A young man returns to London from a monastery to become a godfather, and gets a second chance at love. Robin has not gone outside for five years. When he first arrived at the remote island monastery, he had attacks so violent that the brothers thought he might do himself harm, so his room was stripped of all but the bed. Robin seemed to like it that way. But now, after years of penance for some unspoken sin, he is pale, drawn, and emotionally fragile-nothing...

A self-reliant family in New York City finds their relationships altered when a wealthy and grateful stranger enters their life.

Controversial upon publication in 1946, Memoirs of Hecate County remained banned for more than a decade before being reissued. A favorite among his own books, Edmund Wilson's erotic and devestating portrait of the upper middle class still holds up today as a corrosive indictment of the adultery and intellectual posturing that lie at the heart of suburban America.

"Paul Walden is not an alpha lobster, the hypermasculine crustacean king who intimidates the other male lobsters, beds all the lady lobsters, and "wins" at life. At least not according to the ego-bursting feedback he's given in his freshman seminar. But Paul finds a funny, faithful friend in Roby Smalls, and maybe -- oh god, please -- he's beginning to catch the interest of smart, beautiful Natalia Gutierrez. Cruising through high school as a sauced-out,...

Madame Bovary is the story of a beautiful young woman who marries a luckless and loutish country doctor. She attempts to escape the narrow confines of her life through a series of passionate affairs, hoping to find in other men the romantic ideal she has always dreamed about. Her recklessness comes back to haunt her, however, and the strong-willed and independent Emma finds herself in a desperate fight for existence.