The Puritans thought Hester Prynne's crime was unforgiveable. She was convicted, imprisoned -- and then forced to wear, forever, a public reminder of her sin. The Scarlet Letter. The Letter was unending punishment: it set Hester apart from society, it tormented her days and haunted her soul. But the Letter haunted others, as well. Its mystery turned Roger Chillingworth from a gentle healer into a man driven by revenge. Its meaning burned into Rev....

As fledgling English lawyer Jonathan Harker treks into the Carpathian Mountains to complete a real estate transaction, frightened peasants warn him of horrible dangers that await him. Harker, terrified by eerie events along the way, finally meets his client, Count Dracula, a tall, gaunt old man with a surprisingly powerful handshake. Harker soon realises that he is a prisoner in Draculas sumptuously furnished castle a castle strangely devoid of mirrors....

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...

Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her. Anne (with an 'e' of course) starts out as a mistake. The elderly Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had planned on adopting a boy to help Matthew with the chores on their Prince Edward Island farm. What are they to do with the red-haired, high-spirited...

"This is the story of 17-year-old Anne Shirley that revolves around her life-- her dreams, poetic and romantic ideas and ideals-- her transition as a woman and a school teacher, with high ideals and principles, and a fertile imagination. Avonlea is a picturesque village, which comes alive with interesting characters--Anne, Marilla, Diana, Jane, Gilbert Blythe, Mrs. Lynde, Mr. Harrison, the Copp sisters, Stephen Irving, Miss Lavendar, among others....

Classic fiction. On the grounds of Misselthwaite, her Uncle Archibald's estate near the Yorkshire moors, nine-year-old Mary Lennox finds a walled-in garden that has been locked securely for years. With the help of Dickon Sowerby, a young local boy who can charm animals, Mary cultivates the garden, an experiences that both improves her health and raises her spirits. Ultimately, the secret garden proves beneficial not only to to Mary, but to her sickly...

A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical and amusing characters. Alice has two adventures: first she follows a rabbit into a curious world where she meets the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts. In Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (written 1870; orig. U.S. pub. 1899; St. Martin, 1977; Knopf, 1986; Schocken, 1987; Morrow, 1993), she steps through a mirror into a backward world. Davy and the Goblin,...

During an unnamed battle, 18-year-old private Henry Fleming survives what he considers to be a lost cause by escaping into a nearby wood, deserting his battalion. He finds a group of injured men in which one of the group, the "Tattered Soldier", asks Henry, who's often referred to as "The Youth", where he's wounded. Henry, embarrassed that he's whole, wanders thru the forest. He ultimately decides that running was the best thing, & that he's a small...

Charles Bovary, an unremarkable man who becomes a country doctor in the north of France. During one of his rounds he falls under the spell of Emma Rouault, the beautiful daughter of one of his patients. When Bovary's wife unexpectedly passes away, he marries Emma, whose expectation of life becomes increasingly unfulfilled. After the birth of her child, she spins into a series of uncontrollable urges and bad choices that leads to her tragic downfall....

A story of black and white in the American South with Berenice Sadie Brown, a black cook who mothers the motherless Frankie Addams, a lonely over-imaginative Georgia girl.