To relieve the pressure on her impoverished, overburdened family, shy young Fanny Price is sent to live with Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, wealthy relatives who reside at Mansfield Park. Of the Bertrams' own four children, only the younger son, Edmund, shows her any real kindness, and over time Fanny falls in love with her cousin. With Sir Thomas away on overseas business, Mansfield's social circle gains two superficially attractive new members: handsome,...

This is the story of how a Baggins had an adventure and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. Bilbo Baggins enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep to whisk him away on a journey to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificient, a large...

Of all Jane Austen's books, Pride and Prejudice has earned a special place in the hearts of the reading public as her best-loved and most intimately known novel. From its famous opening sentence the story of the Bennet family and of the novel's two protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, told with a wit that its author feared might prove 'rather too light and bright, and sparkling', delights its most familiar readers as thoroughly as it does those who...

Set during the Roaring Twenties, this masterful story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a young man who moves to Long Island and attempts to learn the bond business in New York City after the war. There, he co-mingles on Long Island with his affluent and wealthy socialite cousin Daisy Buchanan, her brute of a husband Tom, and friend Jordan Baker. Nick's new residence sits across the bay from Daisy and Tom's house, and...

The standard hardcover edition of the second volume of The Lord of the Rings includes a large format fold-out map. Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard, Gandalf, in a battle in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force....

Virginia Woolf said of Emily Brontë that her writing could : "make the wind blow and the thunder roar," and so it does in Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and the windswept moors that are the setting of their mythic love are as immediately stirring to the reader of today as they have been for every generation of readers since the novel was first published in 1847. With an introduction by Katherine Frank.

The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath...

This is not the great classic novel but a few little-known episodes that Dickens excerpted from the book for his dramatic public readings. His performances were for adults who knew the book, and it may be that only readers familiar with the novel will understand what's going on. Because it is quite seriously abridged, the story concentrates primarily on the extended family of Mr. Peggotty: his orphaned nephew, Ham; his adopted niece, Little Emily;...

Oliver Twist is born in the harsh confines of a workhouse, his mother expiring in childbirth, his father unknown. After enduring years of brutal treatment, Oliver runs away to London, where he falls in with a band of child pickpockets led by the villainous Fagin. His foray into a life of crime soon lands him into the arms of the law, when Oliver's fortunes finally appear to turn as the robbery victim becomes his benefactor. But Fagin isn't about to...

The Last of the Mohicans is the second and most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales. Set in 1757 during the fierce French and Indian wars, Cooper's classic novel of adventure follows an adroit scout and his companion as they weave through the lush and spectacular wilderness of upstate New York, fighting to save the beautiful daughters of a fort commander from a treacherous Huron renegade. With its death-defying chases and...