A rich and pompous merchant is plagued by loneliness and misfortune.

Shirley is the story of a complicated friendship between two very different women: shy and socially constrained Caroline, the poor niece of a tyrannical clergyman; and the independent heiress Shirley, who has both the resources and the spirit to defy convention. The romantic entanglements of the two women with a local mill owner and his penniless brother pit the claims of passion against the boundaries of class and society.

Charles Dickens's last completed novel, "Our Mutual Friend" is the story of "Noddy" Boffin, a common clerk who becomes "the Golden Dustman" after he inherits a dust-heap where the aristocracy throw their refuge. A brutal satire and social analysis, "Our Mutual Friend" is a masterpiece that explores the allure and curse of money while demonstrating all the themes the author is famous for. Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer...

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...