The stern and highminded hero, Adam Bede, loves the vain and selfish Hetty Sorrel, but their happiness is ruined when Hetty is seduced by a young squire.

A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...

The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly concerning a young Bohemian girl named Ántonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant.

A mischievous youth encounters a runaway slave and together they travel down the Mississippi in search of adventure.

In the spring of 1863, as he faces battle for the first time at Chancellorsville, Virginia, a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.

There is a legend among sailors of a fierce white whale, known to some as Moby Dick. This epic story is of Captain Ahab, a one-legged fanatic whose vengeance toward this mighty white whale ignites a mighty clash between good and evil.