"In late eighteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of three of her four sisters." --

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

"For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Emma Woodhouse imagines that she dominates those around her in the small town of Highbury, but her inept matchmaking creates problems for herself and others.

The orphaned Pip is serving as a blacksmith's apprentice when an unknown benefactor supplies the means for him to be educated in London as a gentleman of "great expectations."

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.

Newland Archer, a young lawyer in upper-crust 1870's New York, becomes a victim of social expectations and restrictions when he becomes infatuated with his docile fiancee's nonconformist cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska.

"A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...

"A portrait of American manners and morals at the turn of the century offers the saga of Lily Bart, a beautiful heroine who lacks one requirement for marrying well in New York society--her own money." --

An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a 10 year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time. "Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is one of her greatest literary achievements and among the most influential novels of the twentieth century. The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement...