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Henry Jones, an insurance clerk, knows that his uncle has disinherited him. The will, made out at the last minute in favour of Henry's charming cousin, lies neatly folded in a volume of sermons in the uncle's book-room. Only Henry knows where it is - and he stands to lose everything if he makes the knowledge public.

Three men down on their luck in Tahiti agree to ship out on a vessel whose officers have died of smallpox. Their desperate venture inspires them to a further idea: they will steal the schooner and its cargo of champagne, sell them, and live a plentiful life. The thought is intoxicating... and so is the cargo, which they sample. Inattention nearly brings them to grief in a sudden storm. This sobering experience is followed by another - apparently the dead officers had a similar ambition! - and their dreams of riches vanish.

A collection of short stories centering on Mariposa, a fictional Mid-West American turn-of-the-century town. This is a gentle journey through a past era, filled with quiet humour and insightful observations of the human condition.

Mr Polly is a middle-aged man, tired of his wife's nagging and his dreary job as a gentleman's out fitter in a small town. Facing bankruptcy, he concludes that the only way to escape his frustrating existence is by burning his shop to the ground, and killing himself. Unexpected events, however, conspire to lead him to a bright new future.

After a rather dissolute youth and having been disowned by his father, John Caldigate sets sail for Australia with his friend Dick Shand hoping to make his fortune in the goldfields in New South Wales. On the voyage, he meets Euphemia Smith and they conduct an indiscreet affair aboard. After various problems, Caldigate literally strikes gold and returns to Sydney where he meets Euphemia again and they settle, living as man and wife. After a time, they quarrel and Caldigate returns to England.

Elfride is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Cornwall based on St. Juliot, where Thomas Hardy began the book during the first days of his courtship of his first wife Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two men: the boyish architect, Stephen Smith, and the older literary man, Henry Knight. The former friends become rivals, and Elfride faces an agonizing choice.

Contents: The goophered grapevine.--Po' Sandy.--Mars Jeem's nightmare.--The conjurer's revenge.--Sis' Becky's pickaninny.--The gray wolf's ha'nt.--Hot-Foot Hannibal. Note these stories were written in the dialect of the American south of the 19th century. It employes terms and descriptions common to that era which modern readers may find offensive.

Most of Hawthorne's early writings were magazine stories subsequently collected in books. His second story collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, includes many of his best-known short stories. Among the 22 stories in this edition are "Young Goodman Brown," "Rappucini's Daughter," "The Birthmark," "Egotism, or the Bosom Serpent," "Roger Malvin's Burial," and "The Artist of the Beautiful."

Pictures from Italy is a travelogue by Charles Dickens, written in 1846. The book reveals the concerns of its author as he presents, according to Kate Flint, the country "like a chaotic magic-lantern show, fascinated both by the spectacle it offers, and by himself as spectator"

This collection of Thomas Hardy's stories include storie stories of witchcraft, smuggling, mystery, humour and heartache.