The autobiography of a black American, recounting his early years and the harrowing experiences he encountered drifting from Natchez to Chicago to Brooklyn.

"A towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society-and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs...

Regarded as one of Bennett's finest The Old Wives' Tale (1908) was inspired by a chance encounter in a Parisian restaurant. It follows the lives of two very different French sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, from their youth, through their work in their mother's draper's shop, to old age. The 200,000-word masterpiece was written by hand in ten months during a period in which Bennett suffered from insomnia.

"With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this edition of the classic national bestseller chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools--with its emphasis on great men in high places-- to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from...

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", but that ain't no matter.' So begins, in characteristic fashion, one of the greatest American novels. Narrated by a poor, illiterate white boy living in America's deep South before the Civil War, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of Huck's escape from his brutal father and the relationship that grows between him and Jim, the slave who is...

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,...

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths...

Jane Eyre (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published on 16 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character, including her growth to adulthood,...

Often satirical chronicle following the fortunes of the Wapshot family of St. Botolphs, a once lively New England seaport declining into respectability. Old Captain Leander Wapshop is in love with his ferryboat, which he loses, regains, and loses again. His sons, Coverly and Moses, stand to inherit a fortune from their eccentric Aunt Honora if they marry and produce male heirs. They pursue their fortunes in New York and Washington and become involved...

Widely read for his eloquence and wit, widely taught for his superb clarity, White remains one of the greatest essayists of this century.