Catalog Search Results
Author
Lexile Measure
870L
Summary
A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...
Author
Summary
A deluxe Harper Perennial Legacy Edition, with an introduction from John Swansburg, Deputy Editor at SlateOne of the best-selling books of all time, Lew Wallace's enduring epic is a tale of revenge, betrayal, honor, compassion and the power of forgiveness, set during the life of Christ. At the beginning of the first century, Judah Ben-Hur lived as a prince, descended from the royal line of Judea and one of Jerusalem's most prosperous merchant families....
Author
Lexile Measure
1030L
Summary
"'As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream.'" "So begins one of the best-loved and most widely read books in English literature. An acknowledged classic of the heroic Puritan tradition, and a founding text in the development of the English novel, The Pilgrim's Progress has inspired readers for over three centuries. The...
Author
Lexile Measure
1050L
Summary
"Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a classic work of American literature that explores the harsh realities of slavery in the nineteenth century. Published in 1852, the novel follows the lives of several characters, including the titular character Tom, a long-suffering slave on a plantation in Kentucky. Through the characters' stories, Stowe paints a vivid picture of life in slavery, as well as its psychological, emotional, and spiritual...
Author
Summary
Presents Shakespeare's dark comedy about young lovers and a Jewish money lender who demands a pound of flesh in payment for a debt. Includes explanatory notes on facing pages, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a key to famous lines and phrases, a modern perspective essay, and an introduction to the play and the language of Shakespeare.
Author
Lexile Measure
1130L
Summary
Introduction by A. N. Wilson - Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle--all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges...
9) The Republic
Author
Lexile Measure
1370L
Summary
"The Republic is Plato's masterwork. It was written 2,400 years ago and remains one of the most widely read books in the world, famous for both the richness of its ideas and the virtuosity of its writing. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to study philosophy, inviting its readers to reflect on the choices we must make if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex,...
10) Treasure Island
Author
Lexile Measure
980L
Summary
When a mysterious seafarer puts up at the Admiral Benbow, young Jim Hawkins is haunted by his frightening tales; the sailor's sudden death is the beginning of one of the most exciting adventure stories in literature. The discovery of a treasure map sets Jim and his companions in search of buried gold, and they are soon on board the Hispaniola with a crew of buccaneers recruited by the one-legged sea cook, Long John Silver. As they near their destination,...
11) The Virginian
Author
Lexile Measure
830L
Summary
His background is shadowy, his presence commanding. He brings law and order to a frontier town and wins the love of a pretty schoolteacher from the East. He is the Virginian -- the first fully realized cowboy hero in American literature, a near-mythic figure whose idealized image has profoundly influenced our national consciousness. This enduring work of fiction marks his first appearance in popular culture -- the birth of a legend that lives with...
12) Robinson Crusoe
Author
Lexile Measure
1360L
Summary
"Shipwrecked off the coast of Trinidad, Robinson Crusoe - a young man with a thirst for adventure - finds himself washed up on a remote tropical island with nothing but a few tools and animals for company. Castaway for thirty years, he must battle cannibals, mutineers and the elements in a tale so convincing that many readers at the time believed it to be non-fiction. A true page-turner, Robinson Crusoe is one of the most enduring novels in the English...
Author
Summary
A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...
Author
Lexile Measure
1000L
Summary
Mormon elders in the town of Cottonwoods pressure the widow Jane Withersteen to remarry so that her lands and herds will remain in their control. Gradually they frighten away most of her cowboys, and rustlers steal away her cattle, but the gunfighter Lassiter stands by her as the inevitable confrontation draws near.
Author
Lexile Measure
960L
Summary
"A swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, it is set in France during the 1620s and richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense. Dumas transforms major and minor historical figures into larger-than-life characters: the brave d'Artagnan, an impetuous young man in pursuit of glory; the...
Author
Summary
David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.
Author
Lexile Measure
970L
Summary
In this powerful portrait of the self-making of an artist, Willa Cather created one of her most extraordinary heroines. Thea Kronborg, a minister's daughter in a provincial Colorado town, seems destined from childhood for a place in the wider world. But as her path to the world stage leads her ever farther from the humble town she can't forget and from the man she can't afford to love, Thea learns that her exceptional musical talent and fierce ambition...
Author
Appears on list
Formats
Summary
A portrait is a key example of the Keunstlerroman (an Artist's Buldungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's novel trace the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions in which he has been raise.
Author
Lexile Measure
1070L
Appears on list
Summary
When Elizabeth Bennet meets Fitzwilliam Darcy for the first time at a ball, she writes him off as an arrogant and obnoxious man. He not only acts like an insufferable snob, but she also overhears him rejecting the very idea of asking her for a dance! As life pits them against each other again and again, Darcy begins to fall for Elizabeth's wit and intelligence and Elizabeth begins to question her feelings about Darcy. But when Darcy saves her youngest...
