Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...
A startling and haunting vision of the world, 1984 is so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the influence of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.

The Master of Irony Readers the world over recognize O. Henry as the best short story writer of the early twentieth century. Widely known as a master of irony, O. Henry also displays here dazzling wordplay and a wry combination of pathos and humor.

A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman, Lucy, in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century.

Young and imaginative Alice follows a hasty rabbit underground and comes face-to-face with some of the strangest adventures and most fantastic characters in all literature. The mad Hatter, the diabolical Queen of Hearts, the grinning Cheshire-Cat, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee could only have come from that master of sublime nonsense Lewis Carroll. In this brilliant satire of rigid Victorian society, Carroll also illuminates the fears, anxieties, and complexities of growing up.

Clyde Griffiths finds his social-climbing aspirations and love for a rich and beautiful debutante threatened when his lower-class pregnant girlfriend gives him an ultimatum.

Leo Tolstoy's evocative tale of doomed love--one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. Upon it's publication, Anna Karenina startled the world with its powerful portrayal of the human need for love and happiness weighed against the rigid demands of society. Its heroine, the sensual, rebellious Anna, renounces a respectable yet stifling marriage for an extramarital affair that offers a taste of passion even as it ensnares her in a trap for destruction. Her story contrasts with that of Levin, a young, self-doubting agnostic who takes a different path to fulfillment and finds faith and happiness in an age of repression. Anna Karenina has been called Tolstoy's spiritual autobiography. Anna and Levin personify his lifelong struggle to reconcile his physical desires and intellectual ideals in order to lead a more meaningful existence. Translated by David Magarshack

Bawdy and exotic, "Arabian Nights" feature the wily, seductive Scheherazade, who saves her own life by telling tales of magical transformation, genies and wishes, flying carpets and fantastical journeys, terror and passion to entertain and appease the brutal King Shahryar.

First introduced in the West in 1704, the stories of "The Thousand and One Nights" are most familiar to American readers in sanitized children's versions. This modern edition, based on Richard F. Burton's unexpurgated translation, restores the sensuality and lushness of the original Arabic. Here are the famous adventures of Sindbad, "All Baba and the Forty Thieves, " and "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp." Here too are less familiar stories, such as "Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma, " a delightful early version of "The Taming of the Shrew, " and "The Wily Dalilah and her Daughter Zaynab, " a hilarious tale about two crafty women who put an entire city of men in their place. Intricate and imaginative, these stories-within-stories told over a thousand and one nights continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries.

Volume two in a collection of tales representing distinctive genres- from fairy tales to erotica-revealing the customs and societies in the medieval Middle East, as told by the mythic Sheherazade.

On October 2, 1872, an English gentleman makes a remarkable wager: He can travel around the entire world in a mere eighty days. Thus begins Jules Verne's classic novel, which remains unsurpassed in sheer storytelling entertainment. Phileas Fogg and his faithful manservant, Passepartout, embark on a fantastic journey into a world filled with surprises, danger, and beauty--from the shores of India, where the travelers rescue the beautiful wife of a rajah from ritual sacrifice, to the rugged American frontier, where their train is ambushed by an angry band of Sioux. With twenty thousand pounds at stake, Fogg's mission is complicated by an incredible case of mistaken identity that sends a Scotland Yard detective in hot pursuit in what becomes a riveting race against time and an action-packed odyssey into the unknown.

Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder and its consequences--an unparalleled tale of suspense set in the midst of nineteenth-century Russia's troubled transition to the modern age. In the slums of czarist St. Petersburg lives young Raskolnikov, a sensitive, intellectual student. The poverty he has always known drives him to believe that he is exempt from moral law. But when he puts this belief to the test, he suffers unbearably. Crime and punishment, the novel reminds us, grow from the same seed.

Complete and unabridged, Don Quixote is the epic tale of the man from La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Their picaresque adventures in the world of seventeenth-century Spain form the basis of one of the great treasures of Western literature.

"Comedies," as one of William Shakespeare's contemporaries wrote, "begin in trouble and end in peace." This is certainely true of the four masterworks selected for this collection, each of which represents a significant stage in the development of the world's greatest dramatist. Reading these plays, we sample the whole comic spectrum of the Elizabethan world—from the satiric comedy that portrays a world of people whose unreasonable behavior is ludicrous and in need of reform to the romantic comedy that takes us into a dreamlike holiday world whose inhabitants, for all their folly, are still endearing characters.

The greatest works of tragedy from the Bard, this book features "Hamlet, Othello, King Lear" and "Macbeth".

