This tale revolves around Fanny Price, who lives in poverty until being sent to live with her wealthy Aunt Bertram. While received warmly at first, she is soon discovering that her aunt is losing interest in her presence. What unfolds is a life of cold neglect and further trouble with a dramatic family in her new lifestyle.

Of all Jane Austen's books, Pride and Prejudice has earned a special place in the hearts of the reading public as her best-loved and most intimately known novel. From its famous opening sentence the story of the Bennet family and of the novel's two protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, told with a wit that its author feared might prove 'rather too light and bright, and sparkling', delights its most familiar readers as thoroughly as it does those who...

From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler's experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist's shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that...

A photo essay documenting ancient Rome and the people who lived there as revealed through the many artifacts they left behind, including shields, swords, tools, toys, cosmetics, and jewelry.

When Mr. Dashwood dies, he leaves his second wife and her three daughters at the mercy of his son and heir, John. John's wife convinces him to turn his step-mother and half-sisters out, and they move to a country cottage, rented to them by a distant relative. In their newly reduced circumstances Elinor and Marianne, the two eldest daughters, wrestle with ideas of romance and reality and their apparent opposition to each other. Elinor struggles

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The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about...

The acclaimed short story and novella collection by "a virtuoso of the dismal comedy of Soviet life"—and the basis for the HBO film PU-239 (The New York Times).
Ken Kalfus traverses a century of Russian history in tales that range from hair-raising to comic to fabulous. The astonishing title story follows a doomed nuclear power plant worker as he attempts to hawk plutonium in Moscow's black market. In "Budyonnovsk," a young...

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide & family rivalry that embodies the moral & spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime & Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, & profligacy. Significantly,...

Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. This Modern Library edition presents the acclaimed Samuel Putnam translation of the epic tale, complete with notes, variant readings, and an Introduction by the translator." Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being," said novelist Milan Kundera....