The "Little Nugget" of the title is one Ogden Ford, a spoilt, unpleasant child of overindulgent, wealthy parents; he is so dubbed due to his immense ransom value, being a prime target for kidnappers. The novel revolves around numerous schemes to...
Awe and exhiliration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, Nabokov’s most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the...
The Professor is Charlotte Bronte's first novel, in which she audaciously inhabits the voice and consciousness of a man, William Crimsworth. Like Jane Eyre he is parentless; like Lucy Snowe in Villette he leaves the certainties of England to...
This facsimile of Melville's historical novel appears in a paperback classroom edition, with a commentary by Hennig Cohen. "Israel Potter" is the story of a neglected hero of the American...
Seemingly the simplest of stories — a passing anecdote of village life — Rock Crystal opens up into a tale of almost unendurable suspense. This jewel-like novella by the writer that Thomas Mann praised as "one of the most extraordinary, the most...
Separated from his wife Irene for some years now, Soames Forsyte has resigned himself to the fact that she's never coming back. But as he grows older and richer, he yearns for an heir. When he confronts Irene, the raw wounds of his past passion are...
Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe’s tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century...
A. J. Cronin’s latest novel is a devastating one—more realistic than any he has ever written. In The Judas Tree, the author of The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years tells an engrossing story of a man beset...