Catalog Search Results
1) Bleak House
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Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
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Begun as an ambitious project by the versatile English courtier, diplomat, philosopher, and author Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century, The Canterbury Tales follows a group of people on their pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Saint Thomas Becket. The Prologue introduces all of the pilgrims in great detail, and through these descriptions Chaucer provides the entire spectrum of social classes and professions of his time. When the group stops at an inn...
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"Little Dorrit", originally serialized between 1855 and 1857, satirizes the shortcomings of the government and society of the period. This popular novel introduces a rich and memorable array of characters trying to navigate an often hostile capital symbolised by the Marshalsea gaol, where Dickens' own father had been imprisoned. This is a scathing social and political satire within a heart-warming story of love and devotion...Based on the world-famous...
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This grand old childhood classic relates a small-town boy's pranks and escapades with humor and wisdom that appeal to readers of every age. In addition to his everyday stunts (searching for buried treasure, trying to impress the adored Becky Thatcher), Tom experiences a dramatic turn of events when he witnesses a murder, runs away, and returns to attend his own funeral and testify in court.
6) Daisy Miller
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Classic novella about a captivating young American, Daisy Miller, whose behavior causes conflicting feelings in the mind of would-be suitor, Winterbourne.
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1220L
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Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother,...
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A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.
9) Macbeth
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One night on the heath, the brave and respected general Macbeth encounters three witches who foretell that he will become king of Scotland. At first skeptical, he’s urged on by the ruthless, single-minded ambitions of Lady Macbeth, who suffers none of her husband’s doubt. But seeing the prophecy through to the bloody end leads them both spiralling into paranoia, tyranny, madness, and murder. This shocking tragedy - a violent caution to those...
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Story of Egdon Heath and Eustacia Vye in late nineteenth century Wessex, England. Guy Fawkes night, Diggory Venn, a reddleman dyed red from his trade, transports a young woman, Thomasin Yeobright, to her aunt's house on Egdon Heath. Despite Venn's love for the sweet-natured Thomasin, he agrees to secure the man of her choice, the fickle innkeeper Damon Wildeve, who delayed his marriage to Thomasin earlier that day. Wildeve is still enchanted by the...
11) The awakening
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While spending the summer in a resort on Grand Isle with her husband and children, Edna Pontellier begins a process of self-discovery, which only intensifies after she meets the charming Robert Lebrun. Yet, when Robert departs for Mexico and the summer holiday ends, Edna's newfound sense of independence leads her to isolate herself from New Orleans society and to reject her former lifestyle. Moving into a home of her own and devoting more time to...
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Lexile measure
620L
Appears on these lists
Description
One of the most popular and exciting adventure stories is now being reissued with vibrant, realistic paintings by a highly acclaimed artist and an introduction by award-winning author, Gary Paulsen. First published in 1903, this striking reissue is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. Black-and-white illustrations.
14) The jungle
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1906 best-seller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page. Published privately by Sinclair in 1906 after commercial...
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"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness ..." The most famous and possibly the most popular of Dickens's novels, A Tale of Two Cities shows a master of dramatic narrative extracting gold from the ore of history. If the bloody tableau of the French Revolution were...
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Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts...
19) O pioneers!
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The first of Cather's renowned prairie novels--a story that expresses Cather's conviction that "the history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman". When Alexandra Bergson takes over the family farm after her father's death, she falls under the spell of the rich, forbidding Nebraska prairie.
20) Sons and lovers
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The Morel family, who live on the Nottinghamshire coalfields, are beset with conflict. Gertrude has become disillusioned with her inarticulate working-class husband and devotes her energies to her sons. Son Paul falls in love and seeks to escape his family ties.
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