Catalog Search Results
1) 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...
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Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many...
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After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...
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"Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism in a deluxe edition with a gripping cover by 'Hellboy' artist Mike Mignola. 'Heart of Darkness' is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling upriver into the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow's discovery...
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This rather simple plot is a most compelling drama that bristles with suspense as it contains all the elements of a classic 19th-century mystery including, reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, and a tense courtroom scene.
Set in the fictional frontier town of Dawson's Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century, the book turned from a farce to a tragedy in the course of Twain's writing...
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This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...
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Cabbages and Kings (1904) is a novel by American writer O. Henry. Inspired by his experiences as a fugitive in Honduras, the interconnected stories that make up Cabbages and Kings-the title refers to a line from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass-address themes of revolution, imperialism, exploitation, and greed. The novel is significant not only for launching O. Henry's career as a successful professional writer, but for coining the term "banana...
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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,...
11) Middlemarch
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English
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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...
13) My Ántonia
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Orphaned as a teenager, Jim Burden comes to live with his stern grandparents on their isolated farm. His pain and loneliness ease when he meets the beautiful Antonia, the high spirited daugher of neighboring immigrant farmers. Antonia's lust for life in her new country endears the young woman to Jim, but not his grandparents, who want bigger and better things for their grandson.
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A masterpiece of the English Puritan tradition, The Pilgrim’s Progress is rich in its imaginative power and its vivid and heartfelt language. It recounts the story of Christian, who appears to the author in a dream, and his journey to Heaven through the trials and tribulations of life. He meets many like-minded pilgrims on his way, such as Faithful and Hopeful, but before they attain their goal they encounter the Giant Despair and the River of...
15) The Decameron
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This tale of medieval Italian life details how ten young Florentines retreat to the countryside to escape the plague-infested city and entertain themselves by telling stories.
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The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. A consummate prankster with a quick wit, Tom Sawyer dreams of a bigger fate than simply being a "rich boy." Yet through the novel's humorous escapades-from the famous episode of the whitewashed fence to the trial of Injun Joe-Mark Twain explores the deeper themes of the adult world, one of dishonesty and superstition, murder and revenge,...
18) Of mice and men
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An intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and shared dream that make an individual's existence meaningful.
19) Anna Karenina
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Story of passion and family conflict set in 19th century upper-class Russia, in which the wife of an aristocrat falls in love with a dashing cavalry officer. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. States Leo Tolstoy in his great modern novel of an adulterous affair set against the backdrop of Moscow and St. Petersburg high society in the later half of the nineteenth century. A sophisticated woman who is respectably...
20) Ethan Frome
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One of literature's keenest social critics, Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton weaves a tragic small-town tale of epic proportions in this masterful novella. Physically disfigured and trapped in a loveless marriage to a sickly older woman, Ethan Frome is a broken man. He lives a desolate, impoverished life in the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, bound by an unassailable sense of duty. But long ago, Ethan dreamed of something beyond his...