Thackeray's best-loved work, "Vanity Fair, is a satire of epic proportions, and proves that deep-seated cynicism and heartfelt morality don't have to get in the way of a good story. Filled with exceptionally drawn characters, biting social humor, and Thackeray's own illustrations, "Vanity Fair is not only one of the great English novels of the nineteenth century, its title has become synonymous with the follies of high society. Nicholas Dames is Assistant...

John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...

Originally published serially in 1912, "The Lost World" is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tale of discovery and adventure. The story begins with the narrator, the curious and intrepid reporter Edward Malone, meeting Professor Challenger, a strange and brilliant paleontologist who insists that he has found dinosaurs still alive deep in the Amazon. Malone agrees to accompany Challenger, as well as Challenger's unconvinced colleague Professor Summerlee,...

A Book that Transformed America Civil Disobedience was Thoreau's first published book and continues to transform American discourse. It is unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling. The ideas presented in this essay have influenced some of the most powerful and influential people in history, including Martin Luther King Jnr, Leo Tolstoy, President John F. Kennedy and Ernest...

"Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Earnest, while Algernon has also posed as Earnest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend--the "rivals" to fight for Earnest's undivided attention and the "Earnests" to claim their beloveds--pandemonium breaks loose"--P. [4] of cover.

In Baroness Emma Orczy's 1905 novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel", the year is 1792 and the French Revolution is complete. People die by the guillotine every day, often unjustly. Stepping in to right these wrongs and rescue the innocent is the elusive "Scarlet Pimpernel", a mysterious agent named for the red flower that is his signature. Meanwhile, foppish Sir Percy Blakeney and his French actress wife Marguerite are having marital difficulties when Marguerite...

"Orphaned Heidi is sent to live with her grumpy grandfather in the Alps, but soon grows to love the mountains. When she is taken to Frankfurt, her homesickness and a new friendship with a disabled girl called Clara lead to an extraordinary turn of events"--

Through the story of the brilliant but conflicted young Raskolnikov and the murder he commits, Fyodor Dostoevsky explores the theme of redemption through suffering. Crime and Punishment put Dostoevsky at the forefront of Russian writers when it appeared in 1866.

The enchanting story of a shipwrecked family --a minister, his wife, and four sons-- who are cast up on a desert island, build a wonderful house in a tree, and survive so cleverly and happily apart from the world that they never want to be rescued.