Les Miserables, Victor Hugo's timeless novel of income inequality and financial desperation in the face of an uncaring world is as timely today as it was when he first wrote it.
The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes.
The story begins when a mysterious sea monster, theorized by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations; an ocean liner is also damaged by the creature.
It is one of several nineteenth-century novels which uncovers the changes in women's work in the new industrial era, as well as the dilemmas, tensions, and the meaning of that work.
In Henty's words, "e;The Great War between the Northern and Southern States of America possesses a peculiar interest for us, not only because it was a struggle between two sections of a people akin to us in race and language, but because of the heroic courage with which the weaker party, with ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-equipped regiments, for four years sustained the contest with the adversary.
Much of the novel is written from the view-point of his canine character, enabling London to explore how animals view their world and how they view humans.
"e;The Gift of the Magi"e; is a short story, about a young married couple and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money.
Elizabeth von Arnim's novel tells the story of four dissimilar women in 1920s England who leave their damp and rainy environs to go on a holiday to a secluded coastal castle in Italy.
The novel recounts the story of self-absorbed Sir Willoughby Patterne and his attempts at marriage; jilted by his first bride-to-be, he vacillates between the sentimental Laetitia Dale and the strong-willed Clara Middleton.
Set in northern Italy in 1628, during the terrible, oppressive years under Spanish rule, it is sometimes seen as a veiled attack on Austria, which controlled the region at the time the novel was written.
Just before coming of age, Lord Colambre, the sensitive hero of the novel, finds that his mother Lady Clonbrony's attempts to buy her way into the high society of London are only ridiculed, while his father, Lord Clonbrony, is in serious debt as a result of his wife's lifestyle.
An exploration of the sexual practices and doctrinal secrets of Gnosticism*; Reconstructs the lost world of Gnostic spiritual-erotic experience through examination of every surviving text written by heresiologists *; Investigates the sexual gnosis practices of the Barbelo Gnostics of the 2nd century and their connections to the Gnostic Aeon Sophia, the Wild Lady of Wisdom *; Explains the vital significance of ';the seed' as a sacrament in Gnostic practiceExamining every surviving text written by heresiologists, accounts often ignored in favor of the famous Nag Hammadi Library, Tobias Churton reveals the most secret inner teaching passed down by initiated societies: the tradition of sexual gnosis--higher union with God through the sacrament of sex.
After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance.
This novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the "e;degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America.
