The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romanticexpressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and redroses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful incommunicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in thefoster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and heronly connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go,Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through theflowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with amysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in herlife. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from herpast, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for asecond chance at happiness.

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute.The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some ofMaugham's most brilliant characters - his fiance e Isabel whosechoice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, andElliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob.Maugham himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe hischaracters struggling with their fates.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) One of the most swiftly movingand unified of Charles Dickens's great novels, "Oliver Twist" isalso famous for its re-creation-through the splendidly realizedfigures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil BillSikes-of the vast London underworld of pickpockets, thieves,prostitutes, and abandoned children. Victorian critics took Dickensto task for rendering this world in such a compelling, believableway, but readers over the last 150 years have delivered analternative judgment by making this story of the orphaned OliverTwist one of its author's most loved works. This edition reprintsthe original Everyman's introduction by G. K. Chesterton andincludes twenty-four illustrations by George Cruikshank.

Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the BerlinWall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of amarriage, as witnessed by an outsider. Jeremy is the son-in-law ofBernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement beganalmost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep lovecould be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and Junecannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only tobe led back again and again to one terrifying encouner forty yearsearlier--a moment that, for June, was as devastating andirreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe inJeremy's own time. In a finely crafted, compelling examination ofevil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality ofciviliation's darkest moods--its black dogs--with the tensions thatboth create love and destroy it.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) By 1854, when Hard Times waspublished, Charles Dickens' magisterial progress as a writer hadcome to incorporate a many-sided, coherent vision of Englishsociety, both as it was and as he wished it to be. Hard Times. aclassic Dickensian story of redemption set in a North of Englandtown beset by industrialism, everywhere benefits from this vision -in the trenchancy of its satire, in its sweeping indignation atsocial injustice, and in the persistent humanity with which itsauthor enlivens his largest and smallest incidents.

In the tradition of Philippa Gregory's smart, transportingfiction comes this tale of dark suspense, love, and betrayal,featuring two star-crossed sisters, one lost and the othersearching. Bright and inquisitive, Hannah Powers was raised by afather who treated her as if she were his son. While her beautifuland reckless sister, May, pushes the limits of propriety in theirsmall English town, Hannah harbors her own secret: their father hasgiven her an education forbidden to women. But Hannah's secretserves her well when she journeys to colonial Maryland to reunitewith May, who has been married off to a distant cousin after hersexual misadventures ruined her marriage prospects in England. AsHannah searches for May, who has disappeared, she finds herselffalling in love with her brother-in-law. Alone in a wild,uncultivated land where the old rules no longer apply, Hannah isfreed from the constraints of the society that judged both her andMay as dangerous--too smart, too fearless, and too hungry for life.But Hannah

In this bestselling compilation of essays, written in theclear-eyed, uncompromising language for which he is famous, Orwelldiscusses with vigor such diverse subjects as his boyhoodschooling, the Spanish Civil War, Henry Miller, Britishimperialism, and the profession of writing.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Introduction by NicholasRance

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is abitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England betweenthe wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritationof his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothiccountry house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affairwith the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, shesets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waughat his most scathing. The action is set in the brittle social worldrecognizable from Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, darkened anddeepened by Waugh's own experience of sexual betrayal. As Tony isdriven by the urbane savagery of this world to seek solace in thewilds of the Brazilian jungle, "A Handful of Dust " demonstratesthe incomparably brilliant and wicked wit of one of the twentiethcentury's most accomplished novelists.

This complete collection includes all the published stories ofEudora Welty. There are forty-one stories in all, including theearlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The GoldenApples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previouslyuncollected stories. With a Preface written by the Authorespecially for this edition.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) From the Nobel Prize-winningauthor of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocationof an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people'slives together for more than fifty years. In the story ofFlorentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare hisundying love to the beautiful Fermina Daza, whom he lost to Dr.Juvenal Urbino so many years before, Garcia Marquez has created avividly absorbing fictional world, as lush and dazzling as a dreamand as real and immediate as our own deepest longings. Nowavailable for the first time in the Contemporary Classicsseries

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) "Northanger Abbey" is a perfectlyaimed literary parody that is also a withering satire of thecommercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turnof the nineteenth century. But most of all, it is the story of theinitiation into life of its naive but sweetly appealing heroine,Catherine Morland, a willing victim of the contemporary craze forGothic literature who is determined to see herself as the heroineof a dark and thrilling romance. When she is invited to NorthangerAbbey, the grand though forbidding ancestral seat of her suitor,Henry Tilney, she finds herself embroiled in a real drama ofmisapprehension, mistreatment, and mortification, until commonsense and humor-and a crucial clarification of Catherine'sfinancial status-resolve her problems and win her the approval ofHenry's formidable father. Written in 1798 but not published untilafter Austen's death in 1817, "Northanger Abbey" ischaracteristically clearheaded and strong, and infinitely subtle inits comedy.

