On a poor farm near Starkfield in western Massachusetts, Ethan Frome struggles to wrest a living from the land, unassisted by his whining and hypochondrialcal wife Zeena. When Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver is left destitute, and only place she can go is Ethan's farm. An embittered and man and an enchanting young woman meeting in such circumstances unleash predictable consequences as passions are aroused between the three protagonists.

Vanity Fair is a story of two heroines---one humble, the other a scheming social climber---who meet in boarding school and embark on markedly different lives. Amid the swirl of London's posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Through it all, Thackeray lampoons the shallow values of his society, reserving the most pointed barbs for the upper crust. What results is a prescient look at the dogged pursuit of wealth and...

A novel based on a 1930s play in which detective Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of a British scientist and the theft of his formula for an atomic explosive. Suspects range from his son, heavily in debt, to an Italian lady spy.

The Golden Bowl comes in the first years of the 20th-century: the publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, decided never to serialise it and published it in New York in December 1904 in two volumes. After just a few months, in February 1905, also Methuen published the novel in London in a one-volume edition. In 1909, a revised edition appeared as volumes 23 and 24 of the New York edition, and James this time also prepared the preface, in which he reflected...

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With Mr. Dashwood's death, his wife and two daughters, Elinor and Marianne, must accustom themselves to genteel poverty. When Marianne meets the man of her dreams, everyone expects a marriage; unaccountably, he rejects her, with devastating effect. It falls to Elinor, the sensible elder sister, to pick up the pieces, while harboring a secret longing of her own. In Sense and Sensibility, the warmth between two very different sisters contrasts with...

Enjoy the classic rising-from-adversity tale of the little boy who only wants more. A favorite among young readers and adults alike, Charles Dickens' second novel, Oliver Twist, was first published in 1838 and has been made into a number of stage, television, and film adaptations, including the 1968 Academy Award-winning film. Oliver Twist tells the tale of the orphan Oliver, who is sent from the miserable conditions of a workhouse to work for an...

The death of a weathy widow is believed to be an accident until her future husband is killed. The police bring in Hercule Poirot to help with the investigation.

The life of a miserly old man is changed forever when he finds and adopts a beautiful little girl.

Hard Times (originally Hard Times—For These Times) was published in 1854, and is the shortest novel Charles Dickens ever published. It’s set in Coketown, a fictional mill-town set in the north of England. One of the major themes of the book is the miserable treatment of workers in the mills, and the resistance to their unionization by the mill owners, typified by

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