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Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an expose of the cruelty that the author observed when he worked briefly in the Belgian Congo. The story is based on a journey that Conrad took up the Congo River in 1890, during King Leopold II of Belgium’s abusive rule of the area. The main thread follows the journey of the ferry-boat captain, Marlow, who must return Kurtz, an ivory trader, to Europe. The severely ill Kurtz dies on the journey after handling Marlow a collection of papers. Back in Europe, Marlow gives these to a journalist instead of those for which they were intended.

Set in the wild, stormy moorland of England. It tells the tale of the Linton and Earnshaw families: Edgar and Isabella Linton and Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw and their strange adopted brother, Heathcliff. Now considered a classic of English literature, upon publication it received mix reviews due to its Gothic undertones and savage passions. Wuthering Heights has inspired many adaptations, including film, radio, and television dramatizations and a hit song by Kate Bush.

Lays of Ancient Rome is an 1842 collection of narrative poems by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Four of these: Horatius, The Battle of Lake Regillus, Virginia and The Prophecy of Capys cover heroic episodes from early Roman history. They have brief introductions that treat the legends from a scholarly perspective. Two others deal with more recent historical events: Ivry, a Song of the Huguenots, deals with French history, and The Armada: A Fragment, is about the Spanish fleet sent to subdue England.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, a religious allegory by John Bunyan, was published in two parts in 1678 and 1684. The work is a symbolic vision of the good man’s pilgrimage through life. The Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the most famous Christian allegories of all time.

Ingersoll Lockwood (1841-1918) was the ambassador to the German Empire appointed by Abraham Lincoln. As a writer, he is known today for his Baron Trump novels, described by some as prophetic because the narratives contain strange coincidences with the current US president.

Peer Gynt, the five-act romantic play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Based on a Norwegian folk hero, the title character is a rogue who will be destroyed unless the love of a woman saves him. At a wedding he meets Solveig, who falls in love with him, but Peer ruins the wedding by abducting, then abandoning the bride. Then Peer goes global, misbehaving in a trail of adventures around the world. When he finally returns to Norway, old and embittered, Solveig welcomes him home, and he's redeemed by her love.

Hadji Murat is a short novel by Leo Tolstoy which was published posthumously in 1912. It tells the story of Hadji Murat, a separatist guerrilla in the Caucasus who falls out with his own commander and eventually sides with the Russians in the hope of saving his family.

My Bondage and My Freedom is Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography, published 10 years after Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Written during his career as a newspaper editor and orator, the book placed Douglass in the international spotlight as a spokesman for American blacks. Examining the meaning of race, slavery and freedom, the book extends the story of his life by providing more detail on his childhood and including his experiences as a traveling lecturer in the United States and Europe.

The Call of the Wild and White Fang are two masterpieces of American literature set in the desolate cold North. The Call of the Wild is the story of a gentle domestic dog that rejects civilization and returns to the wilderness due to the cruelty of mankind. White Fang is a companion narrative and a thematic mirror to The Call of the Wild; it tells the tale of a wolf-dog hybrid who struggles to survive and ultimately changes from a fearsome wild beast into a creature of love.

"The Mortal Immortal" (1833), a short story by Mary Shelley, relates the life of Winzy, a man who gains eternal life after taking a mysterious drink. At first elated, Winzy likes immortality less and less as time passes and his loved ones grow old and die. Winzy starts considering himself a pariah among people because they die, while he cannot. He even envies the mortality of others but at the same time dreads death more and more, due to having witnessed the deaths of so many, including that of his beloved wife, Bertha.

Ingersoll Lockwood (1841-1918) was a New York attorney, diplomat and lecturer who wrote children's books, satire, and poetry. 1900, Or: The Last President is a dystopian, alternative history book which was published in 1896 and ostensibly involves events of a few years later - the 1898 election that put William Jennings Bryan in power and led to civic unrest. As a work of political satire, the narrative deplores the rise of socialism and populism in its dystopian vision of the future.

Henrik Ibsen’s play The Master Builder was published in 1892 and performed the next year. The architect and builder Halvard Solness receives a visit from the young Hilda, who persuades him to employ her in the household. When Hilda learns of the completion of Halvard’s project - a tall building with a towering steeple - she makes a point of persuading him to climb the steeple at the public opening ceremony. Halvard of course, suffers from acrophobia, a morbid fear of extreme heights....

Green Tea is the story of the Reverend Jennings, who consumes copious amounts of green tea while pursuing his esoteric interests late at night. When something goes wrong, he approaches Doctor Hesselius, who sets out the narrative in the form of a series of letters to another physician. He discusses the symptoms of the clergyman’s mysterious affliction, which torments him and interferes with his services. The illness appears to be mental rather than physical.

Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will (1525) is a response to Desiderius Erasmus's "Diatribe on Free Will.’ The work is considered as one of the great masterpieces of the Reformation. Luther writes powerfully about man's depravity and God's sovereignty in his direct style, which combines spirituality and humor. For Luther, the crucial issue was the ability of free will, and the extent to which it is subject to God's sovereignty.

Jane Addams was an American activist, philosopher, sociologist, and Nobel Prize winner. Addams’ speech The Modern Lear was delivered in 1894 at the Chicago Women’s Club and the 20th Century Club of Boston before appearing in print in 1912. In the address, Addams discusses the Pullman Railroad Strike in the Summer of 1894 in addition to other labor, union, and ethics issues of the day, using the titular character from William Shakespeare’s King Lear, who was betrayed by his two daughters, as a potent analogy.

"Diary of a Madman"(1835) is a farcical short story by Nikolai Gogol. The story follows the life of a civil servant Poprishchin during the repressive era of Czar Nicholas I. Written in diary format, the narrative shows the descent of Poprishchin into insanity. As he loses it, he begins to “understand” canine conversations. Later, he loses a sense of time, and saw himself as the king of Spain. Poprishchin's alienation from society is strongly rooted to the way he perceives and treats people around him.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was an English playwright, poet, translator, and fiction writer from the Restoration era. Oroonoko (1688) is a unique early example of the novel genre. It employs a first-person narrative from a female perspective and addresses some of the controversial political, economic, and social issues of the time. The injustices of the slave trade are exposed through the author’s graphic account of the cruel realities of life in the English colonies.

The memoir of the great magician M. Robert-Houdin is a compilation of essays from the beginning to the end of is career. It contains his recollections on the way he was introduced to the art of illusion, his extensive practicing sessions, his famous stunts and his visit to Algiers. Having been a great writer too, his every tale is fascinating and filled with suspense.

Andy Adams (1859-1935) was born to pioneer parents in Indiana, worked in Texas for a decade driving cattle, and settled in Colorado Springs, where he penned his cowboy narratives. The Log of a Cowboy chronicles a five-month drive of three thousand head of cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana. This classical work of fiction provides fascinating insights of everyday life on the Great Western Cattle Trail with a team of 12 cowhands, a cook, a horse wrangler and a foreman.

Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857) is a comedy of masquerades and a blend of allegory, cultural satire, and metaphysics. The book portrays a confidence man who sneaks on board a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day, and sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. He rapidly assumes various guises and the pleasure of trickery seems more important than the monetary gain. Each person is forced to confront that in which they believe.