Editha is a young and very patriotic young landy. Her lover, George, is not quite as enthused about her "my country right or wrong attitude," but she convinces him to join the army to fight a "just" war. The results of this decision are very unexpected and very thought provoking. This is a very powerful story and is more the type of writing one would expect from the Vietnam War era, rather than the end of the Victorian era.

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.

As a well-paid war correspondent, Stephen Crane was shipwrecked en route to Cuba in early 1897. He and a small party of passengers spent 30 hours adrift off the coast of Florida, an experience that Crane would later transform into this, his most famous short story, in 1898.

Edna Pontellier is married, twenty-eight, and at a crossroads in her life. She is passionate and artistic but has no one who understands her deep yearnings. She jumps at the chance to spend a summer away from her husband and the heat of New Orleans at a small coastal retreat.

Eugene O’Neill’s tale of Ephraim Cabot, greedy and hard like the stone walls that surround his farm, the family patriarch brings home his new young bride, Abbie. His grown sons dissaprove; one leaves but the other stays to fight for the family fortune. What follows is a tragedy of epic proportions.

"He travels fastest who travels alone...but not after the frost has dropped below zero 50 degrees or more." (Yukon Code) Jack London’s best short story.

Zane Grey, an author synonymous with the daring tales of the Wild West, delivers an exciting tale in this phenomenal best-seller, The U.P. Trail. As the country changes around them, a group of Wyoming residents ban together to fight the coming of the Union Pacific Railroad. But railroad engineer Warren Neale, struggling against the terrain, the climate, the populace and even his girlfriend’s abduction, is determined to see his project to completion.

Termed the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the southwestern Indians and the first protest novel of California, Ramona is the story of 3 cultures - Indian, Mexican, and Anglo - locked in combat. The upheaval and injustice are humanized through the romance of a beautiful half-Indian orphan who grow up as the ward of Señora Moreno in privileged surroundings, then falls in love with an Indian and joins him in a life of poverty and tragedy. The Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, based on this romance, has played each year since 1923, reenacting the transition period between Mexican traditions and the new U.S. and state governments.

Open your eyes to one of the greatest naturalist writers of all time with these two short stories by William H.H. Murray. These stories, featuring John Norton, the trapper, were so well loved, that Murray performed them more than 500 times, on book tours in New England and New York. Written at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Murray’s stories of the Adirondack wilderness of the 1860s made outdoor activities like hiking and camping popular for the first time.

Here are 10 unabridged stories by the greatest American authors. These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries were selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic oral qualities.

When The Far Pavilions was first published 19 years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind." From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M. M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich, and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.

Prospecting was a lonely business for Tappan, but his burro Jenet was good company, and more. She knew the trails and waterholes better than Tappan, from the scorching heat and poison air of Death Valley to the blinding blizzards of Arizona's mountains. Jenet tracked with him, faithfully, as his only friend. And he repaid her loyalty with a final, supreme effort of heart, will, and spirit.

Burning Daylight begins as many of London's finest works begin: with the depiction of a man blessed with physical prowess and keen perception who takes on the natural forces of the 19th century Yukon. Supreme gold miner, risk-all gambler, and unbeatable fighter, Burning Daylight is his name. Daylight moves from the Yukon to San Francisco, and plays "the bigger game of finance and wealth," until he is reminded of something he lost, something pure and good....

The never-before-told story behind the legend of Count Dracula! The story of the Count’s greatest love, Mina Harker, and the bloodthirsty vampire hunters whose cruel pursuit drove the master of the night to actions ever more ruthless. The Count Dracula sets the record straight.…

The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846, 87 people, men, women, and children, set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering.