After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

Henry Fleming is a young private in the Union army during the American Civil War--a farm boy untested by battle. Faced with charging rebels, he flees. With his ideals shattered and his heart burdened by shame, Henry seeks an opportunity to redeem himself, even hoping for a wound--a "red badge of courage"--to prove his bravery. Focusing on the inner psychological struggles and sensory perceptions of an individual soldier, Stephen Crane introduced...