This volume describes, in verse, the mythical creatures and people of ancient Scotland. It also includes explanatory notes about about the characters and folk tales that inspired the author's poetry. (Introduction by Matthew Reece)

Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 1909. She died in Vaermland in 1940. The Treasure (Herr Arnes penningar) is a fairly short Novel, both a Drama and a Ghost Story. Published in 1904 and the English translation in 1923. The story is set in Bohuslaen on the West coast of Sweden in the middle of the 16th Century. Herr Arne, the old Parson in Solberga and all his household are brutally murdered, and his great Treasure stolen...

The Ingoldsby Legends are a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry supposedly written by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of Richard Harris Barham.The legends were first printed in 1837 as a regular series in Bentley's Miscellany and later in New Monthly Magazine. The legends were illustrated by John Leech and George Cruikshank. They proved immensely popular and were compiled into books published in 1840, 1842 and 1847 by Richard Bentley. They remained popular through the Victorian era but have since fallen out of fame. An omnibus edition appeared in 1879: The Ingoldsby Legends; or Mirth and marvels.

He was a painter, a poet, a novelist. He lived during the Hungarian revolution and his love of freedom meant his life was often in peril. She was his first love, this girl with the eyes like the sea. She was at heart noble, good and loving. What an excellent lady might have been made out of this woman, if she had only met with a husband who, in the most ordinary acceptance of the word, had been a good fellow, as is really the case with about nine men out of every ten. But she always managed to draw the unlucky tenth out of the urn of destiny...

Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), a Scotsman by birth and a barrel-maker by trade, settled in Chicago in its infancy and founded the Pinkertons, the world's first detective agency. Though events associated with the agency after his death have tarnished the name, Pinkerton himself was one of the original human rights advocates. He was a dear friend to John Brown, an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, and 80 years ahead of his time in hiring female detectives. He was also stubborn, irascible, and an egomaniac...

This novel, which Shakespeare adapted in his pastoral comedy As You Like It, is the archetypal pastoral adventure. Two young persons of high birth, who have recently lost their fathers (one to death, one to banishment), fall in love but are separated almost at once and forced to flee to the Forest of Arden. There they meet again, but as Rosalynde is disguised for safety as a boy, named Ganymede, her lover Rosader does not recognize her. Once Rosader has confided his love to Ganymede, they play a game in which the "boy" poses as Rosalynde to give Rosader practice in wooing...

“Mr. Benson sees the world, four or five generations hence, free at last from all minor quarrels, and ranged against itself in two camps, Humanitarianism for those who believe in no divinity but that of man, Catholicism for those who believe in no divinity but that of God.” This apocalyptic novel from the early 1900's is sometimes deemed one of the first modern dystopias.

Come Rack! Come Rope! is a historical novel by the English priest and writer Robert Hugh Benson, a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. Set in Derbyshire at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, when being or harboring a priest was considered treason and was punishable with death, it tells the story of two young lovers who give up their chance of happiness together, choosing instead to face imprisonment and martyrdom, so that "God's will" may be done.The book was written nearly nine years after Benson's reception into the Catholic Church...

The story could really have been simple: Miss Milner, who is admired for her beauty and charm, could have been a socialite, marry a respectable and good looking man and be happy in the standards of her time. But if it was so, why would there be a book? Miss Milner, beautiful and charming as she is, announces her wish to marry her guardian, a catholic priest. But women in the 18th century do not declare their wishes or speak about their passions, and- after all- he is a catholic priest… And if he finds a way to marry her, is this her road to happiness?

The Metamorphosis, also known as The Golden Ass, is one of the very few novels of the Ancient World that survived to our days; one of the two novels of Roman Literature that we can still read; and the only one preserved in its entirety (the other one being the extremely fragmentary Satyricon). The story of the Metamorphosis, the tale of a man turned into a donkey that goes through many adventures to become a man again, inspired many other similar ones later on. However, more than just the plot, the style of the Golden Ass also made it famous...

This is a long short story from 1899, approximately 95 minutes more or less, about a mysterious woman living virtually alone on the outskirts of a small New England town in a mansion with a magnificent garden. (Introduction by BellonaTimes)

A light-hearted account of a successful middle aged widower who chances to visit the small town in which he grew up to renew old acquaintances and perhaps reflect on his successes since his departure.This visit, however, becomes far more to him than he would have imagined, as he finds that one of his dearest childhood girlfriends had died not long after his departure, and the widower envisions a relationship with none other than her daughter, who he senses to be her mother incarnate.

The Perils of Pauline is one of the first damsel in distress serials. The story is complete with undaunted hero, courageous damsel, unscrupulous villains galore, and other worldly interest. Before getting married, Pauline wants to experience the world and have adventures. When her guardian dies and leaves her an estate in trust of his secretary, adventures suddenly become more hazardous. Pauline charters aeroplanes, meets untrustworthy pirates, braves dangerous China Town, flies in a hot air balloon, adventures in the Wild West, encounters international spies, and escapes many other perils with the aid of her would-be fiancé, Harry, and an Egyptian mummy.

The Ghost Breaker is a drama and haunted house horror complete with heroes, villains, and a Princess. The Ghost Breaker was originally a screenplay and would later be made a drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

Trilby, published in 1894, fits into the gothic horror genre which was undergoing a revival during the Fin de siècle and is one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle period after Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The story of the poor artist’s model Trilby O’Ferrall, transformed into a diva under the spell of the evil musical genius Svengali, created a sensation. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and Trilby, Florida were all named for the heroine, and a variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown (worn in the London stage production of a dramatization of the novel) came to be called a trilby...

The Harbor was written in 1915 by Ernest Poole. The novel is considered by many to be one of Poole’s best efforts even though his book, The Family won a Pulitzer Prize. The Harbor is a fictional account of life on a Brooklyn waterfront through the eyes of Billy as he is growing up. The novel starts with Billy the child, living on the harbor with his father, mother, and sister, Sue. During this time he also meets Eleanor who, at that time, he considers to be strange. She later becomes an important character in the novel...

The 1910s is historically considered the decade of greatest social change in history. It saw the advent and proliferation of the automobile, electricity, lighting, radio, telephone and cinema. Our present time of change is actually quite tame in comparison, though also breathless. His Family is a tale of a widowed father, working to manage this decade of change as it affects his family in New York City. His Family was the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1919.