American Literature

Tales of a Wayside Inn

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The work is a poetic frame narrative that gathers a varied troupe of travelers in a quiet, rustic inn set…

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Ambrose Bierce

The piece is a Civil‑War‑era short story that opens with a stark tableau on a northern Alabama railroad…

The Wall Between

Sara Ware Bassett

The Wall Between is a regional love story set amid the rolling hills of New Hampshire, where the adjoining…

Madge Morton's Victory

Amy D. V. Chalmers

Madge Morton’s Victory is a juvenile‑fiction tale that opens amid the nervous excitement of a girls’ school…

Blazed trail stories, and Stories of the wild life

Stewart Edward White

The book is a vivid slice of frontier life, set in a bustling lumber town on a Fourth of July in the 1880s.

The Hoosier School-boy

Edward Eggleston

The Hoosier School‑boy is a slice‑of‑life tale set in a mid‑nineteenth‑century Indiana village, where the…

Katie Robertson: A girls story of factory life

Margaret E. Winslow

The novel is a domestic‑industrial tale set in a modest English village, following the Robertson family after…

Aunt Jane of Kentucky

Eliza Calvert Hall

The novel is a domestic tale set in rural Kentucky, narrated through the eyes of a young visitor who finds…

Frank Merriwell's Cruise

Burt L. Standish

Frank Merriwell’s Cruise is a juvenile adventure that begins in the bustling streets of Boston, where a…

The Biglow Papers

James Russell Lowell

The work is James Russell Lowell’s The Biglow Papers, a series of politically charged poems that lampoon the…

Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks; or, Two Recruits in the United States Army

H. Irving Hancock

Uncle Sam’s Boys in the Ranks is a juvenile adventure set in a small New Jersey town, where a group of…

Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman

Francis Hopkinson Smith

The work is a Southern‑style Christmas tale that opens with a flashback to a bitter rivalry between Colonel…

That Affair Next Door

Anna Katharine Green

The novel opens on a fog‑shrouded New York street, where the narrator, a curious neighbor, watches a…

Ruth Fielding Down East; Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point

Alice B. Emerson

The novel is a youthful mystery set against a storm‑swept Maine riverside, where the heroine Ruth Fielding, a…

Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country

Joel Chandler Harris

The story opens on a Georgia plantation where three children, a seven‑year‑old girl named Sweetest Susan, her…

Stubble

George Looms

The novel opens on a rain‑slicked porch in a small Kentucky town, where Mary Louise, a young woman of modest…

The Four-Pools Mystery

Jean Webster

The Four‑Pools Mystery is a detective tale that begins in the offices of a New York law firm, where the…

Far Past the Frontier

James A. Braden

Far Past the Frontier is a high‑octane Western adventure that thrusts the reader straight into a frantic…

Starlight Ranch, and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier

Charles King

Starlight Ranch and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier is a collection of Western tales written by…

A Tramp Abroad

Mark Twain

The book is a comic travel narrative that follows an American adventurer who decides, in March 1878, to trek…

The Flight of Pony Baker A Boy's Town Story

William Dean Howells

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

The novel opens with a biblical quotation that frames the story as a meditation on cycles, generations, suns,…

Twas the Night before Christmas: A Visit from St. Nicholas

Clement Clarke Moore

This work is a juvenile poetry collection that centers on Clement Clarke Moore’s famous Christmas verse,…

A Beautiful Alien

Julia Magruder

The novel opens aboard a steamship bound for an unnamed shore, where the artist‑lawyer Albert Noel watches a…