Horrified at the thought of caring for talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca, the spinster aunts nevertheless spend seven difficult years raising their niece, rewarding years for all three inhabitants of the little brick house in a small New England town.

"Set against a bleak New England background, this novel tells of Frome, his ailing wife Zeena and her companionn Mattie Silver, superbly delineating the characters of each as they are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle. Burdened by poverty and spiritually dulled by a loveless marriage to an older woman, Frome is emotionally stirred by the arrival of a youthful cousin who is employed as household help. Mattie's presence not only...

The story of Wang Lung, the family he founded, the gods he implored, and, above all, the earth that sustained him, the land that he made to prosper against the ravages of nature and the savage attacks of bandit tribes.

Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.

This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...

A translation of nineteenth-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel in which the four sons of Fyodor Karamazov, a man of immoral character, must contend with a criminal investigation and with their own inner questions about justice and the existence of God after they are involved in their father's murder.

Beautiful Eustacia is torn between two suitors--one who would help her escape her routine life in nineteenth-century rural England, and another who would make their home the Wessex heath where he was raised.

"Twain's firsthand portrait of the steamboat age and the science of riverboat piloting recalls the history of the Mississippi River, from its discovery by Europeans to the writer's own time." *** "Mark Twain's famous account of life on the Mississippi in the old steamboat days and his own experiences as a pilot. Its historical sketches, its frequent passages of vivid description, and its humorous episodes combine to make [this] a masterpiece of the...

A 19th-century woman pursues her romantic dreams through a series of lovers.

In this novel that unites characters from "The Giver" and "Gathering Blue, " Matty, a young member of a utopian community that values honesty, conceals an emerging healing power that he cannot explain or understand.