A portrait of life in a quiet English country town in the mid-nineteenth century follows the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters living in reduced circumstances.

Washington Square (1881), by Henry James, tells the story of Catherine Sloper, the plain, obedient daughter of the widowed, well-to-do Dr. August Sloper of Washington Square. When a handsome, feckless man-about-town proposes to Catherine, her father forbids the marriage because he believes the man to be after Catherine's fortune and future inheritance. The conflict between father, daughter, and suitor provokes consequences in the lives of all three...

"When a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents is discovered, historian Helen Watt is tasked to find the identity of the documents' scribe, the elusive "Aleph"--

Hester Prynne is the adulteress, forced by the Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric. The result is an American tragedy of stark...

Wilderness explorer Jubal Sackett was the son of Barnabas Sackett, the first of that line to come to the New World. Jubal feared no man, nor did he back away from any challenge. His determination to blaze new trails took him across the vast savage North American continent where no white man had been before. Living and fighting among the Indian tribes, Jubal forged a legend as a powerful medicine man whom they called "Ni'kwana, master of mysteries."...

After her mother's death, Gabrielle Brooks sets sail to the Caribbean in search of her father, discovers he has become a pirate, and spends three happy years sailing with him. His decision that she should return to London to find a proper husband leads to intrigue, scandal, and Gabrielle's passionate quest for revenge, as she finds herself falling for a carefree sea captain with no interest in matrimony.

"Hester Prynne is an adulteress, and the bright red 'A' sewed on to her dress forever separates her from the other sad-colored inhabitants of her New England hometown. But no one else knows who the father of Hester's pixie-like child is-and that sordid mystery eats at the townspeople. Months stretch into years for the uncomplaining and dignified Hester, providing some of her begrudging neighbors with ample opportunity for prying, hypocrisy, contempt,...

The second daughter of the Queens' close friend, the Scottish Duke of Buccleuch, Lady Margaret Montagu Scott is expected to make an advantageous marriage. But Margaret is an impulsive and outspoken girl in a repressive society where women are, quite literally, caged in corsets and required to conform. When Lady Margaret's parents arrange a society marriage for her, she tries to reconcile herself to the match. But shortly before her betrothal is announced,...

"It's the week before her wedding, and all of Eliza's meticulous planning is about to pay off. She's become the exact type of woman who would marry into the prominent blue-blooded Walker family--Ivy League credentials, a high-powered PR job and a designer-label wardrobe. But as the big day approaches, secrets from Eliza's past attendance at an Evangelical college start to throw her true motives into question. Who exactly is Eliza Bennet and what does...

Melanie Barnett has figured out that love and career don't mix. While cleaning her Jordan MX car, a scarlet-red symbol of the Jazz Age's independent women that she inherited from her great-great-great-aunt Violet, Melanie finds a secret compartment holding Violet's weathered journal. In 1921 Violet Bond lived a life of adventure in Detroit. But in an era of speakeasies, financial windfalls, free-spirited friends, and unexpected romance, it was easy...