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubbyLondon bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rentedroom, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "moneyworld" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind ofsecurity symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits inevery middle-class British window.

From the author of "Chatterton" and "Shakespeare: A Biography"comes a gripping novel set in London that re-imagines an infamous19th-century Shakespeare forgery. Charles and Mary Lamb, who willin time achieve lasting fame as the authors of "Tales fromShakespeare for Children," are still living at home, caring fortheir dotty and maddening parents. Reading Shakespeare is thesiblings' favorite reprieve, and they are delighted when anambitious young bookseller comes into their lives claiming topossess a 'lost' Shakespearea play. Soon all of London is eagerlyanticipating opening night of a star-studded production of the playnot knowing that they have all been duped by charlatan and afraud.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Introduction by CatherinePeters A panoramic satire of English society during the NapoleonicWars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's masterpiece. Atits center is one of the most unforgettable characters innineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, acharmingly ruthless social climber who is determined to leavebehind her humble origins, no matter the cost. Her more gentlefriend Amelia, by contrast, only cares for Captain George Osborne,despite his selfishness and her family's disapproval. As both womenmove within the flamboyant milieu of Regency England, the politicalturmoil of the era is matched by the scheming Becky's sensationalrise--and its unforeseen aftermath. Based in part upon Thackeray'sown love for the wife of a friend, Vanity Fair portrays thehypocrisy and corruption of high society and the dangers ofunrestrained ambition with epic brilliance and scathing wit.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) An immediate success on itspublication in 1726, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was read, as John Gay putit, "from the cabinet council to the nursery." Dean Swift's greatsatire is presented here in its unexpurgated entirety.

""He is a religious writer; he is a comic realist; he knows whateverything feels like, how everything works. He is putting togethera body of work which in substantial intelligent creation willeventually be seen as second to none in our time."--William H.Pritchard, The Hudson Review, reviewing Museums and Women (1972)" Aharvest and not a winnowing, "The Early Stories" preserves almostall of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and1975. The stories are arranged in eight sections, of which thefirst, "Olinger Stories," already appeared as a paperback in 1964;in its introduction, Updike described Olinger, Pennsylvania, as "asquare mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by abend in the central avenue that compels some side streets todeviate from the grid pattern." These eleven tales, whose heroesage from ten to over thirty but remain at heart Olinger boys, arefollowed by groupings titled "Out in the World," "Married Life,"and "Family Life," tracing a common American trajectory. Familyl

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Though James Joyce began thesestories of Dublin life in 1904 when he was twenty-two and completedthem in 1907, their unconventional themes and language led torepeated rejections by publishers and delayed publication until1914. In the century since, his story "The Dead" has come to beseen as one of the most powerful evocations of human loss andlonging that the English language possesses; all the other storiesin "Dubliners" are as beautifully turned and as greatly admired.They remind us once again that James Joyce was not only modernism'schief innovator but also one of its most intimate and poeticwriters. In this edition the text has been revised in keeping withJoyce's wishes, and the original versions of "The Sisters,""Eveline," and "After the Race" have been made available in anappendix, along with Joyce's suppressed preface to the 1914 editionof "Dubliners."

One of the most celebrated writers of our time gives us hisfirst cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched,interconnected stories in which music is a vivid and essentialcharacter. A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turningfrom the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring tastein music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . Astruggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failingmarriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted,underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe thatplastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whosetutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . . Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of thetwo—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, inone way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment ofreckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes justeluding their grasp. An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable fo

Dumas's most popular novel has long been a favorite withchildren, and its swashbuckling heroes are well known from many afilm and TV adaptation. Set in 17th-century France, this tale ofthe adventures of D'Artagnan and the three musketeers is the finestexample of its author's brilliantly inventive storytellinggenius.

"The Age of Innocence," one of Edith Wharton's mostrenowned novels and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize,exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibilitythrough the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York.The novel follows Newland Archer, a young, aristocratic lawyerengaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. When May'sdisgraced cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her marriage toa Polish Count, her worldly, independent nature intrigues Archer,who soon falls in love with her. Trapped by his passionlessrelationship with May and the social conventions that forbid arelationship with Ellen, Archer finds himself torn betweenpossibility and duty. Wharton's profound understanding of hercharacters' lives makes the triangle of Archer, May, and Ellen cometo life with an irresistible urgency. A wry, incisive look at theways in which love and emotion must negotiate the complex rules ofhigh society, "The Age of Innocence" is one of Wharton's finest,most illuminative w