When Squire Allworthy returns from London to discover a sleeping baby of unknown parentage in his bed, Tom Jones makes its rollicking start toward a picaresque journey across eighteenth-century England. Its foundling hero, having grown to young manhood and developed a passion for the girl next door, finds himself banished from the squire's country estate by the contrivance of a romantic rival. Lusty, good-hearted Tom is thus compelled to seek his...

"Considered Woolf's first original and distinguished work, 'Jacob's Room' (1922) concerns a sensitive young man, Jacob Flanders, who finds himself unable to reconcile his love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of World War I. His story unfolds in a series of brief impressions and conversations, stream-of-consciousness narratives, internal monologues, and letters." -- Provided by publisher.

"The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel. A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds...

Dickens' genius for creating eccentric yet entirely captivating characters found its fullest expression in his r novel, Nicholas Nickleby, published in 1830. The story follows Nicholas as he escapes from one situation into another.

An aging lawyer hires a new copyist to help with his firm's workload, and at first he finds himself pleased with his new employee. Bartleby is quiet, efficient and he doesn't display any of the loud eccentricities of the firm's other two copyists, Nippers and Turkey. But one day, when the lawyer asks Bartleby if he will help him compare copies, Bartleby simply replies, "I would prefer not to." As time goes by and Bartleby's strange refusals multiply,...

D.H. Lawrence's third novel and one of his most beloved, Sons and Lovers is considered the author's most autobiographical book, following the life of Paul Morel. Paul is an emerging young artist born to a mother who married for passion and came to regret it. Both Paul and his brother William are in their mother's thrall to the point where they find it difficult to detach and pursue romance for themselves. The depictions of their liaisons resulted...

Volume containing two interrelated stories by J.D. Salinger, published in book form in 1961. The stories, originally published in The New Yorker magazine, concern Franny and Zooey Glass, two members of the family that was the subject of most of Salinger's short fiction. Franny is an intellectually precocious late adolescent who tries to attain spiritual purification by obsessively reiterating the "Jesus prayer" as an antidote to the perceived superficiality...

At the age of twenty-three, Charlie Mason is endowed with good looks, good manners and a happy disposition. Following three years at Cambridge and one in his father's business, he is now looking forward to a jaunt in Paris with Simon Fenimore, his oldest friend.Yet Paris is not what he expects. And in just a few days his young eyes are opened to the horror and ugly drama of its underworld. Published before the outbreak of war in 1939, Maugham's purpose...

The romantic pursuits of spoiled couple Anthony and Gloria Patch leave them, after six years of marriage, with Anthony a mental and physical wreck and Gloria's beauty waning.

First published in 1869, this deliberately written work follows the ambitions and whims of the young Frédéric Moreau as he travels from his provincial hometown to the enticing metropolis of Paris. Though he survived the Revolution of 1848, Moreau is still prone to all the mistakes and petty concerns of a young man of the middle class: he develops an infatuation for a married woman, Madame Arnoux, and falls in and out of love with her throughout...