The Lock and Key Library

On a morning train, a solemn spiritualist reports that Socrates is present—and that a bird in the hand is worth two in the “Bosh.” His baffled fellow passenger soon finds a house the village won’t touch.

The Lock and Key Library opens with Charles Dickens’s “The Haunted House,” a Christmas tale set on the road from the North toward London. Seeking a country home to restore his health, the narrator leaves the railway for a neglected garden and a handsome, empty house advertised for rent. Its fresh paint is already peeling; its poplars brood over the windows; and the village seems to have turned its back on it. The narrator knows that even daylight can feel ghostly—and has seen an apparition of his father in the early morning. What has made this house so easy to avoid, and what might greet its next resident?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.