Three horror icons come together in one indispensable tome--with an introduction by Stephen King. A young adventurer succumbs to the night world of a diabolic count. A man of medicine explores his darker side only to fall prey to it. They are legendary tales that have held readers spellbound for more than a century. The titles alone--Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde--have become part of a universal language that serves to put a monster's face on the good-and-evil duality of our very human nature. And the authors--Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Robert Louis Stevenson--equally as mythic, are still possessed of an inventive and subversive power that can shake a reader to this day with something far more profound than fear. They gave root to the modern horror novel, and like the creatures they invented, they've achieved immortality.

Based on the life of her brother, this unforgettable book chronicles the life and times of Jacob Flanders-and remains an important work in the development of the novel form, and a shining example of Woolf's genius and literary daring.

With her 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë created one of the most unforgettable heroines of all time. Jane Eyre is an orphan, penniless and plain, but full of courage and spirit. She has endured incredible hardship to secure her humble status as a governess in the household of her brooding employer, Mr. Rochester. Jane’s sharp wit and defiant nature meet with Rochester’s sardonic temperament. The two become enmeshed in a deep, intense bond. But Rochester has a terrible secret—a remnant from his past that could threaten any hope of happiness with his only love.
An unconventional love story that broadened the scope of romantic fiction, Jane Eyre is ultimately the tale of one woman’s fight to claim her independence and self-respect in a society that has no place for her.

Mansfield Park is named for the magnificent, idyllic estate that is home to the wealthy Bertram family and that serves as a powerful symbol of English tradition and stability. The novel s heroine, Fanny Price a poor relation living with the Bertrams is acutely conscious of her inferior status and yet she dares to love their son Edmund from afar. With five marriageable young people on the premises, the peace at Mansfield cannot last. Courtships, entertainments, and intrigues throw the place into turmoil, and Fanny finds herself unwillingly competing with a dazzlingly witty and lovely rival.

This magnificent reconstruction of Napoleon’s life and legend, written by a distinguished Oxford scholar, is based on intimate documents—including the personal letters of Marie-Louise and the decoded diaries of Grand Marshal Bertrand, who accompanied Napoleon to his final exile on St. Helena. It has been hailed as the most important single-volume work in Napoleonic literature.

This collection showcases Dostoyevsky's evolving outlook on man's fate. The compelling works presented here were written at distinct periods in the author's life, at decisive moments in his groping for a political philosophy and a religious answer.
"Includes: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, and selections from The House of the Dead."

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Its publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history-never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed.

With the three works included in this volume--Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and Lycidas--Milton placed himself next to Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer as one of the greatest literary genius in history.

Spirited Elizabeth Bennet is one of a family of five daughters, and with no male heir, the Bennet estate must someday pass to their priggish cousin William Collins. Therefore, the girls must marry well—and thus is launched the story of Elizabeth and the arrogant bachelor Mr. Darcy, in a novel renowned as the epitome of romance and wit. Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s masterwork, an entertaining portrait of matrimonial rites and rivalries, timeless in its hilarity and its honesty.

Outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor comes alive in this classic epic of the Scottish borderlands. The narrative follows the adventures of Frank Osbaldistone, a businessman's son who falls out of favor with his father and is sent to stay in Scotland.

This epic of urban life tells of small- town heroine Carrie Meeber, adrift in an indifferent Chicago. Setting out, she has nothing but a few dollars and an unspoiled beauty. Hers is a story of struggle? from sweatshop to stage success?and of the love she inspires in an older, married man whose obsession with her threatens to destroy him.

Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Set amid the vibrant colors and sounds of the African jungle, this classic work has beckoned generations of readers toward a glorious journey of pure adventure. This is the story of the ape-man Tarzan, raised in the wild, and how he learns the secrets of the jungle to survive. When his paradise is invaded by white men, Tarzan’s life changes.
The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope
In the mythical kingdom of Ruritania, Rudolf Rassendyll is called upon to impersonate the abducted heir to the throne—and he soon finds himself engaged to a beautiful princess whom he can love only while living a lie. Between its vivid emotion and unflagging action, The Prisoner of Zenda is the ultimate reading experience for those who seek to escape into a world of danger, daring, and noble deeds.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
Take a lighthearted, nostalgic trip to a simpler time, seen through the eyes of a very special boy named Tom Sawyer. It is a dreamlike summertime world of hooky and adventure, pranks and punishment, villains and first love, filled with memorable characters. Adults and young readers alike continue to enjoy this delightful classic of the promise and dreams of youth from one of America’s most beloved authors.

