Maxime, a rich and idle bachelor, intrudes on her independent existence and offers his love and the comforts of marriage. A provincial tour puts distance between them and enables Renée, in a moving series of letters and meditations, to resolve alone the struggle between her need to be loved, and her need to have a life and work of her own.

    What he hasn't counted on is having to deal with a criminal conspiracy whose purposes are not at all clear, and events take an unexpected turn as Theodore and Nella play detective. Replete with evil villains, physical dangers, and secret passages, The Grand Babylon Hotel is a mesmerizing thriller that will be enjoyed by mystery lovers everywhere. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

    Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage, she happily exploits the attentions of four very different suitors. Will she bestow her hand upon the richest of them, or on the man she loves? Ethelberta Petherwin, alias Berta Chickerel, moves with easy grace between her multiple identities, cleverly managing a tissue of lies to aid her meteoric rise. In "The Hand of Ethelberta" (1876), Hardy drew on conventions of popular romances, illustrated weeklies, plays, fashion plates, and even his wife's diary in this comic story of a woman in control of her destiny.

    She thinks she sees through everyone and rules over a family of dependents with knowing cynicism. But there are two people in Redborough who resist her. One is Hester, a young relation with a personality as strong as Catherine's, and as determined to find a role for herself. The other is Edward, who Catherine treats like a son. Conflict between the young and the old is inevitable, and in its depiction of the complex relationships that develop between the three principal characters, Hester is a masterpiece of psychological realism. In exploring the difficulty of understanding human nature, it is also a compulsive story of financial and sexual risk-taking that inevitably results in a searing climax.Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists, and this edition re-establishes her importance.

    Speaking out against the unjust French government, he takes refuge with a nomadic band of actors and assumes the role of the clown Scaramouche—a comic figure with a very serious message...Set during the French Revolution, this novel of swashbuckling romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual’s role in society—a story that has become Rafael Sabatini’s enduring legacy.With an Introduction by Gary Hoppenstand

    Porritt, a plumber, into "good service" on a country estate. One of the precipitating events was her having tea at the Ritz. Obviously didn't know her place! How worrisome! Lovely, thoughtful, full of marvelous characters and an abundance of humor.

    Written in 1906, it is a fore-runner to Doyle's earlier novel The White Company, and describes the early life of that book's hero Sir Nigel Loring in the service of King Edward III at the start of the Hundred Years' War.Dame History is so austere a lady that if one has been so ill-advised as to take a liberty with her one should hasten to make amends by repentance and confession. Events have been transposed to the extent of some few months in this narrative in order to preserve the continuity and evenness of the story. . . . -- Arthur Conan Doyle"Undershaw," November 30, 1905

    Clair was a contemporary of and acquainted with Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Ford Madox Ford, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Rebecca West, among others. She served as an ambulance driver in World War I, and produced poetry and fiction based on it. Her novel "Mr. Waddington of Wyk" was a social comedy. "The Three Sisters" is a study in female frustration, as the three sisters of the title try to come to terms with an isolated existence in a remote spot on the moors. It's Sinclair's first psychological novel, drawing upon her interest in the work of Sigmund Freud. It an early example of the transition from classic realism to modernism, Influenced by Imagism, and structured around epiphanies, images and symbols. It's also considered a precursor to her later novels "Mary Oliver" and "Harriet Frean," using knowledge of psychoanalysis and acknowledging the importance of the character's internal reality.

    Thomas Mann (1875-1955), was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, and "Tonio Kroger" occupies a central position in his spiritual and artistic development. A study of youth, it draws together many strands of his life and work: the duality of his parentage; his abhorrence of discipline; and the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner on his early phase of writing.

    Preface by André Gide. Translated by Stuart Gilbert.

    But Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make his own way in the world. His adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray an extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys; the slow-witted orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas; and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummles and their daughter, the 'infant phenonenon'. Like many of Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterised by his outrage at cruelty and social injustice, but it is also a flamboyantly exuberant work, revealing his comic genius at its most unerring.

    The secret marriage of Cymbeline’s daughter, Imogen, triggers much of the action, which includes villainous slander, homicidal jealousy, cross-gender disguise, a deathlike trance, and the appearance of Jupiter in a vision.Cymbeline displays unusually powerful emotions with a tremendous charge. Like some of Shakespeare’s other late work—especially The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest—it is an improbable story lifted into a nearly mythic realm.

    By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in the Mortmain household, not the least of which is that Cassandra is deeply, hopelessly, in love.

    The few people who saw it from charabancs on morning or evening or circular drives said: “Isn’t it peaceful?” or “Isn’t it quiet?”. And some said they thought it was a lovely place to be buried in, but while they were alive they preferred a place with more life, if you knew what they meant.The unlikely heroine of this delightful comedy of manners is Jocelyn Renshawe, young widow of the local squire, “a specimen of human cabbage” who “fitted into her surroundings so completely that she was hardly noticeable.” But she’s about to be noticed a bit more—by her jaded, much-widowed mother Ermyntrude, who breezes in on the look-out for her next conquest; by her aunt and mother-in-law, who have decided she should marry Colonel Tidmarsh, an elderly (and extremely dull) retired Army man; and by Gervase Blythe, a mysterious acquaintance of Colonel Tidmarsh’s, who arrives in town and rescues Jocelyn from a rainstorm before coming under suspicion as a jewel thief.One is safe in assuming that Jocelyn is about to leave her mouldering existence behind, but how she does so is the sparkling, cheerful plot of Much Dithering.

    Sarah Burton, the fiery young headmistress of the local girls' school; Mrs Beddows, the district's first alderwoman—based on Holtby's own mother; and Robert Carne, the conservative gentleman-farmer locked in a disastrous marriage—with whom the radical Sarah Burton falls in love. Showing how public decisions can mold the individual, this story offers a panoramic and unforgettable view of Yorkshire life.