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For historical novels, we love the Waverly novels by Sir Walter Scott.

Ivanhoe
Rob Roy
The Antiquary
The Bride of Lammermoor
The Heart of Midlothian

We read Victor Hugo (with extensive study of cathedrals in conjunction with Hunchback), Alexandre Dumas (Three Musketeers and Count), The Song of Roland (with a study of the code of chivalry).

We scoured EBay for lots of classical books and Cliffs Notes. A lot of the classics are also online that you can download.

Here is one link: Bibliomania

For a good online literary analysis source, here is NovelGuide

For an online resource of early Christian text and Medieval Classics, here is a great site: Online Medieval and Classical Library

And if you want to start your day out right, try the online daily office (morning prayer, evening prayer, etc.): Oremus or The Daily Office. They will have the Psalm of the day, OT, NT, Gospel readings for the day, prayers, and hymns.

We recently finished Ivanhoe as a family reading project. Then went to the library and checked out the movie (I think it was 4 videos long). It was great to do a critique of the movie compared to the book. Not a bad project for a 11 and 14 year old. How many of the public school systems have reading lists like these on this thread?

Wow! Great sites, Carolina. I bought a book recommended by the authors of "The Well Trained Mind" named "How to Read a Book" (my daughter thought that was amusing, a book on How to Read a Book) by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (yes, he of "Quiz Show" fame). Someone on our Classical Ed. chat board had written a Study Guide for the book and I bought it for our two kids who will be doing A LOT of reading over the next few years. It is a book on literary analysis, and teaches you how to think critically about the work you are studying.

We'll do that course in the fall before they jump into Ancient literature. It is designed to be done once a week over a 12 week period. If you're interested, freepmail me and I'll give you the author's e-mail address. I believe it cost $12.95 for the materials, and she allows you to photo copy for additional members of your homeschooling family. She only asks that individual copies be purchased if it is a teacher doing a class of students. I went ahead and bought the two copies I'd need because the materials are spiral bound, I wouldn't have to go to the trouble of doing the copying myself, and just to support her. It's great when homeschooling folks go to the effort to create materials to help all of us!