While enjoying a six weeks' stay in fashionable Bath, the young and callow Catherine Morland is introduced to the delights of high society. Thanks to a new literary diet of the sensational and the macabre, Catherine travels to Northanger Abbey fully expecting to become embroiled in a Gothic adventure of intrigue and suspense - and, once there, soon begins to form the most gruesome and improbable theories about the exploits of its occupants.An early...

Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...

Artist Basil Hallward is greatly impressed by Dorian Gray's physical beauty when he paints his portrait. Basil becomes strongly infatuated with Dorian, believing that his beauty is responsible for a new mode in Basil's art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new kind of hedonism, Lord Henry suggests that the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty, and the fulfilment of the senses. Dorian...

"A true masterwork of storytelling, Dracula has transcended generation, language, and culture to become one of the most popular novels ever written. It is a quintessential tale of suspense and horror, boasting one of the most terrifying characters ever born in literature: Count Dracula, a tragic, night-dwelling specter who feeds upon the blood of the living, and whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, and the beautiful. But...

=520 \\ Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. Lassiter, a gunglinging avenger in black, shows up in a remote Utah town just in time to save the young and beautiful rancher Jane Withersteen from having to marry a Mormon elder against her will.

"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...

"Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistance. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull's egg, as 'perfect as the moon.' With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security...A story of classic simplicity,...

Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an unflinchingly honest account of the experiences of a female slave in nineteenth-century North Carolina.

On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published his pamphlet "Common Sense", a persuasive argument for the colonies' political and economic separation from Britain. It cites the evils of monarchy, accuses the British government of inflicting economic and social injustices upon the colonies, and points to the absurdity of an island attempting to rule a continent. Today, it remains a landmark document in the struggle for freedom, distinguished not only...

The most sinister, blood - curdling horror story of all time