A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale...

In this unflaggingly suspenseful story of aspirations and moral redemption, humble, orphaned Pip, a ward of his short-tempered older sister and her husband, Joe, is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. And, indeed, it seems as though that dream is destined to come to pass — because one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In telling...

The Patchwork Girl of Oz is the story of Ojo's quest to find the exotic, and often dangerous, ingredients necessary to make a potion that will unpetrify his beloved Unk Nunkie. During his adventures he is present when the Patchwork Girl is brought to life by Dr. Pipt's wife. His interference in the process helps make Scraps, the Patchword Girl, into something far more interesting than the dull house servant that Mrs. Pipt had wanted. Instead of becoming...

Book Two in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known—and feared—as the man christened Muad’Dib. As Emperor of the known universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremen, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he...

A reader favorite from the Queen of Regency Romance, The Grand Sophy is an utterly hilarious and completely endearing story of a charming young heroine and the outrageous lengths she goes to solve everyone else's problems, and the surprises in store for everyone!

When Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on diplomatic business, he parks his only daughter, Sophy, with his sister in Berkeley Square. Forward,

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A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with both good and bad masters.

Les Miserables is the great epic masterpiece of the mid-nineteenth century. Begun in 1845, the year Louis Philippe conferred a peerage and a lifetime seat in the Senate upon Victor Hugo, it was completed when the author was living in exile in the Channel Islands. Les Miserables is a product as well as a document of the political, social, and religious upheaval that followed the Napoleonic Wars and Europe's great democratic revolutions....

Margaret's safe existence is turned upside down when she has to move to the grim northern town of Milton. Not only does she have her eyes opened by the poverty and hardship she encounters there, but she is thrown into confusion by stern factory owner John Thornton - whose treatment of his workers brings them into fierce opposition.
As men and women, workers and masters come into violent conflict, it seems opposites can never meet. But do John

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The old man, whose name is Santiago, is a fisherman who lives alone near Havana. Incredibly poor, he sleeps in a shack and sets out each day on a small skiff to try to catch himself some fish to eat or sell. For awhile, the boy, named Manolin, accompanied the old man each day, to learn from him and assist him. Unfortunately, the old man went weeks without catching anything, so the boy's parents made him stop accompanying the old man. When the story

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In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion a phonetician believes the power of speech is such that he can introduce a Cockney flower girl to polite society after careful language and etiquette training, and no one will discern her true roots. The professor and the flower girl grown close, but after her successful debut she rejects the professor and his overbearing ways for a poor gentleman.

The most famous adaptation of the play is the 1964

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