Bleak House is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience....

Originally published over one hundred years ago, "Roughing It" tells the (almost) true story of Mark Twain's rollicking adventures across the United States. A hilarious account of how the author tried finding wealth in the rocks of Nevada, it was published before his most famous works and shows why he would grow to become one of the most beloved American writers of all time. The story follows many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to...

The Oregon Trail is the gripping account of Francis Parkman's journey west across North America in 1846. After crossing the Allegheny Mountains by coach and continuing by boat and wagon to Westport, Missouri, he set out with three companions on a horseback journey that would ultimately take him over two thousand miles. His detailed description of the journey, set against the vast majesty of the Great Plains, has emerged through the generations as...

Faust, a once-godly scholar, is beginning to suspect that his efforts to learn the secrets of the universe will never be successful. Desperate, frustrated, and suicidal, he makes a deal with Mephistopheles, an agent of the devil. Signed in blood, the contract states that Mephistopheles will obey Faust on Earth, but in return, Faust must serve him in Hell. Faust is unaware that the pact is part of a wager that God and Mephistopheles have made over...

"Set against the tumultuous years of the post Napoleonic era, Dumas's grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantès, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason"--Jacket.

Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the stunted, lecherous and demonic money-lender Daniel Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens's portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant...

Jane Austen's first published novel, sparkling with wit and artistry, captures the inequities of birth, class, and marriage faced by the sisters Dashwood. Published in 1811, Sense and Sensibility has delighted generations of readers with its masterfully crafted portrait of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Forced to leave their home after their father's death, Elinor and Marianne must rely on making good marriages as their means of support....

First published in 1897, Dracula by Bram Stoker has become the standard against which all other vampire stories are compare and the inspiration for countless film and stage adaptations. Indeed, the name "Dracula" has been synonymous with the Undead for at least a century, and the original novels till has the power to chill. Come then to Castle Dracula, hidden in the forbidding peaks of the Carpathian Mountains, where an undying creature of evil casts...

Set in the years leading up to and culminating in Napoleon's disastrous Russian invasion, this novel focuses upon an entire society torn by conflict and change. Here is humanity in all its innocence and corruption, its wisdom and folly.