In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret.

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.

"The ... saga of two women: the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. In this book, both are adults; life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship, examined in its every detail over the course of four books, remains the gravitational center of their lives"--Amazon.com.

Hassan is a culinary ingenue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, his family settles in a quaint village in the south of France. They plan to open an Indian restaurant, that is, until Madame Mallory, the owner of a classical French restaurant, gets wind of it. Her icy protests against the new Indian restaurant so near her own escalate to all out war; until Hassan's cooking talent and love for Mme. Mallory's...

From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler's experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist's shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that...

"A sourcebook on Provence by the writer who has made the region his own. Though organized from A to Z, this is hardly a conventional work of reference. It is rather a selection of those aspects of Provence that Peter Mayle in almost twenty years there has found to be the most interesting, curious, delicious, or downright fun. In more than 170 wide-ranging entries he writes about architecture, expatriates, Aix-en-Provence, the Provenc?al character,...

Daniel Deronda is a sensitive, intelligent, young man haunted by secrets that shroud his birth. Gwendolen Harleth is a beautiful gambler short on cash. When the two meet, sparks fly.

When the National Gallery is flooded, the stuffy curator is forced to flee to the mountains of Wales, along with the paintings. He gets more than he bargained for when he meets the townspeople.