"Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832?1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters?Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March?detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Little Women was an immediate commercial and...

Tess of the dUrbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

At twenty-­seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant...

Basil (1852) is a novel by Wilkie Collins. Written in the aftermath of Antonina (1850), his successful debut, Basil finds the author honing the trademark sense of mystery and psychological unease that would make him a household name around the world. Recognized as an important Victorian novelist and pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins was a writer with a gift for thoughtful entertainment, stories written for a popular audience that continue...

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo.

In Jane Austen's third published novel after Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, young Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram at Mansfield Park. Raised among her four cousins, Fanny, the poor relation, often goes unobserved in the household, making her a unique observer of the ethics, morals, attitudes and behavior of English society.

When a wealthy, elderly woman is poisoned, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot seeks the murderer among a large group of friends and relatives.

Considered the first true detective story Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1868) is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. Originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round, it introduced many hallmarks of detective fiction, including an English country house setting, bungling local policemen, and a large number of false suspects. In it, Rachel Verinder, a young English woman, inherits a large Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday...

Six weeks of shopping, taking tea with the most fashionable ladies and dancing with the most handsome gentlemen is what awaits young Catherine Morland when she makes her entree into the leisure society at Bath. But, oh, the thrill of an unexpected invitation from the mysterious Tilney family to stay at their home-a veritable abbey.

The Return of the Soldier recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and sheds light on their fraught relationships. The successful treatment of the traumatised returned soldier is a fundamental element of The Return of the Soldier. Unlike...