Born into poverty in a small desert town in the American Midwest, Thea Kronborg is one of seven children. But Thea is exceptional, a fact recognized by a discerning few, including Ray Kennedy, who longs to marry her but whose fate it is to set her free. With her rugged will and pioneer spirit, Thea carves her way from Moonstone, Colorado to Chicago, from Dresden to New York, culminating in a triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Thea has become...

A scholarly professor in a Middle Western university is reluctant to move into a new, more comfortable house, despite the protestations of his wife and daughters. His life has changed too quickly for him to adjust.

This is Mark Twain's first novel about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and it has become one of the world's best-loved books. It is a fond reminiscence of life in Hannibal, Missouri, an evocation of Mark Twain's own boyhood along the banks of the Mississippi during the 1840s. "Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred," he tells us. This is a book one never forgets: Tom whitewashing Aunt Polly's fence, Tom and Huck's dreadful oath, their...

Frankenstein discovers how to give life to inanimate matter, and from dead flesh constructs a living being. His Monster possesses superhuman speed and strength, and learns human emotion by studying. But as his mind and thoughts develp, his loneliness and misery build. When the scientist refuses to create a companion for him, the Monster kills Frankenstein's wife and flees to the North Pole. Frankenstein follows, desperate to destroy his rampaging...

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft tackles the wasted potential she sees in women, refusing to see them as inferior to men; she decries their limitations and suggests that they are worthy of an equal standard of education, and that they should be taught to develop their own reason, not simply how to gain a man. Written in 1792, at the height of the French Revolution, A Vindication is an eloquent and persuasive

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Presents the English statesman's classic denunciations of sixteenth-century tyranny and corruption and vision of an ideal society, along with historical and biographical notes.

The Professor (1857) is English writer Charlotte Brontë's first novel. Rejected by several publishing houses, Brontë shelved the novel in order to write her masterpiece Jane Eyre (1847). After her death, The Professor was edited by Brontë's widower, Arthur Bell Nichols, who saw that the novel was published posthumously. Based on Brontë's experience as a student and teacher in Brussels-which similarly inspired her novel Villette-The Professor is...

Originally born in an impoverished community, Charity's parents sought out the most educated man in the nearby New England town to raise their daughter. After being surrendered to a lawyer named Royall, Charity was raised comfortably by Mr. Royall and his wife. However, when Mrs. Royall tragically passes away, Charity's relationship with Royall is threatened. After his wife's death, Royall begins to feel sexually attracted to Charity, and when she...

First performed in 1773, "She Stoops to Conquer" is the timeless comedic drama by Anglo-Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. The play depicts the story of Charles Marlow, a wealthy young man who is promised in marriage to a woman, Kate Hardcastle that he has never met. While he is eager to meet her and is travelling to her home with his friend, George Hastings, Charles is quite shy in the company of women of wealth. He prefers those of a lower class and...

First published in 1930, "Not Without Laughter" is the debut novel by Langston Hughes and a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical tale of an African-American family in rural Kansas. Langston Hughes, born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, spent much of his youth in Lawrence, Kansas and it is here that he set his first novel. "Not Without Laughter" tells the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a young man and focuses on his "awakening...