A club-footed orphan struggles for independence, his intellectual development and his attempt to become an artist.

Recounts the troubled romance of Rosa Bud and Edwin Drood, whose disappearance reveals the jealousy of Drood's uncle John Jasper, who coveted Rosa and may have killed Drood.

Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-ship sailing from an eastern port. His life is ruined: an isolated scandal has assumed horrifying proportions. But, then he is befriended by an older man named Marlow who helps to establish him in exotic Patusan, a remote Malay settlement where his courage is put to the test once more.

Consisting of three novels and two interludes, "The Forsyte Saga" chronicles several generations of an upper middle class British family at the beginning of the twentieth century. Full of social satire, "The Man of Property" commences this fictional history and introduces the first generation of Forsytes, prominently featuring Soames and his wife Irene. Keenly aware of their nouveau riche standing and highly desirous of material possessions, Soames...

Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religious-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally goes abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist.

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.

Little Nell and her grandfather are left destitute when the evil Quilp seizes their Old Curiosity Shop in payment for their overdue debts.

This novel tracks the process by which an ordinary young man is capable of committing a ruthless murder, and the further process by which social and political forces come into play after his arrest. In Clyde Griffiths, the impoverished, restless offspring of a family of street preachers, we see a portrait of a man whose circumstances and dreams of self-betterment conspire to pull him toward an act of unforgivable violence.

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...

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide & family rivalry that embodies the moral & spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime & Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, & profligacy. Significantly,...