Nadia May
2) Silas Marner
Author
Language
English
Description
Disappointed in friendship and love, and embittered by a false accusation, weaver Silas Marner retreats from the world with his loom, but soon finds his monastic existence forever changed by the arrival of an orphaned girl, whom he takes in and raises as his own daughter.
Author
Series
A Bantam book volume Q3303
Language
English
Formats
Description
The author presents the fateful quarter-century leading up to the War, concentrating on the social aspects, not the state aspects, of history.
Author
Series
Language
English
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Description
"Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist. The story's unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger...
5) Howard's End
Author
Language
English
Description
Considered by many to be E.M. Forster's greatest novel, Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home-Howards End-to one of the Schlegel sisters, a...
6) Villette
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully...
Author
Language
English
Description
College Sunrise is a somewhat louche and vaguely disreputable finishing school located in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves while he works, somewhat falteringly, on his novel. Into his creative writing class comes seventeen-year-old Chris Wiley, a literary prodigy whose historical novel-in-progress, on Mary Queen of Scots and the murder of her husband Lord Darnley, has already excited...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The Portrait of a Lady is regarded by many as Henry James's finest work, and a lucid tragedy exploring the distance between money and happiness. When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy the freedom that her fortune has opened up and to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Misunderstood Maggie Tulliver is torn. Her rebellious and passionate nature demands expression, while her provincial kin and community expect self-denial. Based closely on the author's own life, Maggie's story explores the conflicts of love and loyalty and the friction between desire and moral responsibility. Written in 1860, The Mill on the Floss was published to instant popularity. An accurate, evocative depiction of English rural life, this compelling...
11) Middlemarch
Author
Language
English
Description
Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and, the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.
12) Persuasion
Author
Language
English
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Description
"Published one year after its author's death in 1818, "Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. On its most basic level, the book is a love story. On another level, it is a deft exploration of human foibles and social flux. Twenty-seven-year-old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a navel officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement...
Author
Language
English
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Description
Dutiful Newland Archer, an eligible young man from New York high society, is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a suitable match from a good family, when May's cousin, the beautiful and exotic Countess Ellen Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of perceived scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her worldliness, disregard for society's...
14) Emma
Author
Series
Language
English
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Description
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich?Emma is also overly confident in her abilities as a matchmaker for the residents of Highbury in Jane Austen?s widely beloved classic novel. Although convinced that she herself will never marry, Emma makes finding the perfect partner for her new friend, Harriet Smith, her most pressing project. It is a well-meaning endeavor that leads both women into a complex tangle of intrigues, misunderstandings, and conflicts...
Author
Language
English
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Description
Two sisters could hardly be more different. Elinor Dashwood, an architecture student, values discretion above all. Her impulsive sister Marianne displays her creativity everywhere as she dreams of going to art school. But when the family finds itself forced out of Norland Park, their beloved home for twenty years, their values are severely put to the test. Can Elinor remain stoic knowing that the man she likes has been ensnared by another girl? Will...
16) Anna Karenina
Author
Language
English
Description
"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...
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Series
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English
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Description
"Jane Eyre is a novel of passion - of anger, defiance, and of overwhelming desire. No novel, before or since, has caught so precisely the complex emotions of childhood, where feelings of powerlessness can mix with rage, and a bitter sense of injustice. From the early scenes, where Jane is locked in the red room, and learns to defy her aunt, through the oppressive regime of Lowood School, we follow the turbulent swell of Jane's feelings. Her psychological...
Author
Series
Novels of Jane Austen volume 2
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"'Pride and Prejudice' has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down. Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges...
Author
Series
Brother Cadfael medieval mysteries volume 13
Language
English
Description
Brother Cadfael investigates the disappearance of Judith Perle, owner of the Shrewsberry cottage his abbey rents for one rose per annum.
20) A personal devil
Author
Series
Magdalene la Batarde mysteries volume 2
Language
English
Formats
Description
In twelfth-century London, Magdalene la Bâtarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse in Southwark. She is not in the least bit sorry to learn that Bertrild, the unpleasant wife of Master Mainard, is dead. Bertrild was insulting to most people. She made threats, using terrible revelations as a weapon against those who would not bow down to her demanding ways. However, when it seems that Mainard will be charged with Bertrild's murder because no...