The Black Arrow

Robert Louis Stevenson set this brisk tale of revenge and rebellion during England’s Wars of the Roses, when rival factions turned the countryside into a patchwork of ambushes and shifting loyalties. Young Richard Shelton begins to suspect that his guardian, Sir Daniel Brackley, had a hand in his father’s death, and a band of outlaws who fire black-feathered arrows seem to know the truth. Caught between warring lords, Dick takes to the forest, falls in with the fellowship of the Black Arrow, and rescues a young woman traveling in disguise. Stevenson wrote it for a boys’ magazine, and it moves at a gallop, full of forest skirmishes, sea chases, and coded warnings. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available to download.