The Magnificent Ambersons is the epic story of an American family's traumatic tumble from the dizzying heights of fame and fortune. A dynasty spanning three generations, the Ambersons' pre-eminence as society's elite is threatened -- not only by a hungry new breed of industrial entrepreneur -- but from its own arrogance and greed. At the center of the story is George Amberson Minafer, the pampered but pitiful, scion of the clan upon whose shoulders...

A humorous novel looks at the daily life of a married mother of two, who vents her frustrations via artful swearing, imbibing wine, and a daybook where she attempts to offer tips on how to do various domestic tasks.

This novel is about how the artistic soul is sacrificed on the altar of big business. Except in this case the artist willingly makes the sacrifice and has no regrets afterward. Thus, the novel can't be counted a tragedy. John Sheridan lives by one mantra: Bigger is better. He owns the Sheridan Pump Works and is determined to make it an industrial giant. He brings his two oldest sons into the business only to see them fail. His youngest son, Bibbs,...

"Wharton's sly and delicious novel about the ambitious social ascent of Undine Spragg, now in a Penguin Vitae edition, with a foreword by Sofia Coppola"-- "Considered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton’s second full-length work is a scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might...

"Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. "Femi makes three, you know. Three and they label you a serial killer." Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality...

Written between 1873 and 1884 and published posthumously in 1903, The Way of All Flesh is regarded by some as the first twentieth-century novel. Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the...

"'Mother India' is set in contemporary and eternal India but focuses on Jews from America and Israel who go there to, as they see it, find themselves. It contains doses of comedy, tragedy, energy, satire, and an authentic smell of the place."--

A portrait of life in a quiet English country town in the mid-nineteenth century follows the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters living in reduced circumstances.

When her family becomes a local gossip blog's new favorite subject due to her sister's impending nuptials, Cass Coventry finds her weekend stay in Newport becoming a full summer of frenzied wedding planning and society drama that reveals one surprise after another.

A modern retelling of the Jane Austen classic follows the Dashwood sisters--Elinor, Marianne and Margaret--as they, after the death of their father, must come to terms with the cruelties of life without the status of their country house, the protection of the family name or the comfort of an inheritance.