'Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's ... was more striking' As the title of Jane Austen's first published novel suggests, the difference between two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, lies not only in their appearance but also in their temperament. Yet Sense and Sensibility not only contrasts Elinor's good sense,...

"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...

"With wry humor and penetrating satire, Flatland takes us on a mind-expanding journey into a different world to give us a new vision of our own. A. Square, the slightly befuddled narrator, is born into a place limited to two dimensions -- irrevocably flat -- and peopled by a hierarchy of geometrical forms. In a Gulliver-like tour of his bizarre homeland, A. Square spins a fascinating tale of domestic drama and political turmoil, from sex among consenting...

This nineteenth-century tale of an electric submarine, its eccentric captain, and the undersea world, anticipated many of the scientific achievements of the twentieth century. The adventures of a French scientist and his companions who travel the seven seas as prisoners in the submarine of the mysterious Captain Nemo.

"Widely acknowledged as the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote features two of the most famous characters ever created: Don Quixote de la Mancha, the tall, bewildered, and half-crazy knight, and Sancho Panza, his rotund and incorrigibly loyal squire. The unforgettable comic dynamic between these two legendary figures has served as the blue-print for countless novels written since Cervantes's time. An immediate success when first...

"Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York's Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician's mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing...

'She' is Ayesha, the mysterious white queen of a Central African tribe. She is also the goal of a quest bequeathed to three English gentlemen who travel through shipwreck, fever, and cannibals to find her hidden realm.

"When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters--including a teenage rock band called the Paranoids, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, and a former...

Captain John Mackinnon and his ship, the Matthew Flinders, are embarking on their last voyage. Both endangered species, they symbolize the irreversible, quiet decline of the British merchant fleet. But this journey to Hong Kong will prove to be anything but quiet. Internal tensions among the crew provoke unrest and lead to a navigation error, steering them right into the violent, destructive path of Typhoon David. Suddenly the crew of the Matthew...

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...