Eloise Fairfax

"A Tramp Abroad" is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created for the book, and based on his closest friend, Joseph Twichell), through central and southern Europe. While the stated goal of the journey is to walk most of the way, the men find themselves using other forms...

Venture to a world of fairies and flowers in this nineteenth-century collection of stories and poems from the beloved author of Little Women. At the tender age of sixteen, Louisa May Alcott's imagination was already in full bloom. From tales she told her neighbor, Ellen, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, she wove together stories and songs about fairies, elves, talking flowers, and animals. With innocence and whimsy, Alcott revealed the shadowy kingdom...

This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea-if you gazed intently, enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About...

When tragedy strikes on his son's wedding day, Lord Manfred believes it is a foreboding omen, and will do whatever it takes to stop it-no matter how immoral. Set in the 18th century, The Castle of Otranto begins on the day Manfred's son, Conrad, was meant to be married. Known for his sickly nature, Conrad is the eldest child of two, and is set to marry Princess Isabella, a union that would reap strong benefits for the noble family. However, when...

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display her mastery over the realistic fiction genre. In 1922, two years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for "The Age of Innocence", Wharton wrote "The Glimpses of the Moon". The novel centered around two young newlyweds, who arranged their marriage in order to take advantage of their wealthy friends' generosity. However, things do not end quite as they planned when they...

At the top of Mount Munch, lives a group of people known as the Hyups. One of their numbers, a Munchkin named Bini Aru, discovered a method of transforming people and objects by merely saying the word "Pyrzqxgl". After Princess Ozma decreed that no one could practice magic in Oz except for Glinda the Good Witch and the Wizard of Oz, Bini wrote down the directions for pronouncing "Pyrzqxgl" and hid them in his magical laboratory. When Bini and his...

First published in 1852, "The Blithedale Romance" is the third of Nathaniel Hawthorne's romantic novels. Set in the utopian communal farm called Blithedale in the 1840's, the novel tells the story of four inhabitants of the commune: Hollingsworth, a misogynist philanthropist obsessed with turning Blithedale into a colony for the reformation of criminals; Zenobia, a passionate feminist; Priscilla, a mysterious lady with a hidden agenda who turns out...

"Hospital Sketches" by Louisa May Alcott stands as a poignant testament to the human spirit amidst the turmoil of the American Civil War. This slim yet powerful volume encapsulates Alcott's firsthand experiences as a nurse, weaving together a collection of vivid narratives that offer an unfiltered glimpse into the stark realities of wartime hospitals and the resilient souls who inhabited them. In this autobiographical work, Alcott paints a vivid...

First published in 1903 in serial form, Henry James' "The Ambassadors" is the story of the middle-aged and naïve Lewis Lambert Strether, who travels to Europe at the behest of his widowed fiancée to find her supposedly wayward son, Chad Newsome. Mrs. Newsome fears he has fallen under the spell of a sinful woman and Strether must rescue him. With the intent of bringing Chad back to America and to his post at the family business, Strether encounters...

Henry James's tragicomic masterpiece pits a headstrong Mississippi lawyer against his feminist cousin in a no-holds-barred fight for the heart of an impressionable young suffragette. When Basil Ransom, a headstrong Mississippi lawyer, comes to Boston to call on his wealthy activist cousin, Olive, an epic battle of wills ensues. Basil is a conservative of the most ardent type while Cousin Olive is steadfast in her radicalism. Perhaps for a laugh, perhaps...