Books

The Gothic novel so shocking that Parliament denounced it and its own author was forced to censor it.

Ambrosio is Madrid’s most revered holy man — until temptation enters his monastery and drags him into a spiral of obsession, black magic, and unspeakable crime. Published in 1796 when its author was just twenty, The Monk scandalized Europe, was...

Meet the original gentleman thief — the master of disguise who inspired a century of imitators and a global streaming phenomenon.

He robs only those who deserve it, walks out of prison on his own schedule, and signs his crimes with a flourish. In these first adventures from 1907, Maurice Leblanc introduced Arsène Lupin — burglar, escape artist,...

Four strangers, one medieval Italian castle, one enchanted month — the cozy classic behind the beloved film.

On a wet February afternoon in London, Mrs. Wilkins reads an advertisement she cannot afford and cannot resist: a small mediaeval castle on the Italian Riviera, to be let for the month of April, “To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and...

The cozy classic a new generation is rediscovering — from the author of Anne of Green Gables.

At twenty-nine, Valancy Stirling has never been loved, never been free, and never once spent a night away from the joyless house where her clan of aunts and uncles rules her life. Her only escape is a castle she has built inside her own mind. Then a...

Have you seen the Yellow Sign?

There is a play that no one can read twice. Its first act is harmless. Everyone who reads into the second act is ruined — driven mad, damned, or changed forever. It is called The King in Yellow, and the genius of Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 masterpiece is that he never lets you read it. You only meet the wreckage it...

He sits down at your table a stranger. By morning he owns your fortune, your will, and even your voice.

Germany, in the ruined years after the Great War. Into the gambling clubs and seance parlors of a society coming apart walks a man with no fixed face: physician, hypnotist, forger, market-rigger, and murderer. He calls himself many names. The...

A young man caught between two worlds discovers what it truly means to belong.

At almost eighteen, Giorgos Balaskapoulos lives in the most beautiful place he knows and feels nothing but emptiness. Tarpon Springs, Florida, is the sponge-diving capital of the world, a loud and loving Greek-American town where his family owns the boats, the curio...

Published in the last year of the Great War, this is not the gentle book its title promises.

Roughly its first third is war satire aimed squarely at the German Emperor and his son. Kaiser Wilhelm II is interrogated by the Crown Prince to the tune of Lewis Carroll. A parody of the Rubaiyat stars Billi Kaisam, Surnamed the Tentbreaker. And the...

A kitten sets sail across the Atlantic because a cat may look at a king, so surely a kitten may look at a prince.

An ant with more social ambition than provisions invites five score guests to a ball and then sits up all night working out how to feed them. A giraffe is measured. A violet arrives late. And an elf borrows a sleeping dormouse’s...

Printed at Sidney’s Press in New Haven in 1806, adorned with cuts, and offered for the amusement of Little Lack Beard and his pretty sisters.

This is a chapbook: a cheap, thin, hand-illustrated popular book of the kind peddlers sold for pennies and children read to pieces. Thousands were printed in the early American republic. Very few survive.

What would happen if one man suddenly owned more gold than most governments on earth?

Aboard a steamer bound for Buenos Ayres, the composed American Robert Brent falls into conversation with a shrewd Scotsman named Duncan Fraser. Out of that meeting comes a secret hidden in the Cordilleras of South America, and out of the secret comes a hoard...

Dotty spends an entire year secretly collecting a story for every month, pasting them into a scrapbook so it can go under the Christmas tree for Marjorie.

Everything in this book is what Marjorie read. A little girl telephones Santa Claus and is asked, instead of giving her list, to find children he ought to know about. A valentine goes to...

Before Gatsby’s parties, there were Dorothy Speare’s dancers.

It is 1922. Twenty-year-old Joy Nelson arrives in a New England college town with a country stillness about her and a secret she barely trusts: she can sing. What she finds instead is a set of young people who cannot sit still — the “Excitement-Eaters,” who dance until the milk wagons...

Every feeling has a name. Every feeling belongs to you.

Help the children in your life discover, understand, and own their emotions, one crayon stroke at a time.

All About Feelings is a beautifully illustrated coloring book for kids ages 5 to 8 that makes emotional learning feel like playtime. Each of the 14 feeling pages pairs a warm, engaging...