"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta. At once retrospective and radically new, [this book] portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester Prynne...

The volume includes an introduction by Roger Luckhurst that considers the Gothic genre and vampire legend, discusses the vampire tale as sexual allegory, and outlines the social and cultural contexts that feed into the novel, including the New Woman, new technology, race, immigration, and religion. In addition, Luckhurst provides comprehensive explanatory notes that flesh out vampire mythology and historical allusions, plus an appendix featuring Stoker's...

"When a tornado hits Dorothy's home in the Kansas prairies, she and her dog, Toto, are whisked away to the magical Land of Oz. To return home, Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and seek help from the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. So, accompanied by the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, Dorothy sets out on a wild and magical adventure. This classic children's novel has been described as the first American...

The classic story of a boy who makes his own rules and the small Missouri town where he and his friends experience the adventures of a lifetime. Filled with schoolyard pranks, buried treasures, spooky caves, secret gangs, and grave robbers, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is entertainment of the highest order. The clever schemes of its eponymous hero--from tricking his friends into completing his chores to sneaking into his own funeral--are the stuff...

Recounts the story of a young English woman who is born in poverty in Newgate Prison and later becomes, by turn, a prostitute, a thief, a wife, and, finally, a wealthy penitent.

In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret. Charlotte Bronte's novel about the passionate love between Jane Eyre, a young girl alone in the world, and the rich, brilliant, domineering Rochester has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic, ever since...

A complex and profound book, The Tale of Two Cities explores the consequences of tyranny, fate and self-sacrifice. With much of the narrative played out in Paris, during the French Revolution Dickens examines the interplay between personal action, and the flow of history. Dr Manette, having travelled to Paris finds himself imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 brutal years, unable to see his kind and loving daughter Lucy. On his eventual return to London...

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out...

Tall, awkward, and lonely, Frankie Addams has a vivid imagination but no friends. She spends most of her time in the kitchen, pouring out her heart to Berenice, the gentle family cook and housekeeper. Frankie's jealousy of her brother's impending marriage, and her curious belief that she must accompany him and his bride on their honeymoon in order to belong, drives her to strange measures. She devises a desperate plan, reinventing herself as the seemingly...

A landmark in American fiction, Light in August published in 1932, explores Faulkner's central theme: the nature of evil. Joe Christmas-a man doomed, deracinated and alone-wanders the Deep South in search of an identity, and a place in society. After killing his perverted God-fearing lover, it becomes inevitable that he is, pursued by a lynch-hungry mob. Yet after the sacrifice, there is new life, a determined ray of light in Faulkner's complex and...