Unscrupulous financial speculator Ferdinand Lopez, aspiring to marry into respectability and wealth, has society at his feet: well-connected ladies vying with each other to exert influence on his behalf. Even Lady Glencora, the wife of Plantagenet Palliser, prime minister of England, supports the exotic imposter.

Palliser, respectable man of power and inherited wealth, is appalled by the rise of this man who seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

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Returning to Egdon Heath from Paris, Clym Yeobright intends to settle down and improve the lives of his townspeople. But the alluring and mysterious Eustacia Vye has other plans. She believes Clym can provide the cosmopolitan life she craves, if only they return to Paris. When their ideals prove incompatible, desperation breeds tragedy, and lives are changed in ways Clym and Eustacia never could have foretold.

Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe.

Emma Woodhouse imagines that she dominates those around her in the small town of Highbury, but her inept matchmaking creates problems for herself and others.

"The Headless Horseman faces off with Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," a ghost story of enduring popularity that takes place at the time of the American Revolution. "Rip Van Winkle," another traditional favorite from the same historic period, tells the tale of man who fell asleep for 20 years and found his small town in the Catskill Mountains much changed by the time he awakened. Both are included - along with many other tales - in...

In 1872, English gentleman Phileas Fogg has many adventures as he tries to win a bet that he can travel around the world in eighty days.

One of Jane Austen's most profound works, Mansfield Park is a subtle, moving examination of the contrast between superficial charm and true integrity. It tells the story of shy, vulnerable Fanny Price, brought up by rich relations at Mansfield Park with only her cousin Edmund as an ally. When a glamorous couple, Mary Crawford and her brother Henry, arrive from London, their charisma and reckless taste for flirtation dazzle everyone except Fanny, putting...

"O Pioneers! (1913) is the story of Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent and clear-headed young woman whose passionate faith in the Nebraska prairie makes her a wealthy landowner." "Willa Cather's second novel is imbued with the democratic utopianism of Walt Whitman and the serene regionalism of Sarah Orne Jewett, but it is not merely an elegy for the lost glories of America's pioneer past. In its rage for order and efficiency, O pioneers! also...

A young Englishman branded as a coward seeks personal redemption for an act of selfishness.