As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--To arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power.

Step into the charming world of "Cranford" by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. This delightful novel invites you to a quaint English village, where the lives of its eccentric and endearing inhabitants are interwoven in a tapestry of humor, heartwarming moments, and social observations. Set in the early 19th century, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of Mary Smith, an outsider welcomed into the close-knit community. As she navigates the idiosyncrasies...

Collection of nine English short stories, the title story "The Man Who Would be King" tells the tale of an English man living in India and meets two travelers who decide to go to Kafiristan to overthrow the present king and become kings themselves.

Written by American author and dedicated abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Toms Cabin" is a poignant novel which shows the harsh reality of a slaves life in the 1800s. Uncle Tom, an African-American slave who believes in the power of Christian faith. The book would be a major contributor to the Civil War because its compelling portrayal of slaves as fellow human beings left little room for compromise: if slaves were indeed...

That's the product description for Blackstone Audio's excellent rendition of You Could Call It Murder, expertly voiced by Peter Berkrot, and we could leave it at that-but there's an interesting backstory to the book, and the Classic Crime Library seems a good place to share it with you. In 1961, Lawrence Block was living in New York and earning a living writing Midcentury Erotica and crime fiction. He'd just sold his first book under his own name,...

On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary...

Born in 1831, Isabella Bird, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes in 1872 'in search of health' and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel.

Imagine growing up among wolves, being friends with a panther and a bear, and hunting the most fearsome animal in the wild-the man-killing tiger Shere Khan. These are the stories of Mowgli ""the frog,"" a man-cub raised by wolves, and his journey to adulthood with the help of Baloo the bear, and Bagheera the black panther. The Jungle Book is collections of short stories. Each story begins with a few lines of poetry. The best known of these jungle...

"The colonel was right. You had to draw a line through mankind, a wavy line but a line, and on one side you had Good and on the other side you had Evil. There was good and bad in everyone, sure, and every shitheel was some mother's son, and it was all well and good to know this, but when push came to shove, it was just words; there was Good and Evil with no shades of gray and Judgment Day came seven time a week." Meet the Specialists, five good men,...

"If you're not part of the solution, you must be part of the problem." You heard that a lot in the early 1970s, when the country seemed to be teetering on the brink of revolutionary upheaval. Miles Dorn, living quietly in retirement in the U.S., had come a long way from his roots in Central Europe, leaving his past as an assassin and agent provocateur behind him. But as soon as he walks into his house and smells the smoke from a Turkish cigarette,...