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"The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, has been called the defining work of the 20th-century American fiction. Written in prose that is both evocative and hard-edged, it can be read and re-read with fresh appreciation and pleasure. It is a seamless narrative of wonder and disillusionment, passion and betrayal, glamour and vice, satire and wistfulness and depicting a unique time and place-New York City and Long Island's nearby Gold Ckoast...
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Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility is a wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly that revolves around two starkly different sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. While Elinor is thoughtful, considerate, and calm, her younger sister is emotional and wildly romantic. Both are looking for ahusband, but neither Elinor's reason nor Marianne's passion can lead them to perfect happiness -- as Marianne falls for an unscrupulous...
3) Emma
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"The culmination of Jane Austen's genius, a sparkling comedy of love and marriage--now in a stunning 200th-anniversary Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition Beautiful, clever, rich--and single--Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to...
4) Persuasion
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Superb novel, autumnal and mellow in tone, concerns the lives and loves of the Elliot family and their friends and relatives, in particular the thwarted romance between Anne Elliot (Austen's sweetest, most appealing heroine) and Captain Frederick Wentworth. Finely drawn characters, gentle satire and wonderful recreation of genteel life in the English countryside.
6) Black Beauty
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"When Black Beauty was born one sweet spring day, he could not have imagined the life ahead of him. Following his mother's advice to do his work with a good will, he enjoys the adventures of country and city life, makes new friends, and suffers from the cruelty and greed of his human masters. Beauty faces each challenge with bravery and kindness -- and then a chance encounter with an old friend brings him the greatest joy of all. Anna Sewell's classic...
7) Middlemarch
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Writing at the very moment when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged and undermined, George Eliot fashions in Middlemarch (1871-2), the quintessential Victorian novel, a concept of life and society free of the dogma of the past yet able to confront the scepticism that was taking over the age. In a panoramic sweep of English life during the years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Eliot explores nearly every subject of...
8) Oliver Twist
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After orphan Oliver Twist asks for more food, he has to flee the workhouse and ends up on the streets of London. There he meets the Artful Dodger, who leads him to Fagin and his gang of pickpockets. When a thieving mission goes wrong, Oliver narrowly avoids prison and finds himself in the care of kind Mr. Brownlow. But Fagin and the brutal Bill Sikes go in search of the young orphan, determined to drag him back.
9) Kidnapped
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In 1751 in Scotland, cheated out of his inheritance by a greedy uncle who has him kidnapped and put on a ship to the Carolinas, seventeen-year-old David Balfour escapes to the Highlands with the help of the Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart and there encounters further danger and intrigue as he attempts to clear his name and regain his property.
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When the Countess Ellen Olenska returns from Europe, fleeing her brutish husband, her rebellious independence and passionate awareness of life stir the educated sensitivity of Newland Archer, already engaged to be married to her cousin May Welland, "that terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything." As the consequent drama unfolds, Edith Wharton's sharp ironic wit...
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The procession that crosses Chaucer's pages is as full of life and as richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make up the cast of characters -- including Chaucer himself -- are real people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary language across western Europe,...
12) The moonstone
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The Moonstone was published in 1868 and concerns the huge yellow diamond of the title that was once stolen from an Indian shrine. Rachel Verrinder receives the stone as a gift and does not realise that it has been passed to her in a sinister form of revenge by John Herncastle who, it transpires, acquired the moonstone by means of murder and theft. The jewel also brings bad luck. The stone disappears on the very night it is given to Rachel, though,...
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"A Connecticut engineer named hank Morgan gets knocked on the head and is transported back in time to medival England during King Arthur's reign. He is initially captured but uses his Yankee ingenuity to eventually become the boss of the realm. The book recounts his adventures and use of his 'modern' technology against the royalty, knights, and church of the day. He continually makes fun of the backwards nature of the citizens and rulers, and contrasts...
14) Frankenstein
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A brilliant but arrogant young physician strives to make the perfect man in a laboratory but ultimately rejects his creation, who in turn becomes a bitter monster seeking revenge on his creator and his family.
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Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea monster. However, the "monster" turns out to be a giant submarine, commanded by Captain Nemo.
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The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass's classic autobiography,...
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Misunderstood Maggie Tulliver is torn. Her rebellious and passionate nature demands expression, while her provincial kin and community expect self-denial. Based closely on the author's own life, Maggie's story explores the conflicts of love and loyalty and the friction between desire and moral responsibility. Written in 1860, "The Mill on the Floss" was published to instant popularity. An accurate, evocative depiction of English rural life, this compelling...
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The emotional tale of Little Nell and her doting grandfather, played out against the backdrop of a cold and brutal London. The twosome abandon their home to escape debt and roam the countryside as beggars. Relentlessly pursued by a malicious moneylender and encountering ne'er-do-wells, con artists, and the persevering poor, they also find goodness and generosity, love and loyalty.
19) The prince
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The most famous book on politics ever written, The Prince remains as lively and shocking today as when it was written almost five hundred years ago. Initially denounced as a collection of sinister maxims and a recommendation of tyranny, it has more recently been defended as the first scientific treatment of politics as it is practiced rather than as it ought to be practiced. Harvey C. Mansfield's brilliant translation of this classic work, along with...