"Notes on the State of Virginia" is the only full-length book by Thomas Jefferson published during his lifetime. Jefferson first published the book anonymously in a private and limited-edition printing in Paris in 1785 while he was serving as a trade representative for the new American government. "Notes on the State of Virginia" was later made available to the general public in a 1787 printing in London by John Stockdale. Jefferson's detailed description...

Aided by the goddess Athena, warrior-king Odysseus braves the terrors and temptations of a fantastic array of creatures as his return from the Trojan War becomes a decade-long quest to reach his homeland and his faithful wife, Penelope.

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.

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America - an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peace-time optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their own time in a work which endures...

Northanger Abbey was among the last of Jane Austen's novels to be published, in 1818, but the first to be written, mostly in 1798-9. Centred on the loves and friendships of Catherine Morland, an endearing young girl extremely fond of novel-reading, it remains the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's novels. During an eventful season in Bath, Catherine meets the sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney who invite her to stay at their father's...

"The classic handbook of statecraft written by an Italian nobleman recommends guile and craftiness to attain and maintain political power." --

Forced by her parents' ambitions among her wealthy D'Urberville cousins, Tess Durbeyfield attracts the unscrupulous Alec. Seduced and discarded, she finds work as a milkmaid, and her steadfast integrity is finally rewarded by the love of Angel Clare. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty while passionately...

Mansfield's finest work, and the last collection of her stories to be published during her lifetime. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 35 in 1923.