The Ark

The foreman of a large cattle ranch on the Wyoming frontier lives by the honor code of the West even though it means helping lynch a friend or possibly losing the girl he is to marry.

""One of her greatest achievements, a book whose afterlife continues to inspire new generations of writers and readers." - The Guardian. This modernist masterpiece, originally published in 1925, chronicles a day in the life of an upper-class Englishwoman. Revolutionary in its psychological realism, the third-person narrative switches between Mrs. Dalloway and her counterpart, Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked World War I veteran. Woolf's stream-of-consciousness...

The Voyage Out is the debut novel written by Virginia Woolf, and it was first published in 1915. The novel is a precursor to Woolf s later, more experimental works and marks the beginning of her literary career. Set in the early 20th century, The Voyage Out tells the story of Rachel Vinrace, a young English woman who embarks on a sea voyage from London to South America with her aunt and uncle. During the voyage, Rachel encounters a diverse group of...

When an amateur British sailor on a yachting holiday in the Baltic stumbles upon a German invasion plan masterminded by a renegade Englishman, he must choose between warning his country and his love for the traitor's daughter.

When Father goes away with two strangers one evening, the lives of Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis are shattered. They and Mother have to move from their comfortable London home to go and live in a simple country cottage, where Mother writes books to make ends meet. However, they soon come to love the railway that runs near their cottage, and they make a habit of waving every day to the Old Gentleman who rides on it. They befriends the porter, Perks,...

The tale of a passionate, independent woman and her three suitors, Far from the Madding Crowd tells the story of Bathsheba Everdene and her relationships with the devoted Gabriel Oak, the dashing Sergeant Troy, and the reclusive gentleman farmer, Mr. Boldwood. Through her wayward nature and a winding path of events propelled by Thomas Hardy's recurring feminist themes, Bathsheba is led to tragedy and, finally, true love. Written in 1874, Far from...

Ann Veronica is a New Woman novel by H.G. Wells. Ann Veronica describes the rebellion of Ann Veronica Stanley, "a young lady of nearly two-and-twenty," against her middle-class father's stern patriarchal rule. The novel dramatizes the contemporary problem of the New Woman. It is set in Victorian era London and environs, except for an Alpine excursion. Ann Veronica offers vignettes of the Women's suffrage movement in Great Britain and features a chapter...

Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature. A...

The Possessed is a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871—2. It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoyevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoyevsky's...

The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells. The protagonist of The History of Mr. Polly is an antihero inspired by H. G. Wells's early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his "innate sense of epithet",...