Around the World in 80 Days -by Jules Verne

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

(Oops!  I wrote this last week and neglected to publish it!  I am very sorry.)

The 1873 novel, Around the World in 80 Days, by French author Jules Verne has been made into a couple of big budget films.  They are quite entertaining, but perhaps eclipse the book.  This is a neat little band box of a book.  It is an entertaining story that would make good vacation reading.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition) 

It is hard to argue that a book whose title everyone knows is forgotten, but this is a superior work of fiction that still entertains and was famous  long before there were movies.

A US Amazon Reader Reviewer agrees with me! 

"I can't believe that a 130+ year old book translated to English was good enough to keep me up half the night but this brilliant old gem did."

The protagonist (Phileas Fogg) hires a new manservant (Passepartout):

Hearing that Mr. Phileas Fogg was looking for a servant, and that his life was one of unbroken regularity, that he neither travelled nor stayed from home overnight, he felt sure that this would be the place he was after.

 Yes, a rude awakening is coming - as foreshadowed by the title!

"Passepartout!" repeated Mr. Fogg, without raising his voice.

Passepartout made his appearance.

"I've called you twice," observed his master.

"But it is not midnight," responded the other, showing his watch.

"I know it; I don't blame you. We start for Dover and Calais in ten minutes."

A puzzled grin overspread Passepartout's round face; clearly he had not comprehended his master.

"Monsieur is going to leave home?"

"Yes," returned Phileas Fogg. "We are going round the world."

Passepartout opened wide his eyes, raised his eyebrows, held up his hands, and seemed about to collapse, so overcome was he with stupefied astonishment.

The reviewer is right, this book is a gem and I do not say that lightly.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

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Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers

The English Orphans -by Mary Jane Holmes

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

The English Orphans: Or a Home in the New World is an 1855 novel by American author Mary Jane Holmes.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  

Here our heroine encounters a little boy:             

At the sound of his voice the little girl started, and without turning her head, replied, "Nobody wants to see me, I am so ugly and disagreeable."

"Ugly are you?" repeated the boy, and at the same time lifting her up and forcibly holding her hands, he succeeded in looking her fully in the face, "Well, you are not very handsome, that's a fact," said he, after satisfying his curiosity, "but I wouldn't be sullen about it.

Ugly people are always smart, and perhaps you are.

That is a promising beginning to a book about orphans!

Per an article in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers:  "Long excluded from literary histories of the nineteenth century written by men, the author was reappraised by scholars in the late 20th and early 21st century, who recognized her achievements and the value of her work."

This writer has many free books on Amazon.  If you like this one, you will find more free reading.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

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Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

It Happened in Egypt - by Charles Norris Williamson

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Egypt has been much in the headlines over the past year.  Here is a mystery/travelogue that predates the High Dam (Aswan Dam) and describes a river journey.  It Happened in Egypt was written in 1914 by British writers Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  

". . . .I want to talk to you." 

"Then don't do it in a loud voice, if you please, because, as you must have realized, if you've taken time to think, I'm Mrs. Jones at present."

"Why Jones?" "Because Smith is engaged beforehand by too many people. Honestly, without joking, I'm in danger here and everywhere, and it's a wicked, selfish thing for me to come the way I have; but Rosamond Gilder is the hardest girl to resist you ever saw, so I'm with her; and it's a long history."

 "Rosamond Gilder? What—the Cannon Princess, the Bertha Krupp of America?"

In addition to mystery and romance, you will get a layman's education in Egyptology!  (With some philosophy on the side.)

"If Amon-Rã were angry he could become Menthu, the war god. If he were inclined to be gentle, he could shrink to the dimensions of Horus, child-god of the Rising Sun. If he were weary, he could rest as the old god Tum, of the Setting Sun. Probably gods and goddesses never enjoyed themselves so much as in Ancient Egypt; and though it does seem a drawback from our artistic point of view for Hathor to have the head or ears of a cow, for wise Thoth to have the long beak of an ibis, and so on, it was for them only an amusing kind of masquerade or 'tête' party, on the walls of the temples and tombs. At home, they could be what they liked. Think how interesting for the Egyptians to have all these queer gods, and what variety it gave to their lives.

Indeed! 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers

A Bride from the Bush -by E. W. Hornug

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

It is always with trepidation that I download a book I have never heard of, by an unknown author.  Many of these books never make it to my blog.  Too boring!  Too racist!  Too dated!  Yes, many classic books are dated.  I try to offer the sort of timeless books that entertain us today as well as books where you can immerse yourself in the past.  

So when I run across A Bride from the Bush by E. W. Hornug - with no reviews - I wonder what I have found. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)    Well to start with, E. W. Hornug was the celebrated English author who wrote the Raffles series about an urbane thief.  So if he is unknown, that is my ignorance.  However, it is safe to say that this 1890 comic romance is forgotten.

This is the story of a son unexpectedly marrying a bride in Australia and bringing her home to the family home on the Thames.  (I don't think of stately homes on the Thames.)

[From a letter announcing the nuptials] ‘“Of my Bride I will say very little; for you will see her in a week at most. As for myself, I can only tell you, dear Mother, that I am the very luckiest and happiest man on earth!”’ (‘A brave statement,’ Granville murmured in parenthesis; ‘but they all make it.’) ‘“She is typically Australian, having indeed been born and bred in the Bush, and is the first to admit it, being properly proud of her native land; but, if you knew the Australians as I do, this would not frighten you. Far from it, for the typical Australian is one of the very highest if not the highest development of our species.”’

