"Irene Redfield, married to a successful physician, enjoys a comfortable life in Harlem. Reluctantly, she renews her friendship with old school friend, Clare Kendry. Clare, who like Irene is light skinned, 'passes' as white and is married to a racist white man who has no idea about Clare's racial heritage. Even though Irene knows that reigniting her friendship with Clare will lead to trouble, she can't resist allowing Irene into her world. Meanwhile,...

Anne Bronte's second novel is a passionate and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society and reflected in circulating-library fiction. The heroine, Helen Huntingdon, after a short period of initial happiness, leaves her dissolute husband, and must earn her own living to rescue her son from his influence. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is compelling in its imaginative power, the realism and range of its dialogue, and...

Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to control the city. At its heart is Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar, married to the clever but ultimately treacherous Tito whose duplicity in both love and politics threatens to destroy everything she values, and she must break away to find her own path in...

'I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.' Becky Sharp is sharp, calculating, and determined to succeed. Craving wealth and a position in society, she charms, hoodwinks, manipulates everyone she meets, rising in the world as she attaches herself to a succession of rich men. Becky's fortunes are contrasted with those of her best friend Amelia, who has none of Becky's wit and vitality but whose gentle-heartedness attracts the devotion...

A tale of romance and high adventure, ranging from rural Ireland to the streets of London to a village in Belgium, this is the story of a secret society of Irish rebels and their sinister plots that lead to revenge and murder, and of the "blind love" of Iris Henley for the notorious Lord Harry Norland.

Alluring, high-spirited American heiress Isabel - "I always want to know the things one shouldn't do ... so as to choose"--Is in Europe to seek her own destiny. But after refusing marriage proposals from both Lord Warburton, a "prince" of the aristocracy, and Caspar Goodwood, a "prince" of American industry, Isabel becomes utterly captivated by the languid charms of Gilbert Osmond, whom she sees as the "prince" she has been looking for. To him, she...

Carol, a college-bred girl, marries a small town doctor. She tries to uplift the natives of the small town.

A drifter gets a job at an isolated diner and gas station, then quickly sinks into a lustful relationship with the proprietor's young, sexy wife.

"Written from the perspective of a male narrator, Willa Cather's classic novel is an Amercian version of "Madame Bovary". It is a portrait of a talented woman trapped in the conventions and economic restraints of a marriage. It is the story of a woman who defies expectations, and whose personal changes coincide with the transforming American Frontier. In this work, Willa Cather expressed her profoundly modern feminist views in the life of an ordinary...

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was -- now in a Contemporary Classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In The Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when...