The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells · 1898
Mankind ruled the Earth. The Martians had other plans.
The original alien invasion. Towering war machines, a panicking countryside, and a humanity completely outgunned — and it was written in 1898.
The Odyssey
Homer · 700 BC
A war hero. Ten years lost at sea. Every monster wants him dead.
Cyclopes, sirens, a witch who turns men into pigs, and a sea god holding a grudge — all between one soldier and home. The original epic journey.
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas · 1844
All for one, and one for all — now draw your sword.
Swashbuckling at full gallop: duels, court intrigue, and four hot-headed friends taking on a cardinal's army. The blueprint for every buddy-action movie since.
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo · 1862
One stolen loaf. Twenty years hunted. A revolution to die for.
Hugo's towering epic of mercy and obsession — an ex-convict chasing redemption, a relentless cop, and a barricade in revolutionary Paris. Sweeping and unforgettable.
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper · 1826
Caught between two empires and a war in the wilderness.
A breathless chase through the forests of colonial America — ambushes, loyalty, and a vanishing world. Sweeping frontier adventure at full sprint.
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850
One scarlet letter. A whole town's judgment. A secret she'll die to keep.
A blazing story of sin, shame, and defiance in Puritan New England — a woman who refuses to name her child's father and wears her scandal like armor.
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens · 1859
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Love and sacrifice against the guillotine of the French Revolution. Dickens at his most thrilling and heartbreaking — with one of the greatest endings ever written.
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869
Love, war, and an empire under Napoleon.
The mountain of all novels — Russian aristocrats, vast battles, and the sweep of history itself.
The Man in the Iron Mask
Alexandre Dumas · 1850
A secret prisoner. A masked face. A king to topple.
The aging Musketeers risk everything on a hidden twin and the throne of France.
Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace · 1880
Betrayed into slavery, reborn for one furious chariot race.
A Jewish prince seeks vengeance across the Roman Empire in the original epic blockbuster.
Quo Vadis
Henryk Sienkiewicz · 1896
A Roman officer, a Christian girl, and a burning empire.
Forbidden love against the decadence and fire of Nero’s Rome. Sweeping and operatic.
The Last Days of Pompeii
Edward Bulwer-Lytton · 1834
Love and intrigue under a mountain about to blow.
A doomed Roman city, a blind flower-girl, and Vesuvius counting down. Disaster epic, 1834-style.
Ivanhoe
Walter Scott · 1820
A knight returns to a England of tournaments and outlaws.
Jousts, Robin Hood, Saxon-vs-Norman intrigue — the book that invented medieval romance as we know it.
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886
Robbed of his inheritance and shipped off to die — if he lets them.
A breathless chase across the Scottish Highlands with a roguish Jacobite at his side.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Orczy · 1905
A foppish fool by day, a daring rescuer by night.
The original masked hero — smuggling aristocrats out of revolutionary France under the guillotine.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe · 1852
The novel that helped start a war.
A searing, hugely influential anti-slavery story that shook a nation to its conscience.
The Iliad
Homer · 750 BC
Ten years of war, decided by one man’s rage.
The foundational war epic — Achilles, Hector, and the gods, on the bloody plains of Troy.
Dante's Inferno
Dante Alighieri · 1320
A guided tour through the nine circles of Hell.
The most vivid vision of the afterlife ever written — descending through ever-worse torments.
Paradise Lost
John Milton · 1667
The war in Heaven, the fall of man, and the case for the Devil.
Milton’s thunderous epic gives Satan the best lines and grandeur beyond measure.