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1) Bleak House
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1853
Book
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Summary
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1859
Book
On Shelf
Audiobook CD
Not Owned
Large Print
Not Owned
Playaway
Not Owned
eBooks
Available Online
Kindle
Available Online
eAudiobook
Available Online
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
Earliest Publication Date
1862
Book
Not Owned
Summary
After nineteen years in prison, Jean Valjean has difficulty adjusting to the outside world, which scorns and shuns him.
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1872
Book
On Shelf
Summary
The famous classic on evolution that exploded into public controversy and revolutionized the course of science.
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1874
Book
Not Owned
Summary
Charles Darwin's seminal work 'The Descent of Man' is published here edited and with an introduction by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. Suggestions are provided for further reading, a chronology of Darwin's life and works, and a biographical glossary.
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1876
Book
Not Owned
Summary
Deronda, a high-minded young man searching for his path in life, finds himself drawn by a series of dramatic encounters into two contrasting worlds: the English country-house life of Gwendolen Harleth, a high-spirited beauty trapped in an oppressive marriage, and the very different lives of a poor Jewish girl, Mirah, and her family. As Deronda uncovers the long-hidden secret of his own parentage, Eliot's moving and suspenseful narrative opens up a...
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1878
Book
Not Owned
Summary
Henry James' story of a pair of adulterous lovers who are married, respectively, to a rich American collector of European art and to his inexperienced daughter provides--beyond its expensive, burnished, beautifully appointed exteriors--an understanding of the rises and betrayals inherent in society that is unparalleled in literature.
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1880
Book
Not Owned
Audiobook CD
Not Owned
Large Print
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eAudiobook
Checked Out
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
Earliest Publication Date
1885
Book
On Shelf
Summary
Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother,...
10) The idiot
Earliest Publication Date
1887
Book
Not Owned
Audiobook CD
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eAudiobook
Available Online
Summary
"Just two years after completing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its center. In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate...
Earliest Publication Date
1888
Book
Not Owned
Large Print
Not Owned
Summary
A saintly Black man endures the depredations of slavery and the torments of a cruel overseer.
Mr. Shelby is a considerate master, but to pay off debts he must sell Tom to Haley, a slave trader. Eliza, Mrs. Shelby's servant, fearing that her son Harry will also be sold to Haley, escapes to Ohio taking Harry with her. St. Clare purchases Tom from Haley after Little Eva befriends the pious slave. Eva dies from an illness, and St. Clare decides to free...
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1890
Book
Checked Out
CD + Book
Not Owned
Audiobook CD
On Shelf
Large Print
Not Owned
eBooks
Available Online
eAudiobook
Available Online
Summary
Dorian Gray is arrogant. He is pompous, selfish, devastatingly narcissistic, and for much of his life he has never had to think twice about the ramifications of his actions.When the arrival of artist Basil Hallard forces Gray to confront his deepest insecurities, Dorian's most vulnerable self is imminently revealed. After having traded his righteousness for riches, Dorian Gray becomes faced with many regrettable truths he must learn to tackle head...
13) Faust
Earliest Publication Date
1893
Book
Not Owned
eBooks
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Kindle
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Summary
Goethe's 'Faust' is considered to be his Magnum Opus and one of the best works of German literature ever completed. It is a universal tale of belonging, love, despair and finding ones purpose.
Faust is a man in anguish; having dedicated his life to the sciences, to understanding the world around him he now sees that he has learnt all that he can. He is distraught by the notion that he cannot be at one with the cosmic universe and attain the highest...
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1894
Book
On Shelf
Audiobook CD
On Shelf
Playaway
Not Owned
eBooks
Checked Out
eAudiobook
Available Online
Summary
"Set against the tumultuous years of the post Napoleonic era, Dumas's grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantès, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason"--Jacket.
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1895
Book
On Shelf
Audiobook CD
Not Owned
eBooks
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Kindle
Available Online
eAudiobook
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Summary
'I hate to be thought men's property in that way'. Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her confident presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and when tragedy ensues,...
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1895
Book
Not Owned
eBooks
Available Online
eAudiobook
Available Online
Summary
Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the stunted, lecherous and demonic money-lender Daniel Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens's portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant...
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1896
Book
Checked Out
Audiobook CD
Not Owned
Audiobook CD - MP3
Not Owned
Large Print
Not Owned
Playaway
Not Owned
eBooks
Available Online
Kindle
Available Online
eAudiobook
Available Online
Summary
Jane Austen's first published novel, sparkling with wit and artistry, captures the inequities of birth, class, and marriage faced by the sisters Dashwood. Published in 1811, Sense and Sensibility has delighted generations of readers with its masterfully crafted portrait of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Forced to leave their home after their father's death, Elinor and Marianne must rely on making good marriages as their means of support....
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1897
Book
On Shelf
Audiobook CD
Not Owned
eAudiobook
Checked Out
Summary
Harvey Cheyne, the son of a millionaire, learns lessons about life, responsibility, determination, and self-reliance when, saved from drowning by a fishing schooner, he is forced to share the life and hard work of his rescuers.
19) Dracula
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1897
Book
On Shelf
CD + Book
Not Owned
Audiobook CD
Not Owned
Large Print
Not Owned
Playaway
Not Owned
eBooks
Available Online
Kindle
Available Online
eAudiobook
Available Online
Summary
First published in 1897, Dracula by Bram Stoker has become the standard against which all other vampire stories are compare and the inspiration for countless film and stage adaptations. Indeed, the name "Dracula" has been synonymous with the Undead for at least a century, and the original novels till has the power to chill. Come then to Castle Dracula, hidden in the forbidding peaks of the Carpathian Mountains, where an undying creature of evil casts...
20) What Maisie knew
Author
Earliest Publication Date
1897
Book
On Shelf
eBooks
Available Online
Summary
Classic fiction. After her parents' bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother and vain father, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. Maisie - solitary, observant and wise beyond her years - is drawn into an increasingly entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal, until she is finally compelled to choose her own future. What Maisie Knew is a subtle yet devastating portrayal of...
