Reading Essentials: 322 books

This is the novel of the Old South, a world few people knew existed - a world of violence, cruelty, greed, and lust. Mandingo brings to vivid life the sounds, the smells, the terrible reality of the slave-breeding farms and plantations where men and women were mated and bred like cattle. Set in the...

At first, the Ingallses lived in a sod house in Minnesota. Then Pa built a clean new house beside Plum Creek, buying the materials for it on credit, and intending to pay for them with the fall wheat harvest. But just before harvest time, a strange glittering cloud suddenly blocked out the sun. Plunk!...

The sinister business of counter-espionage is played out by an array of magnificent characters in this one of Cheyney's very best efforts.  A classic of Golden Age detective, mystery and spy novels... 'If there are better thrillers it is hardly possible to think of them while under the spell of this one' Times Literary Supplemen

Hermann Hesse is best-known for Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, but his novella DEMIAN has been re-discovered and become very popular in its own right, exploring an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. It's Hesse's brilliant coming-of-age novel about the spiritual and...

An outstanding scholar of the East, author Harold Lamb here presented another one of his brilliant, carefully worked, and blazingly colorful tapestries of a man and his era - in this case, it is Suleiman, wisest and strongest of the Sultans of Turkey, who lived during the dying days of the Renaissance....

For all his young life Albert Brown had known that he was to join the Navy, and the beginning of the First World War finds him a Leading Seaman. Alone on the barren island of Resolution in the South Pacific, he fights against the might of a German battleship. This is the first of C.S.Forester's novels about the sea.

In the underwater caverns of THE BLUE LAGOON, two young divers find rare prizes!

Story of the dream of a young pilot whose plane is wrecked over the Pacific Ocean...

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left,...

Really three plots in one: the story of a raccoon, a superstitious tale of a "duck-footed" hound, and the story of 13-year-old Harky, his father, and the girl Melinda. The best of the book is about the coon's life and the nature background.

This book is perhaps the best introduction to the subject of witchcraft that is neither hysterical nor Wiccan propaganda. Thus it is a rare read on the subject. Charles Williams provides an esoteric and intellectually provocative history of witchcraft and magic in the Christian era. As readable as...

Courageous young Sylvia's first love is threatened by her brother's scheming wife.

Inside the little house in the Big Woods live the Ingalls family: Ma, Pa, Mary, Laura and baby Carrie. Outside the little house are the wild animals: the bears and the bees, the deer and the wolves. Wolves and panthers and bears roam the deep Wisconsin woods in the late 19th century. In those same...

Cyril Hare's short stories were mostly written for the London Evening Standard. Among them, The Story of Hermione, in which the eponymous character grows rich from the all too convenient deaths of several relatives, has been called one of the most chilling short stories ever written. Sister Bessie describes...