Reading Guides & Book Lists

• Andrew Lang's Coloured Fairy Books in Order: 8 Free Online, and Which to Read First
  2026-09-14 — The Blue, Yellow, Pink, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange and Lilac Fairy Books — the order Lang published them, what is in each, and the four colours the library does not have yet.
• Heidi and Nine More Johanna Spyri Books, Free Online
  2026-09-14 — Heidi plus Moni the Goat-Boy, Cornelli, Rico and Wiseli, Gritli's Children and five others — every Spyri book in the free library, and which ones are worth it after Heidi.
• Alice in Wonderland and Everything Else by Lewis Carroll, Free Online
  2026-09-14 — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, The Hunting of the Snark, the songs and the original handwritten Alice — all five free to read, and which is which.
• Robert Louis Stevenson Books Free Online: All 6, and the Order That Works
  2026-09-14 — Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Black Arrow, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, A Child's Garden of Verses and Fables — every Stevenson in the free library, with what each one is actually like.
• Rudyard Kipling Books Free Online: All 6, in the Order to Read Them
  2026-09-14 — The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Kim, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies — the Kipling in the free library, by age and by what each one is.
• Anne of Green Gables Books in Order: All 6 Free Online, Plus What to Read Next
  2026-09-13 — The Anne series in reading order — Green Gables through Rilla of Ingleside — plus the Avonlea story collections and Montgomery's other novels, all free to read online.
• Books Like Treasure Island: 16 Free Sea Adventures and Desert-Island Classics
  2026-09-13 — Read Treasure Island free online, then what to read next — Ballantyne's coral islands, Stevenson's own Kidnapped, real pirate history, and the shipwreck novels the whole genre grew out of.
• Charles Dickens Books Free Online: Where to Start, and What to Read Third
  2026-09-13 — Great Expectations, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol — the Dickens in the free library, ordered by how hard each one is to begin.
• Classic Detective Stories Free Online: Sherlock Holmes and 11 Forgotten Mysteries
  2026-09-13 — Both Sherlock Holmes novels free to read online, plus the girl-detective and boy-detective mysteries of the 1910s and 20s that nobody reprints — and one that is not a mystery at all.
• Classic Orphan Stories Free Online: 18 Books Built on the Same Plot
  2026-09-13 — Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, A Little Princess, Oliver Twist and the Horatio Alger machine — free online orphan classics, and why the nineteenth century told this story more than any other.
• E. Nesbit Books Free Online: All 12 Classics, and the Order to Read Them In
  2026-09-13 — Five Children and It, The Railway Children, the Psammead cycle and the Bastable trilogy — every E. Nesbit book in the free library, with what each one is and where to start.
• Fairy Tales from Around the World: 14 National Collections Free Online
  2026-09-13 — Beyond Grimm and Andersen — Japanese, Croatian, Welsh, Norwegian, Canadian and Scottish fairy tale collections, all free to read online, and what makes each tradition sound different.
• Greek Myths for Children Free Online: Which Retelling to Read at Which Age
  2026-09-13 — Hawthorne, Kingsley, Jean Lang, and Homer and Ovid themselves — free online Greek and Norse myth collections, ordered by how much a child can take.
• Nature Study Books for Children Free Online: 12 Living Books About Real Animals
  2026-09-13 — Burgess, Seton, Patch and the Victorian nature-study writers — free online books that teach a child real natural history through story rather than through facts on a page.
• Nursery Rhyme Books Free Online: 16 Illustrated Classics and Where They Came From
  2026-09-13 — Caldecott, Walter Crane and Beatrix Potter nursery rhyme books free to read online, plus the odd scholarly corner that explains why the rhymes are so much stranger than they look.
• R. M. Ballantyne Books Free Online: All 22, and Which Three Are Actually Good
  2026-09-13 — The Coral Island, The Young Fur Traders, The World of Ice and nineteen more — every Ballantyne novel in the free library, sorted by where he had actually been.
• Read-Aloud Chapter Books Free Online: 18 Classics That Work Out Loud
  2026-09-13 — Not every good children's book is a good read-aloud. These 18 free classics have short chapters, sentences that survive being spoken, and stopping points you can actually stop at.
• Aesop's Fables Free Online — Which Version to Read, and Why They Differ
  2026-09-12 — Aesop's Fables and La Fontaine's are public domain and free to read online in full. Here is which translation to pick, and how the two great fable traditions differ.
