When Elizabeth Bennet meets Fitzwilliam Darcy for the first time at a ball, she writes him off as an arrogant and obnoxious man. He not only acts like an insufferable snob, but she also overhears him rejecting the very idea of asking her for a dance! As life pits them against each other again and again, Darcy begins to fall for Elizabeth's wit and intelligence and Elizabeth begins to question her feelings about Darcy. But when Darcy saves her youngest...

What is the value of human relations, the connection between souls? In Silas Marner, George Eliot explores this question in the story of a reclusive weaver in a small English town who learns to trade his love of gold for the love of those around him. Though he started life as a religious man, a heartbreaking betrayal drove Silas Marner to become a recluse whose only companions were his gold coins. But one day, his gold is stolen and a golden-haired...

When an old friend is killed, the senior partner at the law office where Benjamin Brooker works isn't satisfied with Bow Street's efforts. Benjamin agrees to investigate, and evidence takes him to Belle Island, a remote island on the Thames. Soon he finds himself falling for the main suspect-- a woman who claims not to have left the island in ten years. Isabelle Wilder leads a productive life, but is trapped on the island by fear. The new of her trustee's...

When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves his only daughter Sophy with his sister in Berkeley Square. Newly arrived from her tour of the Continent, Sophy discovers that her aunt's family is in desperate need of her talent for setting everything right: her uncle is of no use at all, the ruthlessly handsome cousin Charles has tyrannical tendencies that are being aggravated by his grim bluestocking...

Since her mother died when she was born Sara and her father became very close. Sara has to go away to an all girl boarding school in Britian, because her father has to fight in the war. One day a messenger comes and tells her that her father is dead. Since Sara will lose all the money her father has she is forced to be a maid with the other maid who is black named Becky just so she can have a place to live. She finds out that her father is not dead,...

"Nothing so coarsely indecent as the whole history of Jude in his relations with his wife Arabella has ever been put in English print," asserted M. O. W. Oliphant, the Scottish humorist. Hardy's "Jude the Obscure--the ill-received novel that was to be his last--is a strikingly modern portrait of provincial, workaday life, frank sexuality, and the desire to transcend the mire of prosaic living. Amy M. King is Assistant Professor of Literature at the...

Darbury, England, 1814. Amelia Barrett, heiress to an estate nestled in the English moors, defies family expectations and promises to raise her dying friend's baby. She'll risk everything to keep her word -- even to the point of proposing to Graham, the child's father -- a sea captain she's never met.

Ten years ago, Perry fled her thrall contract to find sactuary among the Nighthawks. In that time, she's become a respected woman of the Guard, and she's wanted Garrett Reed for as long as she can remember. But when a new case takes a chillingly familiar turn, Perry finds herself once again in the path of a madman ... only this time, there's nowhere left to run.

This book is a satire of early 19th century British society. A bewitching beauty who bends men to her will using charm, sex, and guile. An awkward man who remains loyal to his friends, even when those friends don't deserve his affection. A mother who cannot get over the loss of her husband and devotes her life to her child. Though written in 1847-48, William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair is peopled by types who remain familiar today. The novel's...

An abandoned orphan Gypsy boy Heathcliff is taken in by a well-to-do 19th century English family, the Earnshaws on the isolated moors. He becomes their stable boy and falls in love with the family's spoiled young daughter Catherine Earnshaw, his childhood friend. The beautiful Cathy is desperately in love with Heathcliff, but because of his low birth begins seeing a wealthy neighbor's son. Heathcliff leaves during a misunderstanding and with driving...