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"The Young King" is a short historical fiction story for children by the Irish author Oscar Wilde. It was first published in 1891 as part of the anthology House of Pomegranates, which also includes "The Birthday of the Infanta", "The Fisherman and his Soul" and "The Star-Child". The action of "The Young King" takes place in an unnamed kingdom at an unspecified point in the past. The story's title character and protagonist is a 16-year-old boy.

"The Birthday of the Infanta" is about a hunchbacked dwarf, found in the woods by courtiers of the King of Spain. The hunchback's father sells him to the palace for the amusement of the king's daughter, the Infanta, on her twelfth birthday. Her birthday is the only time she is allowed to mingle with other children, and she much enjoys the many festivities arranged to mark it, especially the Dwarf's performance. He dances, as he did in the woods, thoroughly unaware of his audience's laughing at him.

"The Star-Child" is the story of an infant boy found abandoned in the woods by a poor woodcutter, who pities him and takes him in. He grows up to be exceedingly beautiful, but vain, cruel, and arrogant, believing himself to be the divine child of the stars. He lords over the other children, who follow him devotedly, and takes pleasure in torturing the forest animals and village beggars alike.

A House of Pomegranates is a collection of fairy tales, written by Oscar Wilde, that was published in 1891 as a second collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Wilde once said that this collection was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public." The stories included in this collection are as follows: The Young King / The Birthday of the Infanta / The Fisherman and his Soul / The Star-Child.

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. He tries to sell it to merchants, who tell him it is not worth anything. He goes to a witch, who tells him his soul is his shadow, and says how it can be cut away with a viper-skin knife after he dances with her.

"The Evil Clergyman" is an excerpt from a letter written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft in 1933. After his death, it was published in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales as a short story.

The War in the Air: And Particularly How Mr. Bert Smallways Fared While It Lasted is a military science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. It is (like many of Wells's works) notable for its prophetic ideas, images, and concepts - particularly the use of aircraft for the purpose of warfare - as well as conceptualizing and anticipating events related to World War I. The novel's hero and main character is Bert Smallways, who is described as "a forward-thinking young man" and a "kind of bicycle engineer of the let's-'ave-a-look-at-it and enamel-chipping variety."

Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. It is also a travel book, recounting his trip up the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Saint Paul many years after the war.

King Solomon's Mines (1885) is a popular novel by the English Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre.