrault et agrémentés de moralités. Pleines d'enseignements, ces histoires du temps passé, contées, en France, depuis le Moyen Âge, nous ferons encore rêver ou frissonner avec leurs jeunes filles et jeunes gens dans l'adversité, leurs princesses et leurs princes et, bien sûr, leurs fées. Retrouvons donc le petit Chaperon rouge, Cendrillon, le Chat botté, ... et redécouvrons d'où nous vient ce Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir ? In this book, published in 1742, Charles Perrault accompanies his Tales of passed times, by Mother Goose, with witty morals. In the French language, let us discover or rediscover what happens to Cinderella, the Sleeping Beauty and their folk-tales peers. (Summary by Ezwa)...

Children, Fairy tales

This is a great book if you're looking for an adventure filled novel. It takes place during the Spanish Inquisition and describes some of the horrors that happened giving you an idea of what it was really like to live during that time period. Follow Lysbeth, a young Hollander girl, as she struggles through life enduring times of hardship and peace, sorrow and happiness, war and love. (Introduction by Abigail Rasmussen)...

Historical Fiction, Adventure, Romance