The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy

The year is 1792. The French Revolution, driven to excess by its own triumph, has turned into a reign of terror. Daily, tumbrels roll over the cobbled streets of Paris bearing new victims to the insatiable Madame la Guillotine….Thus the stage is set for one of the most enthralling novels of historical adventure ever written. The mysterious figure known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, sworn to rescue helpless men, women, and children from their doom; his implacable foe, the French agent Chauvelin, relentlessly hunting him down; and lovely Marguerite Blakeney, a beautiful French exile married to an English lord and caught in a terrible conflict of loyalties—all play their parts in a suspenseful tale that ranges from the squalid slums of Paris to the aristocratic salons of London, from intrigue on a great English country estate to the final denouement on the cliffs of the French coast.

(This book is included by default.)

Captain Blood
by Rafael Sabatini

Dr. Peter Blood, an English doctor, is taken prisoner, pronounced guilty of treason, and sent to a terrible island, Barbados, where many are tortured and starved. Despite overwhelming difficulties, and the hatred of the overseer of the prison, Dr. Blood is able to escape. The escape is quite spectacular as Dr. Blood and the prisoners overtake an attack on Barbados by Spanish pirates.

This is a fast-paced novel! However, even though the emphasis is on action, the author takes the time to describe the thoughts of the characters, especially Captain Blood. Dr. Blood did not intend to become a captain or a pirate but because he was considered a criminal, along with the other prisoners, they were forced to live the pirate life.

The book is filled with sea battles and sword fights, gallantry and betrayal, action, suspense, missed opportunities, irony, and romance.

The Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain

Rich with surprise and hilarious adventure, The Prince and the Pauper is a delightful satire of England’s romantic past and a joyful boyhood romp filled with the same tongue-in-cheek irony that sparked the best of Mark Twain’s tall tales. Two boys, one an urchin from London’s filthy lanes, the other a prince born in a lavish palace, unwittingly trade identities. Thus a bedraggled “Prince of Poverty” discovers that his private dreams have all come true—while a pampered Prince of Wales finds himself tossed into a rough-and-tumble world of squalid beggars and villainous thieves.

(This book is included by default.)

My Antonia
by Willa Cather

When her family emigrates from Bohemia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, Antonia finds no white-framed farmhouse of snug barn. Instead, the cultured Shimerda family find themselves huddled into a primitive sod house buffeted by the unceasing prairie winds. Uncompromising in her rich and powerful nature, the beautiful Antonia adapts to embody the elemental spirit of this frontier, despite the events that nearly destroy her family and leave her abandoned. Willa Cather’s lush descriptions of the rolling Nebraska grasslands interweave with the warm tale of a woman coming of age in a chronicle of America’s past.