While inebriated, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a sailor. When he realizes the horror of what he has done, he vows to change his life through hard work and fierce ambition, but his past and his guilt still haunt him.

A thing to marvel at, a thing to be grateful for.'A rich American art-collector and his daughter Maggie buy in for themselves and to their greater glory a beautiful young wife and noble husband. They do not know that Charlotte and Prince Amerigo were formerly lovers, nor that on the eve of the Prince's marriage they had discovered, in a Bloomsbury antique shop, a golden bowl with a secret flaw. The superstitious Amerigo, fearing for his gilded future,...

Doctor Thorne is a tale of love, envy, violence, greed, and vanity...but mainly love. Doctor Thorne lives with his beautiful niece, Mary, who has every virtue save money for a dowry. Only Mary's uncle, Doctor Thorne, knows the truth of her mysterious origins and can resolve the many problems facing his ward.

Wealth is certainly a most desirable thing, but poverty has its sunny side . . .” It's Christmas time . . . The March family has fallen on bad times after the father lost their money. The four March sisters-the nearly perfect ‘little woman' Meg, the tomboyish Jo, the shy but wise Beth, and the artist of the family Amy-are planning to brighten up their Christmas by buying presents while their father is away, fighting the Civil War. Featuring...

"The Marjolein Bastin Classics Series is a chance to rediscover classic literature in collectible, luxuriously illustrated volumes. For the first time ever, the internationally celebrated artwork of Marjolein Bastin graces the pages of the timeless classic, Emma, the story of the well-meaning matchmaker of High bury village. Beyond bringing these stories to life, Bastin's series adds elaborately designed ephemera, such as letters, invitations, and...

Sense and Sensibility is one of the best loved of Jane Austen's novels, populated by great comic creations like Mrs. Jennings, the unscrupulous cad Willoughby, and guileless and artful women. As ever, Austen suffuses her work with great ironic observation and tremendous wit, producing a masterpiece of romantic entanglement that time and a very different set of mores cannot diminish. Sense and Sensibility was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be...

A young woman, Cytherea Graye, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry. Cytherea loves a young architect, Edward Springrove, but Miss Adclyffe's machinations, the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston, Miss...

"Love and the erratic heart are at the center of Hardy's "woodland story." Set in the beautiful Blackmoor Vale, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-to-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of the dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Felice Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked. Hardy's...

The enduring love story and satirical comedy by a master of the English novel. A young vicar's ambition drives him into a costly bargain in this classic tale from one of the Victorian era's finest novelists. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, the fourth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire brilliantly examines the intersection of romance and social class. Mark Robarts is a young, ambitious vicar from the village of Framley,...

This revealing romp through proper society follows three different women who dare to defy Victorian standards. Can You Forgive Her? comically intertwines the stories of three very independent-minded women who each desires to decide her own fate in a world where love comes second to obedience and familial expectations set them apart from their peers. First and foremost is the spirited Alice Vavasor, whose indecision and repeated rejections of two...