Catalog Search Results
1) Adam Bede
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Originally published in 1859, "Adam Bede" is the first novel by George Eliot, which was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. Eliot was one of the leading British writers of the Victorian era, as well as a noted journalist, poet, and translator. "Adam Bede" concerns a small, tight-knit, and fictional rural community called Hayslope and the romantic drama that develops between four of its young residents: the title character Adam, a young carpenter, the...
2) Dead Souls
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
First published in 1842, "Dead Souls" is the story of Chichikov, a young middle-class gentleman who comes to a small town in Russia with a dubious plan to improve his wealth and position in life. He begins by spending beyond his means on the premise that he can impress the local officials and gain standing and connections in the community. At the heart of his plan is the idea of acquiring "dead souls" or more explicitly serfs of landowners who have...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"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...
4) The American
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1877 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
First published serially between January and December of 1878 in the sensationalistic monthly London magazine "Belgravia", Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" is the author's sixth published novel. Set in Egdon Heath, an area of Thomas Hardy's fictionalized Wessex known for the thorny evergreen shrubs, called furze or gorse, which are cut there by its residents for fuel. When the story begins, on Guy Fawkes Night, we find Diggory Venn, a merchant...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Notes from the Underground is Fyodor Dostoevsky's ninth novel, and considered to be one of the first examples of the existential novel. In this radically inventive work, an alienated former minor administrator in nineteenth-century Russia has broken away from society and withdrawn into an underground identity. With its piercing insight into political, social, and moral issues, this classic is one of the most provocative work of literature ever written.
In...
7) The "Genius"
Author
Language
English
Description
The "Genius" (1915) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Based partly on his own experience as an artist from the Midwest, The "Genius" examines the nature of talent, the difficulty of desire, and the meaning of faith itself. Although he had high hopes for the novel, reviews were mixed, and sales suffered due to charges of obscenity. Some critics, however, praised Dreiser's openness on sex and desire, opposing the censorship targeting the author's work....
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Moon and Sixpence (1919) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Inspired by the life of French painter Paul Gauguin, Maugham set out to capture, the disconnect between an artist's desire, to create and their obligations to their loved ones and society. Praised for its multifaceted portrayal of tortured genius and wasted talent, The Moon and Sixpence explores the distance between expectation and desire in a man whose decisions, however, hastily made,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
First published in 1862, Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" is widely considered to be the author's greatest literary achievement. It is a novel about the clash of ideologies of two generations. The older generation, the fathers, represents an upper class whose power and influence is fading and giving way to the younger generation, the sons, who represent an increasing objection to the status quo. This conflict is embodied in the characters of Arkady...
10) The Financier
Author
Series
Trilogy of desire volume 1
Language
English
Formats
Description
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....
Author
Language
English
Description
A financial thriller based on the Panic of 1907 by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Jungle In 1907 the stock market crashed as a result of the manipulations of a group of powerful, wealthy, and unscrupulous men. The repercussions were felt across the nation, taking a devastating toll on thousands of small investors and hardworking Americans. The Moneychangers, written a century before the term "too big to fail" became part of the national...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The greatest writer of his time."-Edmund Wilson
"One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art"-Edgar Johnson
"His characters are marvelous, his insights wonderful…you don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better."-Ruth Rendell
The Old Curiosity Shop was initially published in a weekly serial, "Master Humphrey's Clock", between 1840 and 1841. Charles Dickens' story of the frail and innocent orphan had become such...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Controversial for its honest depiction of work, desire, and urban life, Sister Carrie has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique over a century after its publication. Despite poor reviews upon publication, the novel is now considered a landmark of American literature. Tired of the countryside, Carrie Meeber moves to Chicago to live with her older...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The Taming of the Shrew (1592) is a comedy by William Shakespeare. Written between 1590 and 1592, The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's earliest works. Frequently critiqued by scholars for its demeaning portrayal of Katherina and for Petruchio's violence, the play has also been considered as an ironic treatment of the inequality experienced by women in marriage. The Taming of the Shrew has served as source material for countless film and...
15) Roderick Hudson
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A gifted American artist finds fame, fortune, and tragedy in Europe in this classic tale. Working in obscurity, sculptor Roderick Hudson finds a generous patron in Rowland Mallet, an art aficionado so captivated by the young man's work, he offers to take Hudson with him to Europe. Mallet soon falls in love with Miss Mary Garland, a distant cousin of Hudson's who lives with the family and tends to his aging mother. Unfortunately, Hudson has already...
16) Ruth
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
17) The Europeans
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Two European siblings travel to New England to meet their American cousins in this classic satire. Henry James's short novel The Europeans, which made its debut in serial form in the Atlantic Monthly, is the beloved tale of Eugenia Münster and her brother, Felix Young, who travel to Boston after having spent most of their lives in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. At the heart of the story rest the concerns that most intrigued the iconic author:...
18) Ten Years Later
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The third and final volume of the 'd'Artagnon Romances', of which "The Three Musketeers" and "Twenty Years After" constitute the first and second volumes, The Vicomte de Bragelonne was first serialized between October 1847 to January 1850. It has subsequently been published in three, four, and five-volume editions. Our edition contains four volumes: "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", "Ten Years Later", "Louise de la Vallière", and "The Man in the Iron...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is the second and final novel by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-in-law about the events leading to...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Twenty Years After - Alexandre Dumas - Twenty Years After (French: Vingt ans après) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized from January to August 1845. A book of The d'Artagnan Romances, it is a sequel to The Three Musketeers and precedes The Vicomte de Bragelonne (which includes the sub-plot Man in the Iron Mask).
The novel follows events in France during the Fronde, during the childhood reign of Louis XIV, and in England near the end...
In Interlibrary Loan
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Penticton Public Library can be requested from other Interlibrary Loan libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup. Items must be over 1 year old.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? Try our Materials Request Service for new books published this year. Submit Request