In “Madame Bovary”, Charles, an awkward country doctor courts and weds Emma, the beautiful young daughter of a patient. Emma, unsuited to the role of housewife, quickly gets restless and begins to explore her passions. This leads to infidelities which she hides from Charles and, eventually, mounting debts as she turns to merchandise for her happiness. Flaubert’s novel is cited as the first example of literary realism and has been called a “perfect”...

Published in 1850, David Copperfield is Charles Dickens' eighth novel and the one that most closely follows the author's own life. A coming of age story, it describes David's life from childhood with a difficult stepfather, his schooling, his entry into the workforce, his courtship and marriage(s) and his eventual success as an author. Filled with colorful characters like Wilkins Micawber and Betsey Trotwood, and unforgettable villains like Uriah...

The monumental Russian classic reflects the life and times of Russian society during the Napoleonic War.

The story takes place in the summer of 1931, on board a cruise ship bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. The passenger list is long and portentous, and includes a Spanish noblewoman, a drunken German lawyer, an American divorcee, a pair of Mexican Catholic priests, and a host of others. This ship of fools is a crucible of intense experience, out of which everyone emerges forever changed. Rich in incident, passion, and treachery, the novel explores themes...

Chronicles the story of an alienated New Mexico boy who seeks an answer to his questions about life in his relationship with Ultima, a magical healer.

A young boy living in the Florida backwoods is forced to decide the fate of a fawn he has lovingly raised as a pet. Relive the wonder of a childhood favorite that has been capturing the hearts of readers for more than half a century. An instant bestseller when it was released in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize winner has been read and loved by school-age children across the nation for more than fifty years. In this classic story of the Baxter family and...

A poignant tale of childhood and the ties of family, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" will transport the reader to the early 1900s where a little girl named Francie dreamily looks out her window at a tree struggling to reach the sky.

When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl,...

The love between two teenage brothers helps to alleviate the harshness of their usually parentless life as they struggle to grow up.

Decades after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed. On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying....