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Fearing for the safety of her young child's life, a young slave called Roxy swaps her light-skinned baby with that of her master. Her master's child grows up as a slave, while Roxy's child grows up as a white man called "Tom" who becomes cruel and ends up leading a life crime. The book is a cutting indictment of a society based on racial prejudice and slavery brimming with Twain's characteristic wit and irony. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835—1910),...
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Thomas Hardy's "The Woodlanders" was first published serially in 1887. The tale takes place in the woodland village of Little Hintock and is centers around the romantic dramas of its inhabitants. The story begins with Giles Winterborne, an honest woodsman, who wishes to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. While the two have been informally betrothed to each other since they were young, Grace gains an education through her father's persistent...
66) One man's meat
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The Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and author of Charlotte's Web documents his move from Manhattan to a saltwater farm in New England: "Superb reading." -The New Yorker
Called "a mid-20th–century Thoreau" by Notre Dame Magazine, E. B. White's desire to live a simple life caused him to sell half his worldly goods, give up his job writing the New Yorker's "Notes and Comment" editorial page, and move with his family to a saltwater farm in North...
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"The Light That Failed" is Kipling's first novel, written when he was 26 years old, and is semi-autobiographical; being based upon his own unrequited love for Florence Garrard. Though it was poorly received by critics, the novel has managed to remain in print for over a century. It was also adapted into a play, two silent films as well as a drama film.
68) Persuasion
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"Jane Austen's final novel is her most mature and wickedly satirical. It follows the story of Anne Elliott, a teenager engaged to a seemingly ideal man, Frederick Wentworth. But after being persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that he is too poor to be a suitable match, Anne ends their engagement. When they are reacquainted eight years later, their circumstances are transformed: Frederick is returning triumphantly from the Napoleonic War, while Anne's...
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Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of the most beautiful and most notorious love stories in modern fiction. The summation of D.H. Lawrence's artistic achievement, it sharply illustrates his belief that materialism robbed life of its vitality and purpose...that tenderness and passion were the only weapons that could save man from self-destruction. The Signet Classics edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover is D.H. Lawrence's masterpiece just as he wrote it....
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Carley Burch leaves her high society life in New York City to reclaim her fiancé, Glen Kilbourne, who had moved to the Wild West to recover from World War I. She braves fierce ruffians, brutal elements and lack of civilization. Carley must adapt to the rigorous life of the West. But will she be able to convince Glenn to return to his "home" in New York? Will she be in time before a rival temptress steals Glenn away?
71) The good soldier
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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.
'Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.'
Just before the First World War, two young couples meet in Germany. The seemingly perfect yet brittle relationship of the Ashburnhams soon gives way to unhappiness and betrayal, and respectability to adultery and deception. The Dowells...
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"Based on a series of letters Mark Twain wrote from Europe for San Francisco and New York newspapers as a roving correspondent, The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a caricature of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Mark Twain's fresh and humorous perspective on hallowed European landmarks lacked reverence for the past, and was as mocking about American manners (including his own) as it was about European attitudes. Twain...
73) Oliver Twist
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Adentures of an orphan boy who lives in the squalid surroundings of a nineteenth-century English workhouse until he becomes involved with a gang of thieves.
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Seven year old Sara Crewe learns of the tragic death of her father not long after she is left in the care of Miss Michin, headmistress of a boarding school. Now an orphan and stripped of her family fortune, Sara must survive the emotional trials of loss and the mental anguish of abuse at the hands of her new caretakers.
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The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a proud stranger in his native land. He was a young American Indian named Abel, and he lived in two worlds. One was that of his father, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, the ecstasy of the drug called peyote. The other was the world of the twentieth century, goading him into a compulsive cycle of sexual exploits, dissipation, and disgust. Home from a foreign war,...
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In 1851 French Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are dispatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows-- gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly 40 years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses, and occasionally ecstasy in their wake....
79) The jungle
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A documentary novel portraying industry's conditions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Sinclair's novel prompted public outrage which led President Theodore Roosevelt to demand an official investigation. This eventually led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws.
80) Leviathan
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""During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre." Written during the turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan is an ambitious and highly original work of political philosophy. Claiming that man's essential nature is competitive and selfish, Hobbes formulates the case for a powerful sovereign -- or "Leviathan" -- to enforce peace and the law, substituting security for the...