Books published by publisher Black Classic Press

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionEthan Frome is a novel published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film, Ethan Frome, in 1993.Ethan Frome is set in the fictional New England town of Starkfield, where a visiting engineer tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with a history of thwarted dreams and desires. The accumulated longing of Frome ends in an ironic turn of events. His initial impressions are based on his observations of Frome going about his mundane tasks in Starkfield, and something about him catches the eye and curiosity of the visitor, but no one in the town seems interested in revealing many details about the man or his history - or perhaps they are not able to. The narrator ultimately finds himself in the position of staying overnight at Frome's house in order to escape a winter storm, and from there he observes Frome and his private circumstances, which he shares and which triggers other people in town to be more forthcoming with their own knowledge and impressions. The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The prologue, which is neither named as such nor numbered, opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the village, who is somehow compelling in his demeanor and carriage. This is Ethan Frome, who is a local fixture of the community, having been a lifelong resident. Frome is described as "the most striking figure in Starkfield", "the ruin of a man" with a "careless powerful look…in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain". Curious, the narrator sets out to learn about him. He learns that Frome's limp arose from having been injured in a "smash-up" twenty-four years before, but further details are not forthcoming, and the narrator fails to learn much more from Frome's fellow townspeople other than that Ethan's attempt at higher education decades before was thwarted by the sudden illness of his father following an injury, forcing his return to the farm to assist his parents, never to leave again. Because people seem to not wish to speak other than in vague and general terms about Frome's past, the narrator's curiosity grows, but he learns little more.

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionFlatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions. Several films have been made from the story, including the feature film Flatland (2007). Other efforts have been short or experimental films, including one narrated by Dudley Moore and the short films Flatland: The Movie (2007) and Flatland 2: Sphereland (2012) starring Martin Sheen and Kristen Bell

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionThe Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lane in London, and Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII.

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionShipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour. Swift's savage satire views mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with an uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionShe — subtitled A History of Adventure — is a novel by H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925), first serialised in The Graphic magazine from October 1886 to January 1887. She is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and one of the best-selling books of all time, with over 83 million copies sold in 44 different languages as of 1965. She was extraordinarily popular upon its release and has never been out of print. According to literary historian Andrew M. Stauffer, "She has always been Rider Haggard's most popular and influential novel, challenged only by King Solomon's Mines in this regard".

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksJane Eyre /ˈɛər/ (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published on 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the Byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action—the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility, and all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry—Jane Eyre revolutionised the art of fiction. Charlotte Brontë has been called the 'first historian of the private consciousness' and the literary ancestor of writers like Joyce and Proust. The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel many consider ahead of its time given the individualistic character of Jane and the novel's exploration of classism, sexuality, religion, and proto-feminism.

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionThe Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires [le tʁwa muskətɛʁ]) is a historical novel by Alexandre Dumas. Set in 1625, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan (based on Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan) after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although D'Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately, he befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age: Athos, Porthos and Aramis and gets involved in affairs of the state and court. In genre, The Three Musketeers is primarily a historical and adventure novel . However, Dumas also frequently works into the plot various injustices, abuses and absurdities of the old regime, giving the novel an additional political aspect at a time when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce. The story was first serialized from March to July 1844, during the July Monarchy, four years before the French Revolution of 1848 violently established the Second Republic. The author's father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, had been a well-known General in France's Republican army during the French Revolutionary Wars. The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionThe Rainbow Trail, also known as The Desert Crucible, is Western author Zane Grey's sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage. Originally published under the title The Rainbow Trail in 1915, it was re-edited and re-released in recent years as The Desert Crucible with the original manuscript that Grey submitted to publishers. The novel takes place ten years after events of Riders of the Purple Sage. The wall to Surprise Valley has broken, and Jane Withersteen is forced to choose between Lassiter's life and Fay Larkin's marriage to a Mormon. Both novels are notable for their protagonists' mild opposition to Mormon polygamy, but in The Rainbow Trail this theme is treated more explicitly. The plots of both books revolve around the victimization of women in the Mormon culture: events in Riders of the Purple Sage are centered on the struggle of a Mormon woman who sacrifices her wealth and social status to avoid becoming a junior wife of the head of a local church, while The Rainbow Trail contrasts the older Mormons with the rising generation of Mormon women who will not tolerate polygamy and Mormon men who do not seek it.

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionIn A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus’s Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another.