Basil (1852) is a novel by Wilkie Collins. Written in the aftermath of Antonina (1850), his successful debut, Basil finds the author honing the trademark sense of mystery and psychological unease that would make him a household name around the world. Recognized as an important Victorian novelist and pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins was a writer with a gift for thoughtful entertainment, stories written for a popular audience that continue...

On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is shot dead by Tom Chaney, one of his own workers, for a horse, 150 dollars cash, and two California gold pieces. When Ross's unusually single-minded fourteen -year-old daughter, Mattie, arrives to claim his body, she discovers that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of Rooster Cogburn--an ornery U.S. Marshall who, she's told, has grit and convinces him to join her in a quest into...

"First published in 1897, Richard Marsh's classic work of gothic horror, The Beetle, opens with Robert Holt, an out-of-work clerk seeking shelter in an abandoned house. He comes face to face with a fantastical creature with supernatural and hypnotic powers; a creature who can transform at will between its human and beetle forms and who wrecks havoc when he preys on young middle-class Britons. Featuring an introduction by bestselling author Chelsea...

"Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel: a bildungsroman that depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman...

Ethan Frome and Selected Stories, by Edith Wharton, 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...

When two brothers attempt to split their loyalties between the warring factions of the 1745 Jacobite rising, one family finds itself tragically divided.

Elizabeth Cornish raises the infant son of outlaw Black Jack Hollis as her own, building up the legend of the Colby name, making the boy, Terry, believe he is descended from aristocracy. Then Elizabeth makes it known that Terry will inherit the family ranch on his twenty-fifth birthday, not her ne'er-do-well brother, Vance. As the celebration nears, Vance decides that he must make Terry aware of his outlaw heritage, and who better to set the record...

John Ridd, an unsophisticated farmer, falls in love with the beautiful and aristocratic Lorna Doone, kidnapped as a child by the outlaw Doones on Exmoor. Ridd's rivalry with the villainous Carver Doone reaches a dramatic climax that will determine Lorna's future happiness. First published in 1869, Lorna Doone was praised by R. L. Stevenson and Thomas Hardy and has remained constantly in print. The novel has many aspects: it is a romance; a historical...

Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1st century. His old friend Messala arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions. They become bitter enemies. Because of an unfortunate accident, Ben-Hur is sent to slave in the mines while his family is sent to leprosy caves. As Messala is dying from being crushed in a chariot race, he reveals where Ben-Hur's family is. On the road to find them, Ben-Hur...