Tor Classics | Park County Library System

1) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court

Author

Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

Earliest Publication Date

1901

Summary

"The book relates the tale of Hank Morgan, an engineer from 19th century Hartford Connecticut, who is inexplicably transported to the early medieval England of King Arthur. While there he uses his knowledge of modern technology to appear as though he is a magician. Despite his best intentions, Hank?s attempts to modernize the past bring about a tragic end. A bittersweet depiction of the Arthurian legend through the eyes of a 19th century American..."...

2) A journey to the center of the earth

Author

Verne, Jules, 1828-1905

Earliest Publication Date

1905

Summary

Geologist Otto Lidenbrock is perusing an ancient Icelandic manuscript when he discovers a mysterious encrypted note. The message reveals the account of a sixteenth-century explorer who claims to have found a passageway to the center of the earth. In his quest to penetrate the planet's primordial secrets, the impetuous professor, together with his quaking nephew, Axel, and their devoted guide, Hans, sets off immediately for Iceland. Descending through...

3) Around the world in eighty days

Author

Verne, Jules, 1828-1905

Earliest Publication Date

1924

Summary

One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.

4) A tale of two cities

Author

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Earliest Publication Date

1859

Summary

A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...

5) At the back of the north wind

Author

MacDonald, George, 1824-1905

Earliest Publication Date

1930

Summary

Diamond, a young boy living in nineteenth-century London, has many adventures as he travels with the beautiful lady North Wind and comes to know the many facets of her protective and violent temper.

Author

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891

Earliest Publication Date

1980

Summary

While 'Moby Dick' is Herman Melville's best known book, 'Billy Budd, Sailor' is considered by many to be his greatest work. Billy, a foundling from Bristol, has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. His only physical defect is a stutter which grows worse when under intense emotion. He arouses the antagonism of the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart. Claggart, while not unattractive, seems somehow defective...

7) Captains courageous

Author

Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

Earliest Publication Date

1897

Summary

Harvey Cheyne, the son of a millionaire, learns lessons about life, responsibility, determination, and self-reliance when, saved from drowning by a fishing schooner, he is forced to share the life and hard work of his rescuers.

8) Daisy Miller

Author

James, Henry, 1843-1916

Earliest Publication Date

1879

Summary

A Timeless Classic of Societal Customs, Cultural Disputes, and The Cost of Non-Conformity Henry James' novella Daisy Miller, features one of his greatest heroines. At first glance it seems to be a simple story of a lovely young, independent American girl traveling through Europe. But her flouting of social conventions has the potential to lead to catastrophe as she disrupts the rigid social rules of the Old World, attracting and scandalizing all...

Author

Stoker, Bram, 1847-1912

Earliest Publication Date

1897

Summary

First published in 1897, Dracula by Bram Stoker has become the standard against which all other vampire stories are compare and the inspiration for countless film and stage adaptations. Indeed, the name "Dracula" has been synonymous with the Undead for at least a century, and the original novels till has the power to chill. Come then to Castle Dracula, hidden in the forbidding peaks of the Carpathian Mountains, where an undying creature of evil casts...

10) Frankenstein

Author

Earliest Publication Date

1994

Summary

Immerse yourself in the haunting world of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's legendary gothic horror novel. First published in 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's classic tale of science gone wrong that has electrified readers for over 200 years. This deluxe Frankenstein special edition brings the dark drama and imagination of this seminal work of classic science fiction and horror to vivid life. It follows the story of gifted scientist Victor Frankenstein...

11) Gulliver's travels

Author

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

Earliest Publication Date

1912

Summary

Presents Jonathan Swift's satire in which a shipwrecked Englishman encounters bizarre populations in unheard-of lands, including an enlightened race of horses that makes him see his fellow humans in a different light; and includes explanatory notes and a note on the text, which is based on the 1726 edition.

12) Moby Dick, or, The whale

Author

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891

Earliest Publication Date

1922

Summary

"Moby Dick by Herman Melville is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew...

13) Nicholas Nickleby

Author

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Earliest Publication Date

1911

Summary

"Nicholas Nickleby is the son of a poor country gentleman, and has to make his own way in the world. He first goes as usher to Mr. Squeers, schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall, in Yorkshire, but leaves in disgust with the tyranny of Squeers and his wife, especially to a poor boy named Smike. Smike runs away from his school to follow Nicholas, and remains his humble follower till death. At Portsmouth, Nicholas joins the theatrical company of Mr. Crummies,...

14) Oliver Twist

Author

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Earliest Publication Date

1941

Summary

Adentures of an orphan boy who lives in the squalid surroundings of a nineteenth-century English workhouse until he becomes involved with a gang of thieves.

Author

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817

Earliest Publication Date

1976

Summary

"Don't let anyone tell you how to live or who to love. Of all of Jane Austen's great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quiet charm and deep feeling. At nineteen, she fell in love with and became engaged to a stubborn and fearless naval officer, Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune and Anne...

16) Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Author

Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 1856-1923

Earliest Publication Date

1962

Summary

In early twentieth century New England, talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca goes to live with her spinster aunts, one harsh and demanding, the other soft and sentimental, and spends seven difficult but rewarding years growing up in their company.

17) Sense and sensibility

Author

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817

Earliest Publication Date

1896

Summary

Jane Austen's first published novel, sparkling with wit and artistry, captures the inequities of birth, class, and marriage faced by the sisters Dashwood. Published in 1811, Sense and Sensibility has delighted generations of readers with its masterfully crafted portrait of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Forced to leave their home after their father's death, Elinor and Marianne must rely on making good marriages as their means of support....

18) Spoon River anthology

Author

Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950

Earliest Publication Date

1916

Summary

The dead arise from their sleep in the cemetery of a small town to tell their individual stories about an entire community caught in a web of scandal, sin, and vice in the early twentieth century.

19) Stories by O. Henry

Author

Henry, O., 1862-1910

Earliest Publication Date

1989

Summary

Tales of laughter and tears, love and loss... Tales of old and young, rich and poor, the best and the worst... Tales of lies and truth, selfishness and sacrifice, loyalty and betrayal... O'Henry's stories are set in mansions and slums, teeming cities and desolate frontiers. Stories of grand adventure, thrilling romance, gripping suspense, hilarious comedy. Stories about turns of fate, twists of destiny, accidents of chance...and always. always, endless...

20) The black arrow

Author

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894

Earliest Publication Date

1949

Summary

In fifteenth-century England, when his father's murderer is revealed to be his guardian, seventeen-year-old Richard Shelton joins the fellowship of the Black Arrow in avenging the death, rescuing the woman he loves, and participating in the struggle between the Yorks and Lancasters in the War of the Roses.

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