With two sons of her own, and twelve rescued orphan boys filling the informal school at Plumfield, Jo March (now Jo Bhaer) couldn't be happier. But despite the warm and affectionate help of the whole March family, boys have a habit of getting into scrapes and there are plenty of troubles and adventures ahead.

The book centers on the character of Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity, whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. Young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he considers to be an abuse of privilege, despite being in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. The novel was highly topical as a case regarding the misapplication of ...

Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Theatre des Varietes. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her day. Nana's hedonistic appetite for luxury and decadent pleasures knows no bounds - until, eventually, it consumes her.

Frankenstein was Mary Shelley's immensely powerful contribution to the ghost stories which she, Percy Shelley, and Byron wrote one wet summer in Switzerland. Its protagonist is a young student of natural philosophy, who learns the secret of imparting life to a creature constructed from relics of the dead, with horrific consequences. Frankenstein confronts some of the most feared innovations of ..

Determined that her baby son Tom shall not share her fate and remain in slavery, Roxy secretly exchanges him with his playmate Chambers, the son of her master. The two boys' lives in the quiet Missouri town of Dawson's Landing remain entwined even though they take very different directions.

This is a new edition of Elizabeth Gaskell's witty and poignant comedy of early-Victorian life in a country town. A lively and up-to-date introduction by Charlotte Mitchell discusses the originality and subtlety of the book's treatment of women's experience.

Set against the backdrop of the 1848 Revolution, this is the story of young lawyer Frederic Moreau's infatuation with the demurely exotic Madame Arnoux. This ironic depiction of uneventful lives in a troubled period of European history is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century.

We could pass anything, anything at all, at speeds which would astonish you . Sue, orphaned at birth, is born among petty thieves - fingersmiths - in London's Borough. From the moment she draws breath, her fate is linked to another orphan, growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.

Presents a mystery built around a presumed crime - the murder of a nephew by his uncle.

Mr Pooter is an office clerk and upright family man in a dull 1880s suburb. His diary is a portrait of the class system and the inherent snobbishness of the suburban middle classes. It sends up contemporary crazes for Aestheticism, spiritualism and bicycling.

Based on letters Twain wrote from Europe to newspapers in San Francisco and New York as a roving correspondent, this book is a burlesque of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-19th century.

Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer arrives to Boston in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer. Olive hopes to win the girl over to the feminist cause, Ransom is attracted to her looks, and a battle for possession of the girl begins.

Disdainful of America's booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods near Walden Pond. Walden, the account of his stay, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance.

1969 Carnegie Medal-winning story in which Christina and Will escape Flambards and make their way to London, their heads full of dreams, but what they encounter is a brand new set of problems.

Set in 1820s Russia, this title follows the fates of three men and three women. It offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein.

Darwin's theory of natural selection is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological inter-relatedness revealing the almost unthinkably complex and mutual inter-dependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment and - by implication - the human world.

Describes life on the Mississippi River, with observations and anecdotes about the culture and society along the river valley. This book includes character sketches, historical facts, information and reminiscences of Twain's boyhood and experiences as a steam-boat pilot.

Set sail for the read of your life ! Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback by Harper Perennial with stunning new jackets.