Regarded by Charles Dickens as his best novel upon publication, "Martin Chuzzlewit" relates a tale of familial selfishness and eventual moral redemption. First published serially from 1842 to 1844, it is the story of young Martin Chuzzlewit, who has been raised by his grandfather. He has fallen in love with his grandfather's ward and caretaker, the young orphan Mary Graham. Martin's grandfather does not approve and young Martin alienates himself from...

Sadie's life is calm and complete. She is a mother, a good friend, and the robust survivor of a marriage she deliberately left behind. She has come to believe that she has everything she wants and deserves. But now her father is dying-the elusive man who spent his life creating exquisite perfumes for other women is slipping away from her, and Sadie must try to make her peace with him before it's too late.

Thérèse Raquin (1867) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. Initially serialized in L'Artiste, a popular French literary magazine, Thérèse Raquin, Zola's third novel, earned the author widespread fame and critical condemnation for its scandalous content and unsparing vision of human sexuality and violence. Thérèse Raquin effectively launched Zola's career as a leading practitioner of literary naturalism, and has since been adapted countless...

Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...

Considered Maupassant's greatest novel, "Pierre and Jean" is vivid, satirical, and emotionally profound. The Roland brothers, Pierre and Jean, have always been driven by competition. When a lawyer arrives at the house of their parents to declare that an old family friend has bestowed his entire fortune to Jean, the envy hastily becomes an ardent force for Pierre. Roaming the seaport of Le Havre alone, Pierre contemplates, desperate to come to terms...

One of the most influential authors of the late nineteenth century, and a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, William Dean Howells wrote more than fifty novels, as well as plays, memoirs, and poetry collections. Opposed to the sentimentalism, contrived heroism, and theatrical endings in fiction, he developed a literary style based on unvarnished realism. This unique genre is brilliantly depicted in A Modern Instance, a novel...

Small-town rivals engage in a ruthless battle of wits in the first novel of this beloved satirical series about the Edwardian upper class. The small English village of Riseholme may only have one street, but it contains many paths for the committed social climber. In this this eccentric enclave of the idle rich, Emmeline Lucas-known as Lucia-is the reigning social queen. And together with her husband Peppino and her best friend Georgie, she is determined...

George Flack is the Paris correspondent for an American scandal sheet called The Reverberator. Francie Dosson, a pretty but not always tactful American girl, confides to Flack some gossip about the Proberts, the Frenchified (but originally American) family of her fiancé, Gaston Probert. Predictably, to everybody except Francie, the nasty gossip winds up in The Reverberator, much to the horror of the stuffy Proberts. Francie makes no attempt to hide...

«Ça ne me convenait pas du tout d'être le fruit d'une fille dénuée d'intelligence et d'un gars en rut qui, réunis par le plus pur des hasards, tirent un coup en vitesse, sans amour, sans connivence, sans penser aux consequences, c'est-à-dire moi.» Quand elle découvre, à 37 ans, que sa mère biologique est une simple d'esprit, Rachel Briand espère très fort que l'autre partie de l'équation, son géniteur, est de nature à rétablir l'équilibre...

Sex. Yes. She remembered that. Wasn't that the thing that happened somewhere between the talking-and-going-out-to-dinner bit and the sobbing-and-eating-too-many-biscuits bit? Still, Bella was sure she could handle some -preferably before her as yet unopened packet of condoms reached their expiry date. She must be practically a virgin again by now, all sealed over like pierced ears if you don't wear earrings for too long. But the 'L' word? Uh-huh....