A series of stories in poetry and prose narrated by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.

After a condemned man cursed Colonel Pyncheon from the scaffold during an execution for witchcraft, the Colonel's fate seemed to affect all of his descendants in the crumbling mansion until "young Phoebe Pyncheon from the country breathed fresh air and sunshine into the mouldering lives and rooms."

HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.' At the peak of European Imperialism, steamboat captain Charles Marlow travels deep into the African Congo on his way to relieve the elusive Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader renowned for...

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,...

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.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

Featuring the tumultuous relationship of Petruchio and the headstrong Katherina, this popular comedy goes beyond courtship to explore what happens after a determined man marries a woman who refuses to be tamed.

A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman's life.

A 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story coveriing 100 tales by ten young people. The bawdy tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Includes tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons and also documents life in 14th-century Italy.

As Moll Flanders rises from the infamous Newgate Prison to fame, wealth, and respectability, Moll comes to embody all the excess and vitality of an era.