Edmond Dantes has a perfect life. He is engaged to a beautiful woman and has just been named captain of a ship. But when three jealous friends conspire to destroy him, Dantes is locked away for life in the infamous Chateau d'If. In prison, Dantes learns of an island where vast treasure is hidden. He plots a daring escape, then uses the treasure to transform himself into the Count of Monte Cristo. Equipped with power, wealth, and disguise, he seeks...

Originally published as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, this book is considered a landmark in American fiction for introducing the modern short story form in America, The Sketch Book includes Washington Irving's most enduring works, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The collection also includes travel impressions and narratives featuring legends and folklore.

Oliver Goldsmith's 18th century novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" was so popular in Victorian times that it is mentioned in many classics of that era including George Eliot's "Middlemarch," Jane Austen's "Emma," Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", amongst others. It is the story of Dr. Charles Primrose, the titular Vicar, his wife Deborah and their six children who live an idyllic life in a country parish. The Vicar...

As James Thurber writes in his preface, "This book contains a selection of the stories and drawings the old boy did in his prime, a period which extended roughly from the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to the day coffee was rationed. He presents this to his readers with his sincere best wishes for a happy new world." The Thurber Carnival, which the Saturday Review called "one of the absolutely essential books of our time," was a phenomenal bestseller...

"Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832?1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters?Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March?detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Little Women was an immediate commercial and...

In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity -- powerfully imagined and written with a savage,...