"A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor-these form a series of events that change the orphan Pip's life forever, as he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens's haunting novel depicts Pip's education and development...

"A Tale of Two Cities is one of the most thrilling narratives in the whole range of the literature of fiction. Considered apart from all the other works of Dickens, it would entitle him to a very high rank among romancers. The total effect of the novel, both in construction and content, is remarkably strong. A careful re-reading will convince one that no event is superfluous, that every scene pictured, every character introduced, every mysterious,...

Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined...

In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo.

The slow but inevitable moral degeneration of a weak woman. Describes the patient rendering of the squalor and narrowness of provincial life and of its effect on the woman's mind.