A story of the road, a genre at which Dickens excelled. Little Nell and her grandfather, pursued relentlessly through England by the evil and loathsome dwarf Quilp, meet a fascinating variety of vividly portrayed characters, including Mrs. Jarley, and Codlin and Short, the Punch and Judy men.

"Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales brings together an unforgettable group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, pilgrims who came from all ranks of society, from the crusading Knight and burly Miller to the worldly Monk and the famously lusty Wife of Bath. Their tales are as various as the tellers, including romance, bawdy comedy, beast fable, learned debate, parable, and Eastern adventure. The resulting collection gives us a set of characters so vivid...

A retelling of the adventures of the Saxon knight Ivanhoe in 1194, the year of Richard the Lion-Hearted's return from the Third Crusade.

Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family of the four March sisters living in a small New England community. Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of...

The story follows the adventures of a noble (hidalgo) named Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to become a knight-errant (caballero andante), reviving chivalry and serving his country, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood....

"Kidnapped from his California home and sold to prospectors embarked for the Yukon Gold Rush, Buck, a pampered house dog who has known comfort all of his life, finds himself thrust into a brutal world of cruel human masters, savage fellow sled-dogs, and an unforgiving wilderness full of hardship and misery. In the wilds, Buck earns the love of a man as rugged as he is, and he reacquaints himself with his true animal nature, a noble heritage passed...

Humphrey Van Weydon is on his way to San Francisco when his ship crashes into another boat in the fog. Fate lands him on board a sealing schooner, The Ghost, bound for Japan, under the command of the hated Captain Wolf Larsen.

Upton Sinclair's muckraking masterpiece "The Jungle centers on Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant working in Chicago's infamous Packingtown. Instead of finding the American Dream, Rudkus and his family inhabit a brutal, soul-crushing urban jungle dominated by greedy bosses, pitiless conmen, and corrupt politicians. While Sinclair's main target was the meatpacking industry's appalling labor conditions, the reading public was most outraged by the...

Since its publication in 1897 Dracula has enthralled generations of readers with the alluring malevolence of its undead Count, the most famous vampire in literature. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, his novel helped catapult them to iconic stature, spawning a genre of stories and movies that flourishes to this day. A century of imitations has done nothing to diminish the fascination of Stoker's tale of a suave and chilling monster as he...