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When Oedipus, King of Thebes, realized he had married his own mother and had two sons and two daughters with her, he blinded himself and cursed his sons to divide their kingdom by the sword. The two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, in order to avoid bloodshed, agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years. After...

The Cynic's Dictionary is an indispensable resource offering satirical reinterpretations of terms in the English language, covering every aspect of human foolishness and frailty. A conspicuous, and it is hoped not unpleasant, feature of the book is its abundant illustrative quotations from eminent poets.

The novel follows an ambitious young heroine, Thea Kronborg, who leaves her hometown to go to the big city to fulfil her dream of becoming a well-trained pianist, a better piano teacher. When her piano instructor hears her voice, he realizes that this is her true artistic gift. He encourages her to pursue her vocal training instead of piano.

A construction engineer and world-renowned builder of bridges is undergoing a mid-life crisis. He is married and resumes his acquaintance with a former lover, Hilda Burgoyne, in London. The affair gnaws at Bartley's sense of propriety and honour.

The novel follows life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native, searching for his purpose in life. We see Claude building friendships during his University years and these relationships interrupted when his father expands the family farm and Claude is obligated to leave university and operate part of the...

The novel follows life of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies and devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when many other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie.

Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the world, but he was not always prudent on his own account. Discipline sometimes irked him, and he would then take any opportunity that presented for an adventure; for he was not only a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a man of science, and whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible at-traction for him.

There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil, are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other of these qualities.

Evening was drawing nigh, and the Fianna-Finn had decided to hunt no more that day. The hounds were whistled to heel, and a sober, homeward march began. For men will walk soberly in the evening, however they go in the day, and dogs will take the mood from their masters. They were pacing so, through the...

The story follows adventures of five Americans on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The five Americans escape from prison during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, by hijacking a balloon.

In 'The Fisherman and his Soul', a young Fisherman finds a Mermaid and wants nothing more than to marry her, but he cannot, for one cannot live underwater if one has a soul. He goes to his priest, but the priest tells him his soul is his most precious possession, and the soulless mermen are lost....

It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the young King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber. His courtiers had all taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to the ground, according to the ceremonious usage of the day, and had retired to the Great Hall of the Palace,...

In a great Palace by the sea there once dwelt a very rich old lord, who had neither wife nor children living, only one little granddaughter, whose face he had never seen in all her life. He hated her bitterly, because at her birth his favourite daughter died; and when the old nurse brought him the baby...

Once upon a time there was a boy whose name was Jack, and he lived with his mother on a common. They were very poor, and the old woman got her living by spinning, but Jack was so lazy that he would do nothing but bask in the sun in the hot weather, and sit by the corner of the hearth in the winter-time....