"The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era of political greed and corruption that followed the American Civil War. This period is often referred to as "The Gilded Age" because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the era is exemplified through two fictional narratives; one of the Hawkins family, a poor family from Tennessee who try to get the government...

"1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page." --Amazon.com

"A hundred and fifty years after its first publication, Crime and Punishment continues to fascinate readers. It was the first of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky's long novels to feature not only profound debate on the most pressing philosophical and spiritual questions of the day, but also a murder plot and a level of intrigue and tension associated more commonly with popular fiction than high literature. It established the author's reputation as both...

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced...

It's 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it's not just a political tangle that's kept him tethered to the country. There's also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor...

Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown, the hotelier, Smith the innocent American and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate of the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself - NoveList.

Charley Fortnum, the 'Honorary Consul', a whisky-sodden figure of dubious authority, is taken by a group of revolutionaries. As Eduardo Plarr, a local doctor, negotiates with revolutionaries and authorities for Fortnum's release, the corruption of both becomes evident.

Though he rose to literary fame on the strength of his series of novels set in the fictional rural county of Barsetshire, Anthony Trollope's later works were more concerned with politics and social issues. The novel Phineas Finn is the second in Trollope's series known as the Palliser novels, which focus on political intrigue and relationships among members of Parliament. This volume focuses on Phineas Finn, an immigrant from Ireland who

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This collection of Kipling's short stories follows the development of his work over fifty years, and range from the harsh, cruel, world of the "Indian" stories, through the "experimental modernism of his middle period, to the highly wrought subtleties of his later pieces.Rudyard Kipling is one of the most magical storytellers in the English language. This new selection brings together the best of his short writings, following the development of his...