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
He has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a barrel. He’s Huck Finn—liar, sometime thief, and rebel against respectability. But when Huck meets a runaway slave named Jim, his life changes forever. On their exciting flight down the Mississippi aboard a raft, the boy nobody wanted matures into a young man of courage and conviction. As Ernest Hemingway said of this glorious novel, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”

Oscar Wilde s infamous wit, taste for scandal, and gift for revealing the hypocrisies of fashionable society are on display here in this collection of his finest plays. A genius both of and ahead of his time, he built his craft on the eternal questions of right and wrong with pithy dialogue as fresh today as when it was written.

The Bhagavad-Gita is the Gospel of Hinduism, and one of the great religious classics of the world. Its simple, vivid message is a daily inspiration in the lives of millions throughout the world and has been so for countless generations.
Here is a distinguished translation that can be read by every person, not as an archaic monument to an ancient culture, but as a living contemporary message that touches the most urgent personal and social problems.

From the awe-inspiring story of the Creation to the defeats and triumphs of the Children of Israel and the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, here are the greatest accounts from the greatest book ever written, presented in an accessible form for contemporary readers. Enhanced with annotations, Paul Roche's brilliant retelling of these stories is at once impeccably accurate and vibrantly rendered. He brings to life the saga of Joseph and the coat of many colors, the drama of the fall of Jericho, the heroism of a young David fighting Goliath and the lust of an older David for Bathsheba, the glory and wisdom of Solomon, the bravery of Judith, the dark despair of Job, the faith of Daniel in the lion's den, the joy of the Nativity, and the miracle of the Resurrection. These are just a few of the many great biblical stories presented in this masterful translation by a distinguished poet and scholar.

The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London s vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness classics.

The Call of the Wild features a gentle domestic dog driven by the cruelty of man to abandon civilization and return to the wilderness. By contrast, White Fang tells the story of a magnificent wolf dog born wild and free who struggles to survive and is transformed from a ferocious beast to a blessed wolf, capable of great, uncompromising love. Each novel is filled with action and suspense.

The best of American short fiction.
Spanning over 100 years of literary history, here are 33 of the finest short stories by Washington Irving; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Edgar Allan Poe; Herman Melville; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Bret Harte; Bayard Taylor; Rose Terry Cooke; Ambrose Bierce; Hamlin Garland; Mary E. Wilkens Freeman; Henry James; Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Sarah Orne Jewett; Grace Elizabeth King; Harold Frederic; Kate Chopin; Stephen Crane; Edith Wharton; Mark Twain; Jack London; F. Hopkinson Smith; Zona Gale; O. Henry; Sherwood Anderson; Ernest Hemingway; John Dos Passos; Stephen Vincent Benet; Willa Cather; William Faulkner; James Thurber; F. Scott Fitzgerald; William Saroyan.

Explore the transcendent world of unity and ultimate beauty in Edgar Allan Poe's verse in this complete collection. Although best known for his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe was by nature and choice a poet. From his exquisite lyric "To Helen," to his immortal masterpieces, "Annabel Lee," "The Bells," and "The Raven," Poe stands beside the celebrated English romantic poets Shelley, Byron, and Keats, and his haunting, sensuous poetic vision profoundly influenced the Victorian giants Swinburne, Tennyson, and Rossetti. Today his dark side speaks eloquently to contemporary readers in poems such as "The Haunted Palace" and "The Conqueror Worm," with their powerful images of madness and the macabre. But even at the end of his life, Poe reached out to his art for comfort and courage, giving us in "Eldorado" a talisman to hold during our darkest moments--a timeless gift from a great American writer.

Leo Tolstoy combined detailed physical description with perceptive psychological insight to sweep aside the sham of surface appearances and lay bare man’s intimate gestures, acts, and thoughts. Murder and sacrifice…greed and devotion…lust and affection…vanity and love—one by one, in this volume of great stories, Tolstoy dissects the basic drives, emotions, and motives of ordinary people searching for self-knowledge and spiritual perfection.

Set during the French and Indian Wars, The Deerslayer vividly captures the essence of both the murderous humanity and the natural beauty that distinguished America’s founding. The last of Cooper’s famous Leatherstocking Tales, it is first chronologically in the frontier adventures of the backwoods scout Natty Bumppo. Amid a terrain largely inspired by Cooper’s own boyhood, Natty’s initiation in the moral codes of wilderness society is examined in what is, according to D. H. Lawrence, “the loveliest and best” of the Leatherstocking series.

• Plato: Apology, Crito and the Death of Socrates, from Phado
• Aristotle: Poetics
• St. Ansem: The ontological Proof of St. Ansem, from Proslogium
• St. Thomas Aquinas: St. Thomas’ Proofs of God’s Existence, from the SummaTheologica
• René Descartes: Meditations on the First Philosophy
• David Hume: An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
• John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism
• William James: The Will to Believe

Prince Myshkin, the idiot, is an almost comically innocent Christ figure in a land of sinners, one whose faith in beauty contrasts sharply with that of his society's.

