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"Les Miserables is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. First published in France in 1862, it is Victor Hugo's greatest achievement--the ultimate tale of redemption. Former prisoner Jean Valjean struggles to live virtuously after an unexpected act of forgiveness by a kindly bishop changes his life. His righteous actions change people's lives in surprising ways and culminate in romance between two young people. Now available...
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Washington Square (1881), by Henry James, tells the story of Catherine Sloper, the plain, obedient daughter of the widowed, well-to-do Dr. August Sloper of Washington Square. When a handsome, feckless man-about-town proposes to Catherine, her father forbids the marriage because he believes the man to be after Catherine's fortune and future inheritance. The conflict between father, daughter, and suitor provokes consequences in the lives of all three...
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Pride and Prejudice is a story set in the English countryside outside of London during the early 19th century which centers on the life of Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five sisters who are all unmarried. When a wealthy and sociable young gentleman, Charles Bingley, rents the nearby manor of Netherfield Park the opportunity to find husbands presents itself. While attending a ball the Bennets meet Charles Bingley and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy...
4) Dracula
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In a gripping and sensational work of classic Gothic fiction we discover the infamous Count Dracula. When English lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to an obscure town called Transylvania, the goal of his visit was most certainly not to do business with a vampire. As he makes his way through the village square, Harker is overcome with an eerie sensation that the Count is not who he says he is. Strewn with various charms and trinkets thrown at him from...
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Considered one of the world's greatest novels, this controversial classic offers modern readers a vivid, timeless depiction of the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution. Includes a new Introduction. Reissue.
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Coming-of-age
OBD Audiobook Classics - Adult
OBD Christmas Chapter/ Nonfiction Books - Youth
OBD Oprah's Book Club - Adult
OBD Audiobook Classics - Adult
OBD Christmas Chapter/ Nonfiction Books - Youth
OBD Oprah's Book Club - Adult
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"Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters...
7) Villette
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With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully...
8) Ethan Frome
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This amply annotated edition of Wharton's 1911 classic novella includes textual notes and documents, including Wharton's preface, letters, reviews, and early short story, "Mrs. Manstey's View." It is accompanied by the editor's comprehensive introduction and a wide array of readings on topics central to the novella: tragedy, health and fitness, sex and marriage, and turn-of-the-century New England poverty and isolation. Of her twenty-five novels and...
9) Lord Jim
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The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat,...
10) Jane Eyre
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In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret. Charlotte Bronte's novel about the passionate love between Jane Eyre, a young girl alone in the world, and the rich, brilliant, domineering Rochester has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic, ever since...
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Emily Bront's only novel, a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence, the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights is the definitive edition of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place...
12) Winesburg, Ohio
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Profiles the people of a small midwestern town in the early 1900s, revealing the consequences of human misunderstanding.
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"Clyde Griffiths was born poor and is poorly educated, but his prospects begin to improve when he is offered a job by a wealthy uncle who owns a shirt factory. Soon he achieves a managerial position, and despite being warned to stay away from the women he manages, he becomes involved with Roberta, a poor factory worker who falls in love with him. At the same time, he catches the eye of Sondra, the glamorous socialite daughter of another factory owner,...
14) War and peace
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"'...not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle'- Leo Tolstoy. Striking a balance between philosophical discussion and compelling story-telling, War and Peace transcends the restrictions that Tolstoy perceived in the conventional novel. Set in Russia during the Napoleonic era, this epic novel follows the fortunes of five aristocratic Russian families over the course of the French invasion. Tolstoy's timeless portrayal...
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This classic novel tells the story, in letters, of the beautiful and virtuous Clarissa Harlowes pursuit and abduction by the rake Robert Lovelace. The epistolary structure allows Richardson to create layered and fully realized characters, as well as an intriguing uncertainty about the reliability of the various narrators. As a heroine, Clarissa is both rational and passionate, self-sacrificing and defiant, and her tragic story has gripped readers...
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"Harvey Cheyne, the pampered fifteen-year-old son of an American millionaire, is sailing to Europe when he falls overboard. Saved from drowning by a New England fishing schooner, he finds his rough new companions unimpressed by his wealth and shocked by his ignorance. He will have to prove his worth in the only way the captain and crew will accept: through the slow and arduous mastery of skills upon which their common survival depends."--Back cover....
17) Rob Roy
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By turns thrilling and comic, Rob Roy contains Scott's most sophisticated treatment of the Scottish Highlands as an imaginary space where the modern and the primitive come together. Newly edited from the 'Magnum Opus' text of 1830, this edition includes full explanatory notes and a critical introduction exploring the originality and complexity of Scott's achievement.
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Orphaned as a babe in the African jungle, tiny John Clayton, the only child of Lord and Lady Greystoke, is rescued by a tribe of great apes. The child, now named "Tarzan," grows to manhood in this savage world among the fierce anthropoids. Aided by his keen knife and innate intelligence, Tarzan ascends to become king of the apes, able to face any peril and conquer all foes. When men come to Tarzan's jungle, they bring danger that is motivated by greed...
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"In 1896 ... Sarah Orne Jewett published her finest work, The Country of the Pointed Firs, about a woman writer who retreats one summer to Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacoast town, to find seclusion to do her work. In the novel and stories collected here, Jewett explores the world of the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous coastal towns, offering a detailed view of lives molded by the long Maine winters, by the surrounding rock-filled fields, and by...