The Blue Lagoon (1908) is a novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The first in a trilogy of novels including The Garden of God (1923) and The Gates of Morning (1925), The Blue Lagoon is a story of romance and adventure inspired by the author's travels in the South Pacific. A total of five films have been adapted from the novel, including the hit 1980 drama of the same name starring Brooke Shields. "The Pacific slept, a vast, vague swell flowing from far...

Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight years ago a little fleet of galleys toiled painfully against the current up the long strait of the Hellespont, rowed across the broad Propontis, and came to anchor in the smooth waters of the first inlet which cuts into the European shore of the Bosphorus. There is a long crescent-shaped creek, which after-ages were to know as the Golden Horn, strikes inland for seven miles, forming a quiet backwater from...

A gruesome tale! A somewhat immature teenage boy, Tony 'Pocket' Upton, goes to London to consult a doctor about his asthma and finds himself without a place to stay. He decides to spend the night in the park. The next thing he knows he is standing with a gun in his hand, and a body at his feet. The inescapable conclusion is that Pocket has shot him while sleep-walking. Another man is looking at him in horror but agrees to harbour him. Should he go...

King Charles the Second was the son and successor of King Charles the First. These two are the only kings of the name of Charles that have appeared, thus far, in the line of English sovereigns. Nor is it very probable that there will soon be another. The reigns of both these monarchs were stained and tarnished with many vices and crimes, and darkened by national disasters of every kind, and the name is thus connected with so many painful associations...

ROCKETS SLAMMED PAST -just missing the tall, gaunt man who dodged down the stairs of the Earth Embassy. A figure loomed in a doorway and he snapped off a quick blaster shot at it-missed. He'd killed one man, wounded others-and was carrying papers stolen from the secret Embassy files. They had to stop him-but they couldn't! -And, worlds away, the men of Department 99 watched on their galaxy-spanning view-screen ... knowing they were responsible for...

It was in the month of July 1842, that I was released, by order of Pope Gregory, from my first imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition. On this occasion, one of the Dominican monks who serve the office of Inquisitor, inquired of me, with a malicious look, whether I, also, intended, one day, to write an account of the Inquisition, as a well-known author had done before me, with respect to Spielberg, in his celebrated work, "Le mie prigioni."...

In a future time, the solar system is powered by one energy source, controlled by one huge organisation, which has plans to use this control to dominate the planets. Unknown to them, a couple of maverick scientists accidentally develop a completely new form of energy supply and threaten the corporation's monopoly. Naturally, the corporation can't allow this to happen... A stunning story about the manipulation of pure energy, climaxing in interstellar...

This is a classic science fiction novel by Edward Elmer Smith ("Doc Smith"). 'They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe: Two men, two women, lost in an experimental spaceship billions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally charted the Cosmos to find their way back to earth, their own loves and hates were as startling as the worlds they encountered.' This work is part of our Vintage Sci-Fi Classics Series, a series in which we are republishing...

Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain, prosaic lieutenant in the republican service have done the incredible things here set out for the love of a woman-for a chimera in female shape, for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness? At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator, and then again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write it-the pallid splendour of that thing I loved,...

On the day after the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, Andrew Johnson took the oath of office, and became President of the United States. He was a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, born in 1808. With no advantages of education, he passed his boyhood in poverty and neglect. In 1828, he removed to Tennessee and settled at Greenville. Here, through toil and hardship, he rose to distinction, and after holding minor offices was elected to Congress. As a member...