Nadia May
Author
Language
English
Description
The four women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other--and the castle of their dreams--through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don't anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy.
2) Silas Marner
Author
Language
English
Description
Disappointed in friendship and love, and embittered by a false accusation, weaver Silas Marner retreats from the world with his loom, but soon finds his monastic existence forever changed by the arrival of an orphaned girl, whom he takes in and raises as his own daughter.
Author
Language
English
Description
“A perfect book”—and basis for the Maggie Smith film—about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune).
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie...
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie...
4) Howards End
Author
Language
English
Description
"A wealthy family bound by the rules of tradition and property, two independent, cultured sisters, and a young man living on the edge of poverty." --
Author
Language
English
Description
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal ("A deliciously perverse, laugh-out-loud-funny novel." —Vogue) is a major motion picture from Fox Searchlight starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench
Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St. George's, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba
7) Last ditch
Author
Language
English
Description
On a beautiful island off the coast of France, Ricky Alleyn finds inspiration for a novel in the death of an equestrienne who rode as recklessly as she lived.
Author
Language
English
Description
A model is murdered in this “first-rate” detective story by the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master (Kirkus Reviews).
On a ship traveling back to England, Miss Agatha Troy finds Inspector Roderick Alleyn tedious and dull; he thinks she’s a bohemian cliché. They may be destined for romance, but there’s a murder in the way: No sooner has Alleyn settled in to his mother’s house, eager for a...
On a ship traveling back to England, Miss Agatha Troy finds Inspector Roderick Alleyn tedious and dull; he thinks she’s a bohemian cliché. They may be destined for romance, but there’s a murder in the way: No sooner has Alleyn settled in to his mother’s house, eager for a...
Author
Language
English
Description
At the winter solstice, South Mardian's swordsmen weave their blades in an ancient ritual dance. But for one of them, the excitement proves too heady, and his decapitation turns the fertility rite into a pageant of death. Now Inspector Roderick Alleyn must penetrate not only the mysteries of folklore, but also the secrets and sins of an eccentric group, including a surly blacksmith, a domineering dowager, and a not-so-simple village idiot.
11) Middlemarch
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building of railroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientific approaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behind respectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are played out in the...
12) Persuasion
Author
Language
English
Description
Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend La.
13) Oliver Twist
Author
Language
English
Description
An abridged version of Dicken's story of the orphan forced to practice thievery and live a life of crime in nineteenth-century London. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A.S. Byatt's books shimmer with all the hues of her critically acclaimed talent and imagination. In The Matisse Stories, this Booker Prize-winning author offers three elegant tales that explore the subtle interplays between mind and eye, heart and hand. In the first, Medusa's Ankles, a fashionable woman watches her life take on darker, more ominous shades in the mirror of a beauty salon. In the next, Art Work, an eccentric housekeeper's alarming eye...
17) Jane Eyre
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious,...
Author
Pub. Date
[2008]
Language
English
Formats
Description
Investigating a smuggling ring that is responsible for the thefts of religious antiquities from the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul magistrate Kamil Pasha confronts an adversary who is pursuing a sacred reliquary around which a mysterious sect has grown.
Author
Publisher
Blackstone Audio
Pub. Date
[2009]
Language
English
Description
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and best-selling author Barbara W. Tuchman analyzes the American Revolution in a brilliantly original way, placing the war in the historical context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland. This compellingly written history presents a fresh, new view of the events that led from the first foreign salute to American nationhood in 1776 to the last campaign of the Revolution five...
20) A personal devil
Author
Publisher
Blackstone Audiobooks
Pub. Date
2005.
Language
English
Description
In twelfth-century London, Magdalene la Bâtarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse in Southwark. She is not in the least bit sorry to learn that Bertrild, the unpleasant wife of Master Mainard, is dead. Bertrild was insulting to most people. She made threats, using terrible revelations as a weapon against those who would not bow down to her demanding ways. However, when it seems that Mainard will be charged with Bertrild's murder because no...