The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

The Devil's Dictionary (1906) is a work of satire by Ambrose Bierce. Although he is commonly remembered for his chilling short stories on the experiences of Civil War soldiers, Bierce was recognized in his day as a leading journalist and humorist who spent decades ruffling feathers and drawing laughter with his witty opinion columns, poems, and definitions. Toward the end of his career, he decided to compile these satirical definitions into a book,...

Here is the story of an intransigent young architect, Howard Roark, of his violent battle against a mindless status quo, and of his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who worships him yet struggles to defeat him. In order to build his kind of buildings according to his own standards, Roark must fight against every variant of human corruption.

When Professor Pierre Aronnax and harpoonist Ned Land join an expedition to hunt a fierce "whale" that has been sinking ships, they end up as captives of Captain Nemo, who prowls the sea in his magnificent submarine, the Nautilus. There, they discover a mysterious and sometimes dangerous underwater world.

Growing up as an orphan, Razumou adopted the belief that all of Russia was his family, a sentiment that he carries into his higher education. Because of this, when talks of revolution start arising in Russia, Razumou decides to stay neutral. However, this becomes increasingly difficult when most of his classmates start to express their ardent support for a revolution. Still, Razumou decides not to take a stand on either side. Since he feels all of...

Oliver Twist is born an orphan and grows up handed from bad position to worse. Eventually he ends up in the London street gang run by Fagin, who attempts to blacken the boy's pure soul in his service. Through chance and coincidence Oliver is restored to his mother's middle-class family, where he is shown love and comfort for the first time in his life. The villains' attempts to kidnap him back are foiled and all are transported or hanged.

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Originally a highly popular, long-running play (1904-1913) Peter Pan is the timeless classic about a magical young boy who refused to grow old. Published as a novel known as both Peter and Wendy and The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up in 1911, the story follows Peter's relationship with Wendy, where he eventually persuades her to join him in the fairy tale world of Neverland to be a mother to him and his friends The Lost Boys. But not all is safe in Neverland,...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 short story, The Yellow Wallpaper is a valuable piece of American feminist literature that reveals attitudes toward the psychological health of women in the nineteenth century. Diagnosed with "temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency" by her physician husband, a woman is confined to an upstairs bedroom. Descending into psychosis at the complete lack of stimulation, she starts obsessing over

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The captain of the HMS Bounty, William Bligh, was a competent seaman, but a harsh disciplinarian. This prompts his crew to mutiny, setting him adrift in the South Pacific. The crew returns to the tropical paradise of Tahiti, while Bligh survives an astounding journey back to England. This novel is based on the incredible true story.

A cautionary tale about the rise of fascism in the United States first published in 1935. During the presidential election of 1936, Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, observes with dismay that many of the people he knows support the candidacy of a fascist, Berzelius Windrip. When Windrip wins the election, he forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court, and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States...