Great Stories
The great novels, one chapter-sized reading every morning by 6am ET. Start at day one, free.
The shelf: 20 books, read in order
Everyone starts on day one of book 1. When one book ends, the next begins.
1. Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
56 days
Quick-witted Elizabeth Bennet meets the proud Mr Darcy, and both must unlearn their first impressions.
2. Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
35 days
A young scientist brings a creature to life, flees in horror, and is hunted across Europe and the Arctic by what he made.
3. Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
104 days
Ishmael signs on to a whaler whose captain, Ahab, is bent on revenge against the white whale that took his leg.
4. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
12 days
A bored girl follows a white rabbit down a hole into a world of riddles, mad tea parties and a furious Queen of Hearts.
5. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
50 days
Twelve cases for the world's first consulting detective and Dr Watson, from a scandal in Bohemia to a speckled band.
6. Dracula
Bram Stoker
78 days
Told in letters and diaries: a young lawyer's trip to Transylvania brings an ancient vampire to England, and a small band sets out to stop him.
7. Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
11 days
Two teenagers from feuding families in Verona fall in love at first sight, marry in secret and race toward tragedy.
8. A Room with a View
E. M. Forster
31 days
On a trip to Florence, sheltered Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional George Emerson and must choose between propriety and her heart.
9. Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky (tr. Constance Garnett)
94 days
A destitute student in St Petersburg commits murder to prove a theory, then is slowly undone by conscience and a patient detective.
10. A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
64 days
Between London and revolutionary Paris, a freed prisoner, his daughter and two men who look alike are swept up in the Terror.
11. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
12 days
A London lawyer investigates the strange bond between his respectable friend Dr Jekyll and the brutal Mr Hyde.
12. The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
34 days
A beautiful young man wishes his portrait would age in his place, and the painting begins to record every sin.
13. Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
85 days
An orphaned governess with a fierce sense of self falls in love with her brooding employer, whose house hides a secret.
14. The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
22 days
On Long Island in 1922, Nick Carraway watches his mysterious neighbour Jay Gatsby chase a dream and the woman he lost.
15. Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
84 days
The four March sisters grow up in Civil War New England, chasing art, love and independence while their father is away.
16. The Blue Castle
L. M. Montgomery
33 days
Told she has a year to live, a timid Ontario woman stops obeying her family and starts living for herself.
17. The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
3 days
Confined to an upstairs room for a 'rest cure', a young mother becomes obsessed with the pattern in its wallpaper.
18. The Odyssey
Homer (tr. Samuel Butler)
55 days
After ten years at Troy, Ulysses spends ten more fighting his way home past monsters, witches and angry gods, while suitors besiege his wife in Ithaca.
19. Middlemarch
George Eliot
147 days
In a provincial English town, idealistic Dorothea Brooke and the young doctor Lydgate learn what marriage, money and ambition cost.
20. The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
215 days
Betrayed on his wedding day and jailed for fourteen years, Edmond Dantès escapes, finds a fortune and plots his revenge.
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