Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Grace Livingston Hill was one of my favorite writers in my adolescence. I read all of her 80 romance novels, some of them more than once. They are so familiar to me, still!

Here is the first page of “The Enchanted Barn.” It tells you everything you need to know about her novels. The story is laid out right there on the first page. Re-reading this makes me want to keep on going.

Shirley Hollister pushed back the hair from her hot forehead, pressed her hands wearily over tired eyes, then dropped her fingers again to the typewriter keys, and flew on with the letter she was writing.

There was no one else in the inner office where she sat. Mr. Barnard, the senior member of the firm, whose stenographer she was, had stepped into the outer office for a moment with a telegram which he had just received. His absence gave Shirley a moment’s respite from that feeling that she must keep strained up to meet his gaze and not let trouble show in her eyes, though a great lump was choking in her throat and the tears stung her hot eyelids and insisted on blurring her vision now and then. But it was only for an instant that she gave way. Her fingers flew on with their work, for this was an important letter, and Mr. Barnard wanted it to go in the next mail.

As she wrote, a vision of her mother’s white face appeared to her between the lines, the mother weak and white, with tears on her cheeks and that despairing look in her eyes. Mother hadn’t been able to get up for a week. It seemed as if the cares of life were getting almost too much for her, and the warm spring days made the little brick house in the narrow street a stifling place to stay. There was only one small window in mother’s room, opening against a brick wall, for they had had to rent the front room with its two windows.

But, poor as it was, the little brick house had been home; and now they were not to have that long. Notice had been served that they must vacate in four weeks; for the house, in fact, the whole row of houses in which it was situated, had been sold, and was to be pulled down to make way for a big apartment-house that was to be put up.

The novel is from 1918, the protagonist is not going to become CEO. She will find Prince Charming. The story may be old-fashioned, but it is also timeless.

Click here to get your free copy of  “The Enchanted Barn” by Grace Livingston Hill >>>

Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Alone in London is an 1869 novel by Hesba Stretton, the pen name of Sarah Smith. She was an extremely popular writer. This is a story of an abandoned child.

Oliver stooped down to bring his eyes nearer to the ground, until he could make out the indistinct outline of the figure of a child, seated on his shop floor, and closely hugging a dog in her arms. Her face looked small to him; it was pale, as if she had been crying quietly, and though he could not see them, a large tear stood on each of her cheeks.

“What little girl are you?” he asked, almost timidly.

“Rey called me Dolly,” answered the child.

“Haven’t you any other name?” inquired old Oliver

“Nosing else but Poppet,” she said; “rey call me Dolly sometimes, and Poppet sometimes. Ris is my little dog, Beppo.”

She introduced the dog by pushing its nose into his hand, and Beppo complacently wagged his tail and licked the old man’s withered fingers.

“What brings you here in my shop, my little woman?” asked Oliver.

“Mammy brought me,” she said, with a stifled sob; “she told me run in rere, Dolly, and stay till mammy comes back, and be a good girl always. Am I a good girl?”

“Yes, yes,” he answered, soothingly; “you’re a very good little girl, I’m sure; and mother ‘ill come back soon, very soon. Let us go to the door, and look for her.”

This is a sentimental passage, but it soon turns out this shop was not randomly chosen . . .

Click here to get your free copy of Alone in London by Hesba Stretton >>>