Books published by publisher Akasha Classics

The Free Rangers is a thrilling chronicle of young Kentucky boys caught up in the upheaval of the American Revolution. Henry Ware and his friends have been putting their backwoods knowledge to use helping the local settlers fend off both the British and the Iroquois. Now they face another challenge - the Spanish have taken an interest in Kentucky, and plan to attack the settlements. Can a small group of boys prevent another war from breaking out? Part of Joseph Altsheler's popular Young Trailers series, The Free Rangers is an immensely enjoyable adventure story for readers of all ages.

Anne of Green Gables is the tale of a spirited orphan girl who finds a new home for herself in a quiet corner of Prince Edward Island. Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, an aging brother and sister, arrange for a boy to be sent from the orphanage to help them with their farm. When a freckled, red-haired eleven-year-old girl turns up instead, they intend to send her back immediately. But Anne has other ideas, and the old couple find their life may never be the same again. Loved by generations of readers for its warmth, humor, and idyllic setting, Anne of Green Gables will delight readers of any age.

What do you do after the end of the Civil War when your services are no longer required? If you are members of the Baltimore Gun Club, you decide to build a gun large enough to launch a rocket to the moon. From the Earth to the Moon follows the ambitions of Impey Barbicane, the president of the Gun Club, as his plan sets off an international space race. With uncanny details that presage the actual moon landings, large helpings of satire, and an action-filled plot, this novel is one of the early masterpieces of the science fiction genre, a genre that its author Jules Verne helped create.

Experience the original gothic novel - complete with castles, ghosts, and dark deeds. Manfred, Lord of Otranto, was due to oversee the marriage of his son and heir, Conrad, to the beautiful Isabella. But Conrad is found dead under mysterious circumstances on the day of the wedding, and Manfred suspects an ancient curse is responsible. Determined not to lose his hold on Otranto, he resolves to marry the unwilling Isabella himself and secure his line. Larger forces are at work, however, and Manfred may find that thwarting fate is not quite so simple... Written in 1764, Walpole's chilling and exciting tale is credited with starting the gothic horror tradition.

Should you always tell the truth, no matter what the personal cost? In Henrik Ibsen's classic play, An Enemy of the People, Dr. Tobias Stockman discovers that the town's health spa water is contaminated. When he announces this, he is at first hailed as a hero by his fellow citizens. But his campaign to have the spa closed for repair threatens the economy of the town, and Dr. Stockman finds himself an enemy of the people, facing hostility and ridicule for insisting on telling a truth that others do not want to hear. Written as a response to his own critics, Ibsen's 1882 fable has modern echoes, hailing the courage of those willing to stand against the crowd.

For generations audiences have been gripped by the powerful drama of Macbeth: the ruinous journey of a man driven by his ambition for power, yet ultimately ending in fear violence, and madness. Macbeth, a Scottish general in King Duncan's army, is given a prophecy by three witches that he himself will become king. Fueled by this knowledge and goaded on by his ruthless wife he murders the king to gain the crown. Yet having gained his goal, the "peace to all their days and nights to come" prophesized by the witches fails to appear. Rather, he finds that having killed, he must do so again and again. Suspicion, fear and the ghosts of the dead haunt him and his wife, destroying everything that they fought for, including their relationship, their world and finally both of them. Holding new meaning for each generation this play is a masterpiece not to be missed.

Are traditional notions of morality actually the means of enslaving the human spirit? This is the claim of Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche is one of the most controversial of European philosophers. His bold attacks on Christianity, and the advocacy of a fearless approach to the uncertainties of life, have earned him both criticism and praise from disparate quarters. This book embodies the author’s attempt to summarize and enhance his previous work. Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche at his most concise and systematic, and is a good starting point for the novice.

The Mysterious Stranger is a tale that is itself both mysterious and strange. Written by Mark Twain, better known for such humorous tales as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the story concerns the visit of Satan to a medieval Austrian village. One of several versions which he wrote during his later life, it was only published posthumously by his biographer. It is a deeply serious book which examines the nature of morality and maintains a scathing attack on organized religion as a tool of oppression. If you are interested in seeing another side of one of America's most famous authors, The Mysterious Stranger is a fascinating read.

Greyfriars Bobby is the poignant story of Scotland's most famous dog. Bobby, a Skye terrier, lived in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. He was devoted to his kind master and enjoyed his life. When the man died, the little dog's devotion continued unabated, as he kept a nighttime vigil at his master's unmarked grave in Greyfriars cemetery. For the rest of his life - all fourteen years of it - Bobby's routine remained the same. Nothing, not even the efforts of the highest city officials, could dissuade him from sleeping near the resting place of his best friend. With its lovable hero and engaging portrayal of nineteenth century Edinburgh, Eleanor Atkinson's fictionalized account of a real-life dog will entertain readers of all ages.

Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to English-men. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel Butler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best of them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of compliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by divine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he has left any, include some satires that may be published without too destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an ill-natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly.

The Island of Doctor Moreau, by Wells, H. G. - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - Join H.G. Wells for a spine-tingling classic of science fiction. When Edward Prendick is shipwrecked in the South Pacific, he is picked up by a ship loaded with animals and bound for a strange island. Once there Prendick finds himself under the power of Dr. Moreau, who has turned the island into a haven where he can indulge in dark experiments. As he discovers the horrors which Dr. Moreau has created, Prendick finds that his own life is now at stake. Criticized as blasphemous when it was first published in 1896, The Island of Dr. Moreau prefigures modern issues surrounding genetic engineering and the ethical problems of technology.

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Wilde, Oscar - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - Among Oskar Wilde's plays, The Importance of Being Earnest is certainly the most celebrated. It still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. Both Wells, H. G. and Shaw, George Bernard thought it one of the funniest plays ever written. Set in England during the late Victorian era, the play's humor derives in part from characters maintaining fictitious identities to allow them to escape unwelcome social obligations. The characters' plans are constantly sent topsy-turvy by unexpected turns of events. Along the way, Wilde's wit-sharpened dialogue skewers nearly everyone, throwing into high relief the strains of class pretension, social ambition, and romantic gamesmanship.