• 35 Classic Boarding School Stories, Free to Read Online
  2026-09-12 — Angela Brazil, L. T. Meade, Just Patty and The Varmint — the school story was one of the biggest genres in children's publishing for fifty years, and nearly all of it is public domain and free to read here.
• 14 Books Like Anne of Green Gables You Can Read Free Online
  2026-09-12 — Finished Anne of Green Gables and want more? The whole Anne series plus Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, What Katy Did, Pollyanna and Little Women are public domain — free to read online, no download needed.
• 15 Classic Christmas Stories to Read Free Online
  2026-09-12 — A Christmas Carol, The Gift of the Magi, The Cricket on the Hearth and Baum's full mythology of Santa Claus — all public domain, all free to read in your browser in one sitting.
• Where to Read Fairy Tales Free Online — Grimm, Andersen and Lang's Colour Fairy Books
  2026-09-12 — The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and all twelve of Andrew Lang's colour Fairy Books are public domain — free to read online in full, no download and no account needed.
• The First World War Written for Children: 11 Books From 1914-1919, Free Online
  2026-09-12 — Rilla of Ingleside, The Forest of Swords, Air Service Boys and the boys' series written while the war was still on. Eleven books from the free library, and what it means that most of them were published before anyone knew how it would end.
• Frances Hodgson Burnett: All 7 Books in the Library, Free to Read Online
  2026-09-12 — The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Lost Prince — plus the shorter first version of A Little Princess and the two odd late books. All 7 free to read here, with what each one is.
• All 49 G. A. Henty Books, Sorted by the War They Are About
  2026-09-12 — Henty wrote a novel for nearly every conflict in European history and gave them interchangeable titles. Here are all 49 in the free library, arranged by period — from Hannibal to the Boer War — so you can find the one you actually want.
• Horatio Alger: All 34 Rags-to-Riches Novels, Free to Read Online
  2026-09-12 — Ragged Dick, Phil the Fiddler, The Cash Boy — Alger wrote the American success myth into a hundred novels about street boys. Here are the 34 in the free library, which to read, and what they actually say.
• Louisa May Alcott: 21 Books Free to Read Online
  2026-09-12 — Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins and the story collections she actually made her living from — 21 Alcott books in the free library, in reading order, with what each one is.
• All 14 Oz Books in Order, Free to Read Online
  2026-09-12 — Baum wrote fourteen Oz novels and every one is public domain. Here they are in publication order with what happens in each, plus the six other fantasy worlds he built — all free to read in your browser.
• The Stratemeyer Syndicate: 27 Books From the Fiction Factory, Free Online
  2026-09-12 — Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and the Rover Boys all came out of one office in New Jersey, written to outline by ghostwriters on a flat fee. Here are 27 syndicate books in the free library, filed under the pen names that never existed.
• Thornton Burgess Books in Order: 20 Animal Stories Free Online
  2026-09-12 — Old Mother West Wind, Reddy Fox, Jimmy Skunk and Paddy the Beaver — Burgess wrote 170 books of short bedtime chapters about real animals, and 20 of them are here free to read in your browser.
• 10 Classic Adventure Novels You Can Read Free Online
  2026-09-09 — Treasure Island, Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers and seven more classic adventure novels in the public domain — free to read online, no download and no account required.
• 12 Classic Children's Books You Can Read Free Online
  2026-09-09 — Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Peter Rabbit and nine more classic children's books in the public domain — free to read online together, no download or account needed.
• Classic Science Fiction You Can Read Free Online — a Starter List
  2026-09-09 — H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley invented science fiction, and every one of their books is free to read online. Here's where to start and what order to read them in.
• 9 Gothic Classics You Can Read Free Online Tonight
  2026-09-09 — From Dracula to The Turn of the Screw — nine gothic masterpieces in the public domain, free to read online in a beautiful reader. No download, no account required.
• How to Build a Reading Habit That Actually Sticks
  2026-09-09 — The research-backed way to become a daily reader — small quotas, streaks, the right first books, and why finishing a short book beats abandoning a long one.
• Shakespeare Free Online: 7 Plays and Where to Start
  2026-09-09 — Read Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest and four more Shakespeare plays free online — plus which one to start with and how to read a play without stalling on the language.
• 12 Short Classics You Can Finish in One Sitting
  2026-09-09 — Twelve public-domain classics under 150 pages — Jekyll and Hyde, The Metamorphosis, Heart of Darkness — free to read online tonight. No download, no account required.