"When it comes to walking the mean streets, Dickens could give modern genre authors the tour of their lives." -Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times When a corpse is found in the Thames River and identified as John Harmon, many lives will be forever changed. John, who had been abroad and estranged from his miserly father for years, will no longer collect his inheritance. It will instead go to the miser's employees, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, transforming...

First published in English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 from its original Farsi, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is a collection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in the later part of the 11th century. Omar Khayyam's poetry, which received very little international notoriety in its own day, achieved classic status when it was discovered and rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald over seven...

First published in 1899, this graphic depiction of urban American life centers around its title character, McTeague, a dentist practicing in San Francisco at the turn of the century. While at first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus, McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina, a frugal young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. The greed of the majority of the characters in the novel creates a chain...

Here is the story of Christy Mahon, hailed as a hero (and an immediate object of romantic attention) for his claim to have killed his cruel father. However, when he finds out his father survived, Mahon attempts to murder him a second time. Will he succeed? Considered Synge's masterpiece, this play was viewed as indecent and met with riots when first performed.

The Financier (1912) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. The first installment of Dreiser's Trilogy of Desire, The Financier has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique over a century after its publication. Followed by The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947), The Financier captures the greed at the heart of the Gilded Age, a time when tycoons rose with total impunity to take over swaths of American industry....

A writer travels to a fishing village to complete her book and becomes close friends with many residents including her popular housemate, Mrs. Almira Todd. Throughout her stay, the writer is, inundated with personal stories from her colorful neighbors. In The Country of the Pointed Firs, a Boston native travels to a small Maine town called Dunnet Landing. She finds room and board with an older woman named Almira Todd, a widow and local herbalist....

The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. A small portion of this tale appeared in Once a Week, July-September, 1859, under the title of "A Good Fight".) The Cloister and the Hearth is a historical novel by the English author Charles Reade. Set in the 15th century, it relates the story revolving about the travels of a young scribe and illuminator, Gerard Eliassoen, through several European countries.

Eager to leave his humble beginnings, Redmond Barry, runs multiple scams, conning his way into the military and pursuing the fortune of a young widow. For every momentous achievement, he's riddled with a bittersweet result. Redmond Barry is born into a poor Irish family and desires to become a man of status and means. Although ambitious, he's naturally mischievous and has no interest in doing things the right way. After falling into debt, he joins...

"Tom Sawyer Abroad" is Mark Twain's 1894 novel featuring Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. A sequel to Twain's famous "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", this parody of a classic adventure story follows Tom, Jim and Huck as they journey by hot air balloon to Africa, where they encounter all manner of excitement and danger. A wonderful example of Twain's unforgettable work not to be missed by fans of the timeless Tom Sawyer series. Samuel Langhorne Clemens...

"The Garden Party and Other Stories" is a 1922 collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield. Kathleen Mansfield Murry (1888—1923) was a modernist writer from New Zealand who produced poetry and short stories under the pseudonym Katherine Mansfield. She left New Zealand when she was 19 and relocated to England, where she became friends with a number of notable literary figures including D. H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell, and Virginia Woolf....