Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love...

Ulysses draws upon a complex network of symbolic parallels from mythology, history, and literature (including a framework and episodes that echo the Odyssey) to document an ordinary day in the lives of three Dubliners. Regarded today as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Ulysses entered the world in a firestorm of controversy. Denounced as obscure, unintelligible, nonsensical, and obscene, it was first published in Paris in 1922...

Story of three generations of English middle-class people and their sexual conflicts. The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire, and is a metaphysical inquiry into the possibilities that human relationships hold amid the uncompromisiing circumstance of industrial culture, which Lawrence continued in Women in Love. Throughout the novel the rainbow symbolises each character's search for self-fulfilment....

Young Pip, an orphan, is working as a blacksmith when he learns that an unknown person has willed him a fortune. He is sent to London to be educated as a rich gentleman.

Vanity Fair is a story of two heroines---one humble, the other a scheming social climber---who meet in boarding school and embark on markedly different lives. Amid the swirl of London's posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Through it all, Thackeray lampoons the shallow values of his society, reserving the most pointed barbs for the upper crust. What results is a prescient look at the dogged pursuit of wealth and...

Set in 18th century Lima, Peru, a rickety bridge which has spanned a deep gorge for ages suddenly breaks, and five people plunge to their deaths. A priest who is deeply affected by the catastrophe decides to make an investigative study of the lives of the victims to determine if he can find some clue to God's intention in casting five dis-associated mortals into eternity at precisely the same moment.

In nineteenth-century England, two sisters are drawn into unhappy romances despite the cool judgment of one and the emotional intensity of the other.

While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.

""Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me." With these chilling words a husband claims his wife after a two-year absence. But the child she clutches is not his, and Hester wears a scarlet "A" upon her breast, the sign of adultery visible to all. Under an assumed name, her husband begins his vindictive search for her lover, determined to expose what Hester is equally determined to protect. Defiant and proud, Hester witnesses the degradation of...

Fraternizing with a horse trader who doubles as an agent of Her Majesty's Secret Service, helping a Tibetan lama search for a lost river, touring a mystical, magical land that is the shining jewel in the British crown are all in a day's work for Kimball O'Hara, the sly adventurous waif known as Kim.