The Cliff

A collection of some of Hawthorne's best short stories. The talew all incorporate scenes and themes from New England history and it demonstrates young Hawthorne's mastery of the genre.

In first century Judaea, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur is betrayed by his childhood friend Messala and sentenced to life as a Roman slave. When, during a pirate attack in the aegean, Ben-Hur saves the life of a galley commander, his fortunes improve and he returns to Galilee a free man. There, his quest for vengeance turns into insurrection, but his life is transformed when he witnesses Christ's baptism by John the Baptist. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,...

Featuring five works of short fiction from the critically acclaimed author, Joseph Conrad, Tales of Unrest is a fascinating exploration of human struggle and philosophy. Karain: A Memory adopts elements of a traditional ghost story, setting an eerie mood as it explores the duality common among colonial and post-colonial people. The Idiots depict a family driven to murder after a couple stains to raise their intellectually disabled children. With the...

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain Charles Dickens - The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time (better known as The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain or simply as The Haunted Man) is a novella by Charles Dickens first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens's Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of Christmas than about the holiday itself, harking back to the first in the series, A Christmas...

Charles Dickens' work The Battle of Life: A Love Story has an English village on the site of a historic battle as the setting. Some characters allude to the war as a metaphor for the struggle for life, hence the title. Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA is an English writer and social commentator. He produced some of the world's most renowned fictional characters and is often regarded as the best author of the Victorian era. His writings achieved unparalleled...

In dark days, men need a clear faith and a well-grounded hope; and as the outcome of these, the calm courage which takes no account of hardships by the way. The times through which we are passing have afforded to many of us a confirmation of our faith. We see that the things we had thought evil are really evil, and we know more definitely than we ever did before the directions in which men must move if a better world is to arise on the ruins of the...

Relates the various activities and adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club.

Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1888) is the first of four of the original Sherlock Holmes novels and introduced the world to the most famous detective duo in literature. From the initial discovery of a corpse in a deserted house in London, to the wild west of the pioneer days of Utah, this is transatlantic crime adventure steeped in mystery, romance and delectable revenge. A Study in Scarlet was initially published in the magazine Beeton's...

An unabridged republication of nineteenth-century essayist Henry David Thoreau's reflections on the natural world, written during a two year period when he lived alone in a cabin on the shores of Walden Pond.

Share with the Robinsons--a minister, his wife, and four sons--as they survive a shipwreck and then adapt to life on an island populated by exotic birds and animals. Through small successes and disappointments, not only does this courageous family survive, but comes to find a happiness that eluded them in their civilized homeland.