While guiding a small party of English settlers to the protection of a fort during the French and Indian War, Hawkeye, a frontier scout, and his two Indian friends, struggle against the evils of Uncas who desires a white maiden for his wife.

In London, Dr John Watson convalesces after his disastrous Afghan war experiences. Sharing rooms with an enigmatic, new acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes, their quiet bachelor life at 221B Baker Street is short-lived. A dead man is discovered in a grimy house in south-east London, his face contorted with horror and hatred. On the wall, the word 'rache' - German for 'revenge' - is written in blood, yet there are no wounds on the victim or signs of a struggle....

At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace (1868-9), Tolstoy entwines grand...

Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams
Afterword by T. H. Watkins
 
Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations...

"The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era of political greed and corruption that followed the American Civil War. This period is often referred to as "The Gilded Age" because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the era is exemplified through two fictional narratives; one of the Hawkins family, a poor family from Tennessee who try to get the government...

Emma Bovary becomes bored with her life and embarks on an affair.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Rudyard Kipling's Kim is the tale of an Irish orphan raised as an Indian vagabond on the rough streets of colonial Lahore. Young Kimball O'Hara's coming of age takes place in a world of high adventure, mystic quests, and secret games of espionage played out between the Russians and the British in the mountain passages of Asia. Kim is torn between his allegiance to the ascetic...

The last of the five Leatherstocking tales recalls Natty Bumppo's adventures as a young man among the Delaware Indians of New York.

The tale of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, and his struggles to save the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.

Written in the middle of the 14th century as the Bubonic Plague decimated the population of Europe, "The Decameron" is a satirical and allegorical collection of stories by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. Constructed as a series of "frame stories," or stories within a story, the narrative follows seven young women and three young men who take refuge in a secluded villa outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death. During ten evenings of their...