Modern Library

For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch's Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity, Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths, and the age of chivalry have been known. The forerunner of such interpreters as Edith Hamilton and Robert Graves, Thomas Bulfinch wanted to make...

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (18371915), Victorian Englands bestselling woman writer, blends Dickensian humor with chilling suspense in this exuberantly campy (Kirkus Reviews) mystery. The novel features Jabez North, a manipulative orphan who becomes a ruthless killer; Valerie de Cevennes, a stunning heiress who falls into Norths diabolical trap; and Mr....

With an Introduction by Jane SmileyFirst published in America in 1794, Charlotte Temple took the country by stormin fact, it was this nations first bona fide bestseller. Susanna Rowsons most famous work is the story of an innocent British schoolgirl who takes the advice of her depraved French teacher with tragic consequences. Seduced by the dashing...

Told by a master storyteller who, according to critic Russell Nye, combined adventure, action, violence, crisis, conflict, sentimentalism, and sex in an extremely shrewd mixture, Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. It is the story of Lassiter, a gunslinging avenger in black, who shows up in a remote Utah town just in time...

Les Miserables is the great epic masterpiece of the mid-nineteenth century. Begun in 1845, the year Louis Philippe conferred a peerage and a lifetime seat in the Senate upon Victor Hugo, it was completed when the author was living in exile in the Channel Islands. Les Miserables is a product as well as a document of the political, social, and...

Why do people read science fiction? In hopes of receiving such writing as thisa ravishingly accurate vision of things unseen; an utterly unexpected yet necessary beauty. So says Ursula K. Le Guin in her Introduction to The First Men in the Moon, H. G. Wellss 1901 tale of space travel. Heavily criticized upon publication for its fantastic ideas, it...