National Network for Equitable Library Service

In Manhattan, an elderly lawyer's business is growing. Having two scriveners in his employ, the lawyer advertises for a third to meet demand. Enter Bartleby, a glum albeit quality scrivener. However, the lawyer quickly discovers that something is off with his new employee. When asked to perform any duties outside of copywriting, Bartleby responds with a canned 'I would prefer not to.' Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at work.

Ingersoll Lockwood invented the fictional character Baron Trump in 1890 for a two-part sci-fi/fantasy series about a privileged boy who undertakes a sequence of fantastic voyages. The style of the Baron Trump series-a mix of fantasy and young-reader-oriented science fiction-anticipated and may have influenced L. Frank Baum's Oz series. The second in that series, Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey, describes Baron's trip to the earth's interior via an opening in the Russian Arctic.

Clarence Mulford's classic Western introduces the legendary Hopalong Cassidy and other colorful cohorts from the Bar-20 ranch. While the Hopalong Cassidy of film and TV (portrayed by the silver-haired, avuncular William Boyd) was clean-cut and polished, Mulford's original Cassidy is rough-and-tumble and foul-mouthed, thriving on brawls and gun-fights. Bar-20 depicts Cassidy as he was originally conceived, fierce and free-wheeling, and matches the cowboy hero up against Slim Travennes, the violent head of a vigilante gang.

Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renown musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention. Trapped between the life she is expected to live and the life she longs to lead, will Edna find happiness?

Originally published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man revealed as never before the color line dividing America, and the price it exacted on those souls who could traverse the two worlds. The book presents the fictional account of 'an ex-colored man' - an African-American who could pass for white - as he attempts to choose which side of the line will better suit his life, and his psyche.

Set in the 1870s, Edith Wharton examines the American elite culture on the East Coast. Newland Archer is a lawyer and heir to one of New York City's most prominent families. He is arraigned to be married to May Welland. Newland is pleased with the prospect, under he meets Countess Ellen Olenska, May's older cousin. Suddenly, Newland begins to doubt his arranged marriage and society's shallow rules as his attraction to Ellen increases.

This near-future political satire about the election of a new president argues that socialism and populism will eventually give rise to chaos and disaster. Authored by Ingersoll Lockwood-around whom conspiracy theories concerning the sci-fi/fantasy character Baron Trump now abound-1900; or, The Last President is notable for both its clairvoyance and its reflection on the social movements and political climate of its time.

Il n’est pas possible pour l’histoire qui va être contée d’en préciser l’époque; elle se perd dans la profondeur des siècles, et la terreur qu’elle a inspirée autrefois a rendu les témoins peu bavards… En ces temps, seuls quelques anciens, le soir, dans la sécurité de leurs foyers, osaient murmurer à des oreilles proches ce qu’ils avaient entendu de la bouche même de ceux qui les avaient précédés.

A classic collection of American short stories about the lives of the late-nineteenth-century citizens of Maine. Sarah Orne Jewett's masterpiece, The Country of Pointed Firs is a short story sequence that celebrates what the author believed were the rapidly disappearing traditions, manners, and dialect of the natives of coastal Maine at the turn of the twentieth century. In revealing snapshots-a family reunion, the ghostly vision of a seaman, and more-Jewett presents honest portraits of individual New Englanders and a warm, humorous, and compassionate vision of the Northeast.

The iconic Gothic horror classics that gave birth to the monstrous myths that still inhabit our nightmares. Tragic heroines, windswept moors, dark and stormy nights, castle prisons, and forbidden desires realized at the greatest cost-these are the elements of Gothic horror, given its finest expression in these five enduring novels. Frankenstein: Obsessed with the secret of creation, Swiss scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein cobbles together a body he is determined to bring to life.