Pollyanna, now cured of her crippling spinal injury, and able to walk again, goes to live in Boston with Mrs. Carew, a heart-broken woman searching for her lost nephew. Her Aunt Polly goes abroad with her new Uncle, Dr. Chilton. While in Boston, Pollyanna meets new friends and has several interesting adventures... A... read more »
It is 1642 in the Puritan town of Boston. Hester Prynne has been found guilty of adultery and has born an illegitimate child. In lieu of being put to death, she is condemned to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as a reminder of her shameful act. Hester's husband had been lost at sea years earlier and was... read more »
Classified by Hardy as a romance and fantasy and now regarded as one of his minor works. The book is one of the Wessex novels, set in a parallel version of late Victorian Dorset. read more »
While he had written many short stories before, "Fanshawe" was Nathaniel Hawthorne's first attempt at writing a novel. The novel is based on his experiences at Bowdoin College in the early 1820s and Hawthorne published the novel himself anonymously in 1828. A commercial failure, Nathaniel Hawthorne's contempt for... read more »
Set on a communal farm called Blithedale, "The Blithedale Romance" is the story of four inhabitants of the commune: Hollingsworth, a misogynist philanthropist obsessed with turning Blithedale into a colony for the reformation of criminals; Zenobia, a passionate feminist; Priscilla, who turns out to be Zenobia's... read more »
The victim of a vicious scandal, the impoverished Lady Susan is obliged to take up residence with her brother-in-law and his family. Refusing to resign herself to the role of placid house guest, she conspires to baffle her hosts, seducing her sister-in-law's brother in the process by means of her impeccable... read more »
When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as 'a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action'. She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment... read more »
The Well-Beloved completes the cycle of Hardy's great novels, reiterating his favourite themes of man's eternal quest for perfection in both love and art, and the suffering that ensues. Jocelyn Pierston, celebrated sculptor, tries to create an image of his ideal woman - his imaginary Well-Beloved - in stone, just as... read more »
The Touchstone was Edith Wharton's first published novella, and it's spare, perhaps even underwritten. Even so, this Faustian tale of a man who stoops to publish love letters for money has mesmerizing, even dangerous qualities -- it has betrayals, greed, and consequences faced: hidden meanings emerge in places where... read more »
Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues and is thrust onto the horns of... read more »
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza... read more »
Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old... read more »
Set in medieval Paris, Victor Hugo’s powerful historical romance The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has resonated with succeeding generations ever since its publication in 1837. It tells the story of the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda, condemned as a witch by the tormented archdeacon Claude Frollo, who lusts after her... read more »
Volume one of Wallace's, The Prince of India; recounting the events leading to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The legendary wandering jew, in the guise of a Prince of India aids in bringing about the downfall of the city and its empire by aiding and advising the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II. A glowing... read more »
While the French and Indians besiege Fort William Henry, Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of the English commander, are on their way to join him. They are accompanied by Major Duncan Heyward, Alice's fiance, and by the treacherous Indian Magua, who secretly serves the French. Magua plans to betray the party to the... read more »
A romance of America's nascent imperial power recounting the adventures of Robert Clay, a mining engineer and sometime mercenary, and Hope Langham, the daughter of a wealthy American industrialist, as they become caught up in a coup in Olancho, a fictional Latin American republic. When the coup, organized by corrupt... read more »
The seemingly peaceful country village of Hayslope is the setting for this ambitious first novel by one of the nineteenth century's great novelists. With sympathy, wit, and unflinching realism, Adam Bede tells a story that would have been familiar to Eliot's first readers: the seduction of a pretty farm girl by the... read more »
The Man Who Laughs is a romantic masterpiece of a man whose face has been disfigured into a laughing mask in childhood, the loyal blind girl who gives him her heart, and the cruelty of the privileged aristocracy whose laughingstock and saviour he becomes, is remarkable in its emotional impact. But do not be... read more »
A Christmas love story and the only one of Dickens' Christmas stories without a supernatural theme, is about a group of philosophical friends who meet over breakfast in the woods to discuss the serious questions of life while the four daughters of one of them sing dance naturally. It's a book about the virtues of a... read more »
When Jeeves suggests dreamy, soulful Gussie Fink-Nottle don scarlet tights and false beard to win over soppy Madeline Bassett, Bertie Wooster doubts this is the way to get his friend hitched. Meanwhile, Bertie's eccentric Aunt Dahlia asks him to hand out prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School, which he's sure... read more »
From the beloved author of Treasure Island Originally serialized in a periodical of boys’ adventure fiction, The Black Arrow is a swashbuckling portrait of a young man’s journey to discover the heroism within himself. Young Dick Shelton, caught in the midst of England’s War of the Roses, finds his loyalties... read more »
This shocking tale of father-daughter incest, by the author of Frankenstein, was suppressed for over a century. Mathilda's adoration of her beloved father veers into tragedy in this High Romantic tale of forbidden passion. Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, was so repulsed by the story that it laid unpublished... read more »
This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's romantic and witty first novel, was written when the author was only twenty-three years old. This semiautobiographical story of the handsome, indulged, and idealistic Princeton student Amory Blaine received critical raves and catapulted Fitzgerald to instant fame. Now... read more »
Love, and the erratic heart, are at the centre of Hardy's 'woodland story'. Set in the beautiful Blackmoor Vale, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-to-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of the dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the... read more »
A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, Anna Karenina portrays the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the... read more »
New adventures lie ahead as Anne Shirley packs her bags, waves good-bye to childhood, and heads for Redmond College. With old friend Prissy Grant waiting in the bustling city of Kingsport and frivolous new pal Philippa Gordon at her side, Anne tucks her memories of rural Avonlea away and discovers life on her own... read more »
At sixteen Anne is grown up...almost. Her gray eyes shine like evening stars, but her red hair is still as peppery as her temper. In the years since she arrived at Green Gables as a freckle-faced orphan, she has earned the love of the people of Avonlea and a reputation for getting into scrapes. But when Anne begins... read more »
Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of her parents and society. The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen... read more »
A pretty young girl has to leave home to make money for her family. She is clever and a good worker; but she is uneducated and does not know the cruel ways of the world. So, when a rich young man says he loves her, she is careful - but not careful enough. He is persuasive, and she is overwhelmed. It is not her... read more »
"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman," writes Willa Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father’s farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve... read more »