The sages of the centuries, each one tincturing their thought with their own soul essence, have united in telling us that, As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

DO you desire above all things to live a serene, useful, successful life? Do you want to get out of the petty limitations of conventionality?

We have called our stories Fairy Tales though few of them speak of fairies (For some recent views on fairies and tales about fairies, see Notes.)

Causing mass hysteria as listeners of its 1938 radio broadcast believed a Martian invasion of Earth really was taking place, H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is perhaps the most famous novel of its genre.

The Best American Humorous Short Stories features tales from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and many other well known writers.

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), were born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in the German state of Hesse.

Nicholas Nickleby is left responsible for his mother and sister when his father dies.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol under financial duress, but it became one of his most popular and enduring stories.

H. G. Wells' comic 1910 novel, The History of Mr. Polly, stars Alfred Polly, a timid man who is more successful at daydreaming than working in the local draper's shops.

One of H. G. Wells' first ventures outside of the science fiction realm, the novel Love and Mr. Lewisham was published in the year 1900.

Student! Your life is your own. You have only yourself to thank for what you are, have been and will be.

James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is the fictional account of the life of a young American man in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Sara Crewe's young but doting father sends her to a London boarding school when she is seven.

According to the great horror writer H.P. Lovecraft The Ghost Pirates . . . is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils.

Lady Audley's Secret was one of the first and most successful sensation novels of the late 19th century. A young gentleman of leisure, Robert Audley, is spurred into action when his friend Geroge Talboys goes missing from Audley Court.

This first novel in Sax Rohmer's series, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu combined together previously written short stories into a single story about the dealings of this criminal mastermind.

William Dean Howells' 1885 novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham tells the story of its protagonist's materialistic aspirations; his rise from rags to riches.

The lessons herein taught are such as cannot be learned too early, nor dwelt on too long or too often, by those who are engaged in the active and all-absorbing duties of life.

The Lectures embraced in this volume, were written for the pulpit, in the usual manner of preparation for such labor, without any expectation of their appearing in print.

Since its publication in 1678, The Pilgrim's Progress has never been out of print.