"As one of the many installments in Jules Verne's Voyage Extraordinaire series, Journey to the Center of the Earth promises high stakes and thrilling adventure. When Professor Otto Lidenbrock bought an ancient runic manuscript, which chronicles the lives of Norwegian Kings, he did not expect to learn of anything but the history of Icelandic leaders. However, upon further inspection, Lidenbrock and his nephew, Axel, find that the manuscript includes...
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Down the rabbit hole away little Alice goes. Follow her at your own peril, but beware of the world you are about to enter. One with a decapitation-crazed queen, an unintelligible duchess, a sleepy dormouse, a chronically late rabbit, a witty Cheshire cat, a blue hookah-smoking caterpillar, a Hatter and a March Hare hosting a mad tea party, and a caucus race so bewildering that the best way to explain it is just to...
In a gripping and sensational work of classic Gothic fiction we discover the infamous Count Dracula. When English lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to an obscure town called Transylvania, the goal of his visit was most certainly not to do business with a vampire. As he makes his way through the village square, Harker is overcome with an eerie sensation that the Count is not who he says he is. Strewn with various charms and trinkets thrown at him from...
"The culmination of Jane Austen's genius, a sparkling comedy of love and marriage--now in a stunning 200th-anniversary Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. Beautiful, clever, rich-- and single-- Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts...
"Few works by comic book artists have earned the universal acclaim and reverence that Bernie Wrightson's illustrated version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein was met with upon its original release in 1983. A generation later, this magnificent pairing of art and literature is still considered to be one of the greatest achievements made by any artist in the field. This book includes the complete text of the original groundbreaking novel,...
The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft -- but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The wicked Prince John plots to usurp England's...
In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret. Charlotte Bronte's novel about the passionate love between Jane Eyre, a young girl alone in the world, and the rich, brilliant, domineering Rochester has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic, ever since...
After the death of his father, the seventeen-year-old orphan David Balfour discovers the existence of an uncle, and sets off in search of him. His uncle Ebenezer is far from welcoming, however, and David, after barely escaping with his life, finds himself kidnapped and bound for America, where he is to be sold into slavery. Yet when the hot-headed Jacobite rebel Alan Breck Stewart comes on board, David soon finds himself thrust into a perilous adventure,...
A New York lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with Antonia, a courageous immigrant woman. Infused with a gracious passion for the land, My Antonia embraces its uncommon subject- - the hardscrabble life of the pioneer woman on the prairie-- with poetic certitude, rendering a deeply moving portrait of an entire community. Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life...
Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman, and reformer. He was called both ₁The Sage of Anacostia₂ and ₁The Lion of Anacostia₂ and is one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history. He was born into slavery but secretly taught himself to read and write; a crime punishable by death. Because of this, we now possess what may be the most eloquent...
"Published posthumously in 1818, this was Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Anne Elliot, an intelligent and pretty young woman, was persuaded by a trusted friend to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth years earlier because of his lack of fortune. Anne always regretted that decision and now, years later, at age 27, Wentworth comes back into her life a prosperous man. Wentworth becomes involved with another and Anne herself has a suitor,...
Pride and Prejudice is a story set in the English countryside outside of London during the early 19th century which centers on the life of Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five sisters who are all unmarried. When a wealthy and sociable young gentleman, Charles Bingley, rents the nearby manor of Netherfield Park the opportunity to find husbands presents itself. While attending a ball the Bennets meet Charles Bingley and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy...
A half-century after its initial publication in 1968, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains the essential portrait of America--and California in particular--during the sixties. The remarkable debut essay collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, it explores such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes; growing up in California; the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room; and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury,...
A story of Americans on the French Riviera in the 1930s is a portrait of psychological disintegration as a wealthy couple supports friends and hangers-on financially and emotionally at the cost of their own stability.
Huckleberry Finn, the best friend of Tom Sawyer, is a young boy in the 1840s, who runs away from home, and floats down the Mississippi River. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective). It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi...
"Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been enjoyed by generations of readers across the world since its publication in 1876. With its humorous glimpses into life in nineteenth-century, small-town America, this novel has provided unique social commentary that continues to be discussed in classrooms today. Tom Sawyer, a mischievous boy growing up in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, is constantly getting in and out of...
Dutiful Newland Archer, an eligible young man from New York high society, is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a suitable match from a good family, when May's cousin, the beautiful and exotic Countess Ellen Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of perceived scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her worldliness, disregard for society's...
"A stunning deluxe edition for the fortieth anniversary of an unparalleled cornerstone of feminist literature, featuring the original cover art and a short, unpublished essay penned in 1986 by Margaret Atwood, "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (The New York Times). In Margaret Atwood's dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of...