In the picaresque series of sketches in Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens wrote one of the masterpieces of comic fiction, and presented readers with some of the most colorful and beloved characters of all time. In Dickens' first novel, initially based on a series of illustrations, members of the eponymous club recount their various experiences and encounters as they travel around England. Without the dark themes that dominated so many of his novels,...

First serialized in "The Century Magazine" between 1893 and 1894, Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a murder mystery set before the American Civil War in Missouri, more specifically, in a town on the banks of the Mississippi River. During infancy, a light-skinned black baby and a white-skinned baby were switched at birth by a slave mother. Because the black baby grows up thinking he is white, he is highly racist toward his slaves. The white baby,...

This comprehensive volume of all of Twain's shorter works is representative of his vast humor and wit. "The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain" includes the following tales: "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "The Story of the Bad Little Boy," "Cannibalism in the Cars," "A Day at Niagara," "Legend of the Capitoline Venus," "Journalism in Tennessee," "A Curious Dream," "The Facts in the Great Beef Contract," "How I Edited an Agricultural...

"Further Chronicles of Avonlea" is a collection of short stories by L. M. Montgomery that serves as a sequel to" Chronicles of Avonlea", and a companion book to the Anne of Green Gables series. The stories all relate to the fictional sea-sprayed Canadian village of Avonlea, and while Anne Shirley appears in a few, mostly concern other characters from the series, including Diana Barry, and members of the Meredith and Blair families. Published in 1920,...