The work that signaled Fitzgerald's maturity as a storyteller and novelist, The Beautiful and Damned is a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age. Anthony Comstock Patch is a Harvard-educated gallant who leisurely aspires to author a book as he awaits an enormous inheritance upon his grandfather's death. Gloria is a sparkling young socialite and a rare beauty. Patch's impassioned marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and consumed by...

Montgomery "Monty" Brewster counts his blessings when he inherits a million dollars from his late, rich grandfather. However, when his equally-wealthy uncle also dies, Brewster immediately inherits another seven million dollars. But there's a catch: Brewster will only receive his uncle's money if he spends all of his grandfather's money within one year.

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...

Clyde Griffiths was born poor, but his prospects improve when he is hired by an uncle who owns a shirt factory. Despite a warning to stay away from the women he manages, Clyde begins a love affair with a young factory worker named Roberta, but neglects her when he catches the eye of Sondra, a glamorous socialite. When Roberta turns up pregnant, Clyde's hopes of marrying Sondra are threatened and he responds with desperation.

A foundling of mysterious parentage, Tom Jones is brought up by the benevolent and wealthy Squire Allworthy as his own son. Tom falls in love with the beautiful and unattainable Sophia Western, a neighbor's daughter, whose marriage has already been arranged. When Tom's sexual misadventures around the countryside get him banished, he sets out to make his fortune and find his true identity. Against the vivid background of eighteenth-century London,...

"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake,...

The classic novel follows Stephen Dedalus from his days as a student at the Clongowes Wood School, to the deep religious conflict he experiences at a day school in Dublin, to his college years during which he challenges the conventions of his upbringing.

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape...

Before The Lost Get-Back Boogie appeared to wide acclaim in 1986, James Lee Burke had been out of print in cloth for thirteen years and his fifth novel had received a record 111 rejection letters. "LSU Press put me back in the game and turned my career around," Burke says. The novels and stories Burke had written during those years of rejection eventually became the stuff of the Dave Robicheaux series, which has earned him two Edgar Awards.

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This novel is about how the artistic soul is sacrificed on the altar of big business. Except in this case the artist willingly makes the sacrifice and has no regrets afterward. Thus, the novel can't be counted a tragedy. John Sheridan lives by one mantra: Bigger is better. He owns the Sheridan Pump Works and is determined to make it an industrial giant. He brings his two oldest sons into the business only to see them fail. His youngest son, Bibbs,...