The self-interested disregard of a dying woman's bequest, an impulsive girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage between an idealist and a materialist — all intersect at a Hertfordshire estate called Howards End. The fate of this beloved country home symbolizes the future of England itself in E. M. Forster's exploration of social, economic, and philosophical trends, as exemplified by three families: the Schlegels, symbolizing...

John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...

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...

The Spanish House is known to locals as an architectural folly, and it is now nearly derelict to boot. When its reclusive owner dies intestate the Spanish House is left to his city-dwelling niece. For the recently-widowed Isabel, the house is a potential lifeline. For her neighbour Matt McCarthy, the house is revenge.

Many critics consider "The Portrait of a Lady" Henry James's finest achievement and Isabel Archer one of the greatest heroines in all literature. An American heiress just arrived in Europe, Isabel is high-spirited and independent. Two eligible suitors, an English aristocrat and an aggressive American, both woo her. She refuses them, but finds herself captivated by the chrarms of Gilbert Osmond, a worthless, tyrannical dilettante. "The Portrait...

"From the author of "The House at Riverton" comes a story of outer and inner journeys as "Nell," abandoned as a child, leaves her adoptive parents in Australia and travels to England to trace her story, to find her real identity--a quest that ultimately leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family."

This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...

"Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed...

Max Skinner is a ruthless, successful English investment broker with no time for life outside of his job. When his uncle dies, Max inherits the chateau and vineyard in the south of France where he grew up, but he then meets a potential rival to the inheritance, a young American who claims to be his illegitimate cousin. His first intention is to sell the vineyard as quickly as possible, but while spending time in Provence, Max "finds his soul when...