Humans and gods wrestling with towering emotions. Men fighting to the death amid devastation and destruction. Perhaps the Western world’s first and best storyteller, Homer draws the reader in with bated breath. His masterful tale contains some of the most famous episodes in all of literature: the curse on the prophet Cassandra; the siege of Troy; the battle between Hector and Achilles; the face that launched a thousand ships; and of course, the deception of the Trojan Horse. To this day, the heroism and adventure of The Iliad have remained unmatched in song and story.

Mowgli, lost in the deep jungle as a child, is adopted into a family of wolves. Hunted by Shere Khan, the Bengal tiger, Mowgli is allowed to run with the wolf pack under the protection of Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the brown bear who teaches wolf cubs the Laws of the Jungle. Through his many adventures, Mowgli evolves from a man-cub to a just and compassionate human being who at last returns to join—perhaps to lead—his own kind.

The Last of the Mohicans, one of the world’s great adventure stories, dramatizes how the birth of American culture was intertwined with that of Native Americans. In 1757, as the English and the French war over American territory, the frontier scout Hawkeye—Natty Bumppo—risks his life to escort two sisters through hostile Huron country. Hawkeye enlists the aid of his Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas, and together they battle deception, brutality, and death in a thrilling story of loyalty, moral courage, and love.

A masterpiece of Western culture, this is the first attempt to link all the Greek myths in a cohesive whole to the Roman myths of Ovid's day. Horace Gregory, in this modern translation, turns his own poetic gifts toward a deft reconstruction of Ovid's ancient themes.

With little more than courage and ingenuity, five Union prisoners escaped the siege of Richmond-by hot-air balloon. They have no idea if they'll ever see civilization again-especially when they're swept off by a raging storm to the shores of an uncharted island.

The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories unites nine of master American humorist Mark Twain s most accomplished works. From tall tales of con men s tricks, such as the classic that brought him instant fame, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, to a man with no money (other than a 1,000,000 banknote that no one can cash), to an expose of greed and hypocrisy in perhaps his greatest short story, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, Twain showcases his notorious humor skewering policemen, clergymen, politicians, bankers, and others and displays his changing attitude toward human nature. The finale is the novella The Mysterious Stranger, a rarity for Mark Twain in which he turns his sardonic, freewheeling wit on eternal evil in a distant time and place and conjures a memorable, tormenting conclusion."

Homer's Odyssey has been called "the first novel," "the first expression of the mind in literary form," and "the best story ever written." Whether fans of suspense, fantasy or human drama, readers of all ages thrill to Homer's vibrant picture of Odysseus on his decade-long journey, as he meets the lotus-eaters, cunningly flees Cyclops, angers his gods, resists the sexy Sirens, narrowly escapes Scylla and Charybdis, averts his eyes from Medusa, docks in exotic cities--all the while struggling to make it home to his wife and son. Adventure on the high seas, legendary romance, tests of endurance, betrayal, heroism--the saga has all these and more, imagined by the most famous bard of all time

Vigorous, self-reliant, amazingly resourceful, and moral, Natty Bumppo is the prototype of the Western hero. A faultless arbiter of wilderness justice, he hates middle-class hypocrisy. But he finds his love divided between the woman he has pledged to protect on a treacherous journey and the untouched forest that sustains him in his beliefs. A fast-paced narrative full of adventure and majestic descriptions of early frontier life, Indian raiders, and defenseless outposts, The Pathfinder set the standard for epic action literature.

The adventures of the immortal Pickwick Club, headed by good Mr. Pickwick himself, have kept readers laughing for nearly two centuries. Following the intrepidly bumbling Pickwickians along the highways and byways of old England, Charles Dickens creates a vivid world of highwaymen, duels, lawsuits, jails, and hilarious romantic imbroglios—but a world too of deeply affecting human warmth and generosity.

The first volume in the famous Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers introduces Natty Bumppo, the quintessential American hunter and frontiersman who struggles to defend his cherished freedom.

Set in a provincial French town in 1827, this psychological masterpiece tells the tale of Julien Sorel, who, during the Bourbon Restoration, disregards all moral codes as he attempts to accumulate power. Reissue.

Indisputably the greatest fictional detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes lives on—in films, on television, and of course through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s inimitable craft. These twenty-two stories show Holmes at his brilliant best.

With an introduction by W.H. Auden and commentary from Helen Vendler, among others, this volume presents all of Shakeseare's non-dramatic poetry in one place.

So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey eight hundred thousand years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H. G. Wells’s successful career. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of tomorrow as well.