An "A" for "adultery" marks Hester Prynne as an outcast from the society of colonial Boston. Although forced by the puritanical town fathers to wear a badge of shame, Hester steadfastly resists their efforts to discover the identity of her baby's father. Masterful in its symbolism and compelling in its character studies, Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of punishment and reconciliation examines the concepts of sin, guilt, and pride.

The Scarlet

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The Red and the Black, by Stendhal, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

Charles Dickens' work The Battle of Life: A Love Story has an English village on the site of a historic battle as the setting. Some characters allude to the war as a metaphor for the struggle for life, hence the title. Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA is an English writer and social commentator. He produced some of the world's most renowned fictional characters and is often regarded as the best author of the Victorian era. His writings achieved unparalleled...

First published in 1852, "The Blithedale Romance" is the third of Nathaniel Hawthorne's romantic novels. Set in the utopian communal farm called Blithedale in the 1840's, the novel tells the story of four inhabitants of the commune: Hollingsworth, a misogynist philanthropist obsessed with turning Blithedale into a colony for the reformation of criminals; Zenobia, a passionate feminist; Priscilla, a mysterious lady with a hidden agenda who turns out...

From the book:

GLOUCESTER. Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front,

And now,

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Zenith, Ohio, a good-sized city, is the setting for Sinclair Lewis's parody of middle-class American life represented by average citizen George F. Babbitt, a prosperous real estate agent. He considers himself a regular fellow who is a Rotarian, an Elk, a Republican, and makes use of the current slogans, and parrots the editorials of the local newspaper. A day in Babbitt's life is a view of the most disturbing examples of American policies of this...

Bored of the parties and luxuries that come with her socialite lifestyle, Claire Boltwood longs for something more authentic in her life. Desperate for adventure, Claire and her father decide to travel from New York City to the Pacific Northwest in their automobile, a new privilege enjoyed by the rich. Though he is a clever businessman, Claire's father knows nothing about cars, so he encourages Claire to drive, challenging the gender stereotypes of...

"Filled with lively humor, compassion, and intimacy." -Alice Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. An Oprah Book Club selection, this powerful...

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) is a novel by English author E.M. Forster. The work was Forster's first novel, and its success helped launch his lengthy and critically acclaimed career as a writer of literary fiction. Where Angels Fear to Tread, the title is drawn from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711), is a moving meditation on class, gender, social convention, and the grieving process. Following the death of her husband, a widow named...

A masterwork of American literature from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence.
A marked departure from Edith Wharton’s usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his ailing...