Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.

Tolstoy based "Resurrection", the last of his novels, on a true story of a philanderer whose misuse of a beautiful young orphan girl leads to her ruin. Fate brings the two together many years later and the meeting awakens the man's moral conscience. Anger, intimacy, forgiveness, and grace result. While the situation of Tolstoy's plot is alien to most people, his nuanced treatment of mortal life is familiar to all. Late in his life Tolstoy confessed...

Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

"Of Human Bondage" is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's novels. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, Philip settles in London to train as a doctor. And that is where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a formative, tortured and masochistic affair which very nearly...

Miles Franklin's 1901 ground-breaking debut, and an instant sensation. Meet Sybylla Melvyn, the young girl hungering for life and love in outback New South Wales. First published in 1901, this Australian classic is the candid tale of the aspirations and frustrations of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl constrained by middle-class social arrangements, especially the pressure to marry. Trapped on her parents' outback farm, Sybylla...

"All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?" Generations of readers have recognized the impassioned cry that introduces the young narrator of Demian, and embraced this tale of a troubled young man's struggle toward self-awareness. Initially published in Berlin in 1919, the novel met with instant critical acclaim, as well as great popular success among people seeking...

The Longest Journey (1907) is a novel by English author E.M. Forster. Despite its critical success, the novel was a commercial failure for Forster, but has since grown in reputation and readership to help cement his reception as one of twentieth century England's most talented writers. Rickie Elliot enters Cambridge as a young man, exploring his interests in poetry and art and joining a circle of intellectuals centered around, a philosopher named...

The White Peacock is a novel by the famous writer D. H. Lawrence. The novel involves themes of mismatched marriage and the damage they can cause in the no man's land between town and country. Featuring famous descriptions of nature and the impact of the industrial revolution on the countryside. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Pomona Press are republishing...

Alvina Houghton is bored by her little town, and feels trapped after her plans to elope with her lover falls through. Though she had previously dreamed of training as a nurse, Alvina is unsure what to do with her life. Alvina comes of age as her father, James, faces the failure of his business. She has a difficult relationship with her father. He is a man who never fully indulged in his passions, but has made eccentric financial decisions. In attempt...

Marigold has always lived a solitary life at her family's homestead, Cloud of Spruce, on Prince Edward Island, but her vivid imagination and lively neighbors keep things "int'resting."