Discusses the rise to power of Julien Sorel who uses his love affairs to serve his ambitions. He tries to murder his first mistress when she betrays him to her successor.

A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.

Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

For Coleridge the plot of Tom Jones was, along with that of Oedipus The King, the most perfect ever constructed. Fielding used all his art and all the craft he had amassed as a successful playwright for the eighteenth-century London stage to tell this hugely entertaining story of a foundling and how he arrives, through sexual misadventures and elaborate disasters, to claim his legitimacy, his fortune, and his true love. Describes the foundling, Tom,...

The author's first novel, comprising a sequence of loosely related adventures of the Pickwickians as they explore the nooks and crannies and encounter the characters of early nineteenth century England.

"In his first novel in ten years, Ernest Gaines, the highly acclaimed author of the best-selling The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brings us a wrenching story of death and identity in a small Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s." "A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white store owner. Jefferson, the only survivor, is accused...

Bigger, a young black man in Chicago, kills his first victim in a moment of panic. He then goes on to kill again. The book describes the feelings of freedom and identity Bigger gains from these acts.

Four bumbling members of a nineteenth-century London social club, known as the legendary Pickwick Club, journey to places outside the city and become involved in romantic foibles, danger, and a few legal scrapes.

Recounts the story of Martin Eden, a young seaman struggling to obtain social and intellectual recognition as a writer.

Weaves three stories about 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement park. Eddie meets 5 individuals in heaven each with a story to share, a secret to reveal and a lesson. They have profound meanings for Eddie on the real purpose of his life.