A Good-For-Nothing

Ralph Grimm is barely breathing when his parents begin assigning him a future: his mother chooses literature, his father the army. By five, he has declared for piracy—and learned that doing nothing can look like genius to a proud family.

In Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen’s 1876 novel, a pampered young man grows up beneath his well-to-do parents’ grand expectations, then arrives in the capital convinced that good clothes and good fortune may carry him into the Military Academy. Instead, he fails the examination and hides from the truth in a rented room. Across its narrow courtyard, Bertha, a young girl longing for home, spots his vacant gaze and sends him her German exercise. Their strange first exchange gives Ralph something no parental plan has prepared him for. What might begin between a young man who has never had to find his way and a girl who sees more than he lets on?

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.