Alexandra, daughter of a Swedish immigrant farmer in Nebraska, inherits the family farm and finds love with an old friend.

In these three short stories, �emile Zola presents characters in search of fulfillment--romantic, religious, and financial. Read together, they give us an extraordinary depiction of sexual mores. When the apparently angelic Th�er�ese commits murder, she offers sexual favors to a petty clerk if he will dispose of the body; the pregnant Flavie manipulates a neighbor's interest in her dowry to arrange a shotgun wedding; and churchgoing women find...

Once the red rash appears, it is too late. The victims die within hours, their rapidly decomposing bodies spreading the disease in the dust. Art, science, and learning die with them while the few survivors degenerate into feral clans. This story takes place in 2073, sixty years after the great pandemic of 2013.A former professor of literature-now a dirty old man in goatskin-tells his incredulous and uncomprehending grandsons, "I am the last man who...

The astonishing memoir of a free man who was sold into slavery in Louisiana where he was kept for 12 years--a powerful, riveting condemnation of slavery, and a story soon to be introduced to a new audience through a major filmTricked by two men offering him a job as a musician in New York state in 1841, Solomon Northup was instead drugged and kidnapped. Threatened with death, Northup was forced to assume a new name and fake past. Taken to Louisiana...

Published in 1904, this forgotten classic is sci-fi and dystopia at its best, written by the creator and master of the genreFollowing extensive research in the field of "growth," Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood light upon a new mysterious element, a food that causes greatly accelerated development. Initially christening their discovery "The Food of the Gods," the two scientists are overwhelmed by the possible ramifications of their creation....

Critically acclaimed when first published in France in 1946, and now in a new translation, this is a lightly fictionalized account of a true story of a Jewish family's desperate attempts to lie low in a Nazi-dominated World War II FranceHaving emigrated from Budapest and Warsaw respectively, Nathalie and Ladislas Gara originally came to Paris to seek the university educations that their Jewish religion barred them from in their home countries. However,...

Do you know your abbess from your elbowshaker? Originally printed as a guide to street slang for men of quality, this reference guide will enrich your vocabulary with vulgar witticisms fashionable more than 200 years ago.The avowed purpose of this dictionary was to give men "of fashion" an insight into the inappropriate language of the street. Read in modern times it is by turn uproariously funny and deeply confusing and yet certain truths have remained--the...

Written in a series of letters to the daughter of a friend, Love and Friendship tells of a young girl's path to betrayal, by way of a seemingly ecstatic marriage. It is accompanied by The Three Sisters, another expertly crafted epistolary novel. When a noble youth arrives unannounced to request the hand of the matchless Laura, it seems their future is one of contentment and bliss-that is until his family learn of the marriage and, one by one, reject...

A 1638 work of erotic fiction features nun-to-nun dialogues in the sexual arts "Is it right that a girl so accomplished be secluded as you are? No, no, my child, I want to share with you my most secret habits, and to give you a true notion of the deeds of a wise nun." This landmark erotic novel salaciously presents the education, one might say indoctrination, of green Catholic nun Sister Agnes at the hands of her...