Jane Austen's last completed novel, marrying witty social realism to a Cinderella love story At twenty--seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick...

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before- of the intense passion between the foundling...

THE PICKWICK PAPERS began as a literary spoof centred around sketches of stock sporting fops by caricaturist Robert Seymour. Following the success of SKETCHES BY BOZ, Dickens was recruited to compose the words which would accompany the illustrations. Dickens quickly made the project his own and...

This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he...

The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald's family and from his lifelong publisher. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book...

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors- the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in...

In the early 15th century, during the middle of the Hundred Years' War, England and France were fighting for sovereignty over France. It was a time of hand-to-hand combat, the invention of the longbow, and real knights in armor. Simon Beauvallet was born in 1386, the...

A masterful collection of horror fiction by widely acclaimed authors whose contributions to the genre have been lost in the shadow of Poe, by one of America's foremost anthologists. Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. There were American, English, and Continental...

This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.

Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a "revenge tragedy," in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties. ...

Mary Shelley's classic novel, presented in its original 1818 text, with an introduction from National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon   Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read   The...

Laurence Sterne's beloved comic novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is the "biography" of Tristram Shandy-a wonderfully humorous and eccentric narrator who guides the reader from his conception to his birth, and on to his life as an adult. The twists and turns of Tristram's...

'All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.'- Ernest Hemingway Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first...

In this thrilling adventure tale by the 'Father of Science Fiction', three men embark on an epic journey under the sea with the mysterious Captain Nemo aboard his submarine the Nautilus. Over the course of their fantastical voyage, they encounter the lost city of Atlantis, the South Pole and...

A flamboyant and controversial personality of enormous wit and intelligence, Voltaire remains one of the most influential figures of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.Candide,his masterpiece, is a brilliant satire of the theory that our world is “the best of all possible worlds.” The...

Set in old New York, this novel details the thwarted romance between Newland Archer, a young dandy, and the beautiful, unconventional divorceee Countess Ellen Olenska. The cast of characters includes Newland's docile - and calculating - fiancee, May Welland and the lordly Mrs Manson Mingott.

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman inthe eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears...