reading lists
Where to start with the classics.
Hand-picked routes into the classics, by what you're in the mood for. Every book is free and readable in full on Folio.
The detectives that built the genre — Holmes, Poirot, Father Brown, Lupin and Dupin — in their original, free editions.
Dread, ruined houses and the uncanny — the gothic canon from Walpole and Shelley to Stoker, Stevenson and Wilde.
Dracula
Bram Stoker
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Turn of the Screw
Folio
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
The Fall of the House of Usher
Folio
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
Carmilla
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The books that invented the future — Wells, Verne, Shelley and the pulp pioneers, every one free to read.
Treasure, the open sea and far-off worlds — Stevenson, London, Dumas, Verne and the great adventure storytellers.
Chases, conspiracies and codes — Buchan, Childers, Fu-Manchu and the golden-age thriller, a step away from the drawing-room detective.
The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan
The Riddle of the Sands
Erskine Childers
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
Folio
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
Sax Rohmer
The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Folio
The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Sax Rohmer
The Devil Doctor
Folio
The Devil Doctor
Sax Rohmer
The Angel of Terror
Folio
The Angel of Terror
Edgar Wallace
Cosmic dread and the unnameable — Lovecraft, Machen, Chambers and the masters of the weird tale.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Folio
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The Great God Pan
Folio
The Great God Pan
Arthur Machen
The King in Yellow
Folio
The King in Yellow
Robert W. Chambers
The Dunwich Horror
H. P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulhu
H. P. Lovecraft
The Shunned House
Folio
The Shunned House
H. P. Lovecraft
Jungle empires and forgotten kingdoms — Burroughs, Haggard and the lost-world adventurers who mapped the imaginary.
The foundations of Western thought — Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, from the Meditations to the Republic.
The Russian giants — Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Turgenev, free and complete.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The shooting party
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories
Folio
Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Satan's Diary
Leonid Andreyev
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
The Torrents of Spring
Folio
The Torrents of Spring
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
The hidden tradition in its founding texts — the Kybalion, Crowley, Blavatsky and the whole shelf of witchcraft, alchemy, astrology and the occult, every one free to read.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
Folio
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
Margaret Alice Murray
An Introduction to Yoga
Folio
An Introduction to Yoga
Annie Besant
A Textbook of Theosophy
Folio
A Textbook of Theosophy
C. W. Leadbeater
The Kybalion
Folio
The Kybalion
Three Initiates
The Basis of Morality
Folio
The Basis of Morality
Annie Besant
Thought-Forms
Folio
Thought-Forms
Annie Besant