The Deep South of the late 1950's was another country: a land of lynchings, segregated lunch counters, whites-only restrooms, and a color line etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. White journalist John Howard Griffin, working for the black-owned magazine Sepia, decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a southern white man for the disenfranchised...

"This 'collection of King's shorter work is a hefty sampler from all stages of his career, and demonstrates the range of his abilities....There are several stories that must rank among King's best.'"

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America-an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their own time in a work which endures...

"Presented as a miraculous cure-all, Tono-Bungay is in fact nothing other than a pleasant-tasting liquid with no positive effects. Nonetheless, when the young George Ponderevo is employed by his uncle Edward to help market this ineffective medicine, he finds his life overwhelmed by its sudden success. Soon the worthless substance is turned into a formidable fortune as society becomes convinced of the merits of Tono-Bungay through a combination of...

Satirizes the manners of the American Middle West. The story of Carol Kennicott who, to be accepted, must adapt to the ways of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. This novel attacks conformism, commercialism, moneygrubbing and the decline in what the author saw as the American ideals of freedom and respect for individuality.

A depiction of life in London in 1984 under a totalitarian regime. Orwell's best-known work of unrelenting dystopian realism warns against totalitarianism. The story is told from the point of view of Winston Smith, a functionary of the Ministry of Truth whose work involved the "correction" of all records each time the "Big Brother" decided that the truth had changed.

In Washington Square (1880), Henry James reminisces about the New York he had known thirty years before as he tells the story of Catherine Sloper and her fortune-seeking suitor Morris Townsend. This perceptively drawn human drama is James' most accessible work and an enduring literary triumph. The plot of Washington Square has the simplicity of old-fashioned melodrama: a plain-looking, good-hearted young woman, the only child of a rich widower, is...

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Mary Balogh's The Secret Mistress.
Mary Balogh has no equal when it comes to capturing the complex, irresistible passions between men and women. Her classic novel, The Secret Pearl, is one of the New York Times bestselling author’s finest–a tale of temptation and seduction, of guarded hearts and raw emotion…and of a love so powerful it will take your breath away….
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Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally powerful, vivid, and unforgettable re-creation of the Western novel, which Clark transmuted into a universal story about good and evil, individual and community,...

A Desperate Lord...
As rebel, soldier, hero, and spy, Kenneth Wilding had never known defeat. But nothing can save his heritage when he returns from the wars to an empty title and a ravaged estate. Nothing—until a stranger offers a devil's bargain: financial salvation in return for Kenneth's special subversive skills. Reluctantly Kenneth enters the household of the greatest artist in England to unmask a terrible crime.

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