The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, is an 1896 novella and early example of the regionalism genre with its sketches of the fictional fishing village of Dunnet Landing in Maine. The narrator is a woman from Boston who returns to the small coastal town after a brief earlier visit, in order to finish writing her book. She rents an empty schoolhouse with a panoramic view of Dunnet Landing, which serves as a focus of narrative consciousness....

The enduring love story and satirical comedy by a master of the English novel. A young vicar's ambition drives him into a costly bargain in this classic tale from one of the Victorian era's finest novelists. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, the fourth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire brilliantly examines the intersection of romance and social class. Mark Robarts is a young, ambitious vicar from the village of Framley,...

"It's now known as New York City's Roosevelt Island. Originally called Blackwell's Island, it housed a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse and almshouse in the 19th century. This book re-creates what daily life was like on the island, what politics shaped it, and what constituted therapy and charity in the nineteenth century."--

"From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls. Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have:...

"A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor-these form a series of events that change the orphan Pip's life forever, as he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens's haunting novel depicts Pip's education and development...

Orphaned at a young age, Lady Katherine Ashton and her brother have spent most of their lives on the high seas, seeking to restore their family fortune through somewhat dubious means. After that kind of adventure, Kate knows she won't ever be accepted as a proper society lady. To the annoyingly clever, temptingly handsome, and altogether troublesome Earl of Wynbrook, society ladies are a dead bore. Kate, on the other hand, is scandalous, alluring,...

An exciting and touching tale of an Irish orphan-boy who has lived free in the streets of Lahore before setting out, with a Tibetan Lama, on a double quest. This eventually leads to enrollment in the Indian Secret Service and a thrilling climax in the Himalayas.

An illustrated adaptation of Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield," the story of a young boy in nineteenth-century London who runs away from an unhappy home, finds employment in a wine factory, and becomes acquainted with a wide variety of characters in the city streets.

Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of the British Regency. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London. Pride and Prejudice tells the story...

Selected stories from Kipling's two "Jungle Books" chronicle the adventures of Mowgli, the boy reared by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle. Also includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."