Ruth is a young orphaned girl who works in a sweatshop. Mrs. Mason, Ruth's boss, runs the sweatshop in a respectable manner, earning a sterling reputation among her employees and society. However, the comfort and acclaim of Ruth's job is threatened when she attends a ball to repair any dresses that get torn during dancing. There, she meets an aristocratic man named Henry Bellingham, who is infamous for his immoral treatment of women and frivolous...

"First published in 1897, “Captains Courageous” follows the adventures of Harvey Cheyne, a spoiled, rich young man who is accidentally washed overboard from a luxury ocean liner and is rescued by the Portuguese captain of a fishing boat and his hard scrabble crew. Kipling, drawing on his own experiences living in Vermont, fills this classic coming of age story with period details of late nineteenth-century American fishing, whaling, and railroad...

This is a classic tale of a house cursed through the centuries by a man hung for witchcraft, and haunted by the ghosts of its sinful dead.

"This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication the text of Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation, originally published in book form in 1848 by Bradbury & Evans, London. Charles Dickens's Preface from an 1858 edition has also been included, while the original illustrations have been omitted"--

Written in the middle of the 14th century as the Bubonic Plague decimated the population of Europe, "The Decameron" is a satirical and allegorical collection of stories by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. Constructed as a series of "frame stories," or stories within a story, the narrative follows seven young women and three young men who take refuge in a secluded villa outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death. During ten evenings of their...

In the picaresque series of sketches in Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens wrote one of the masterpieces of comic fiction, and presented readers with some of the most colorful and beloved characters of all time. In Dickens' first novel, initially based on a series of illustrations, members of the eponymous club recount their various experiences and encounters as they travel around England. Without the dark themes that dominated so many of his novels,...

The Life and Death of King John, one of William Shakespeare's historical plays, delves into the tumultuous reign of one of England's most controversial monarchs. This gripping drama, often overshadowed by Shakespeare's more famous works, offers a vivid portrayal of the struggle for power and the complexities of royal politics in the 13th century. Shakespeare examines King John's conflict with France, his turbulent relationship with the Church,...

Past and Present is a book by Thomas Carlyle.[1] It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Cromwell. He was, inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Rudyard Kipling's Kim is the tale of an Irish orphan raised as an Indian vagabond on the rough streets of colonial Lahore. Young Kimball O'Hara's coming of age takes place in a world of high adventure, mystic quests, and secret games of espionage played out between the Russians and the British in the mountain passages of Asia. Kim is torn between his allegiance to the ascetic...

"Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham and her beautiful...