Sounds like fun!  Meet the bride meet the gentry!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers

From the Oak to the Olive - Travel Memoir by Julia Ward Howe

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

From the Oak to the Olive A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey  is an 1868 travel memoir by American abolitionist Julia Ward Howe.  (She wrote the words to the famous Civil War anthem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic.") (US Edition)  (UK Edition) 

Now here is a bid of odd advice.  Skip the short introduction titled "Preliminaries."  It is so mannered and off-putting, that I am sure many don't read past it.  It is really not at all like the book.  Here is a familiar scene for anyone who has visited St. Paul's:

St. Paul's is clearly organized for the extortion of shillings and sixpences. So much for seeing the bell, clock, and whispering gallery; so much for the crypt. You are pressed, too, at every turn, to purchase guide-books, each more authentic than the last. There, as elsewhere, we go about spilling our small change at every step, and wondering where it will all end.

The book starts with a steamer voyage, which she claims will be too familiar to the reader to describe.  Who knew that out of print and forgotten books would outlive their authors by a hundred years? (Wikipedia is not even aware this book exists and that is unusual when they profile the author.)

Howe travels about the UK, then to France, Italy, and Greece.  Yes, it appears to be the Grand Tour!

It is a litter borne tour from this extract:

Our vexation against our guides had long ago cooled into a quiet good will. Relinquishing the fiery journey , which might have been prolonged some hours further, we paid the rather heavy fee. The second carrier of the litter demanded a few extra pence, reminding us that at our first arrival he had brushed the dust from our dresses with a zeal which then appeared mysterious, but whose object was now clear.

Here she is on Venice:

Venice, which I seek to hold fast, is already a thing of yesterday.

Yes, that is Venice . ..

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Pride and Prejudice - by Jane Austen

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

I am rerunning my blog on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  Her books have never gone out of style and are deservedly popular with or without zombies.  (I am properly fearful of zombies and avoid them, especially in novelizations of out of copyright books.)

No, I am not going to quote the famous first line.  You will just have to download Pride and Prejudice and read it for yourself!  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  

I do not know how many times I have read this favorite of mine, first published in 1813.  It is always wonderful to realize how much we have in common with those who lived 200 years ago.  If we can laugh at the same things, how different can we be?  

There are few characters in literature as funny as Mr. Collins who fancies himself a skilled flatterer - adept at correcting any misstep. 

"The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and [Mr. Collins] begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellence of its cookery was owing. But here he was set right by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologise for about a quarter of an hour."

Mr. Collins brings me as much pleasure as he does Mr. Bennet!

So immerse yourself once again in the society of the Bennet girls with their interest in balls and the activities of the regiment.  And if you are reading this book for the first time, I envy you the pleasure of discovering one of the world's great novels.  Great because it is funny, surprising, romantic and up-to-date, all at the same time.

A reader in 1813 said:

I have finished the novel called Pride and Prejudice, which I think a very superior work. It depends not on any of the common resources of novel writers, no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres and disguises. I really think it is the most probable I have ever read.

Still probable after all these years! 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

On Secret Service: Detective-Mystery Stories Based on Real Cases - by William Nelson Taft

On Secret Service: Detective-Mystery Stories Based on Real Cases Solved By

Government Agents by William Nelson Taft. This is fiction, but based on fact.  Fans of Ian Fleming will find the title familiar.  Once again the Amazon UK title is not free.  It is difficult to understand why the US titles are free and there is a charge for the same UK out of copyright title ! (US Edition)  (£2.05 UK Edition)  There are just not as many free books in the UK.

There is a narrator who introduces yet another narrator, Quinn, to tell the stories.  It is an odd framing device, but not too intrusive.  The stories from that point on do not seem like fiction.

Secret Service men [said Quinn] divide all of their cases into two classes—those which call for quick action and plenty of it and those which demand a great deal of thought and only an hour or so of actual physical work. Your typical operative—Allison, who was responsible for solving the poison-pen puzzle, for example, or Hal Preston, who penetrated the mystery surrounding the murder of Montgomery Marshall—is essentially a man of action. He likes to tackle a job and get it over with. It doesn't make any difference if he has to round up a half dozen counterfeiters at the point of a single revolver—as Tommy Callahan once did—or break up a gang of train robbers who have sworn never to be taken alive. As long as he has plenty of thrills and excitement, as long as he is able to get some joy out of life, he doesn't give a hang for the risk.

There are a couple dozen stories, may with intriguing titles reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, such as: Five Inches of Death, Trail of the White Mice and The Double Code.   

"The rest of the story," concluded Quinn, "is a matter of history. How the fleet bottled up the harbor at Vera Cruz, how it was forced to send a landing party ashore under fire, and how seventeen American sailors lost their lives during the guerrilla attack which followed. All that was spread across the front pages of American papers in big black type—but the fact that a steamer named the Ypiranga had been held up by the American fleet and forced to anchor at a safe distance offshore, under the guns of the flagship, was given little space.

Actually it is a matter of history- Google "The Occupation of Veracruz."

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.