Fiction

"Jane Austen's brilliantly sophisticated teenage writings constitute her beginnings as a writer. We see in the works in this volume the sheer fun of her early sketches and their ridicule of human foibles, her parody of the absurdities of romance and sentimental fiction, her decision-making over choice of word and incident, her changing attitude towards character and style, and especially her early fascination with wordplay and hidden meanings that reveal her sprightly imagination." —From the ...

The tale of Heathcliff's and Cathy's ungovernable love and suffering, and the havoc that their passion wreaks on the families of the Earnshaws and the Lintons, shocked the book's first readers, with even Emily's sister Charlotte claiming, "Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is."  Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectib...

It has been said, quite correctly, that we write as well as we read. It can also be said that we think as well as we read. Since reading well is so important, it is good to get into the habit of reading good books. The better the book, the better will be our ability to think well and write well. In Classic Literature Made Simple, literary expert Joseph Pearce takes the reader on a guided tour of fifty great works of literature. The author of over thirty books, Pearce uses his experience of te...

Ethan McQuarry is a young lighthouse keeper on a tiny island, the rugged outcropping of easternmost Cape Breton Island on the Atlantic Ocean. A man without any family, he sees himself as a silent vigilant, performing his duties courageously year after year, with an admirable sense of responsibility.He cherishes his solitude and is grateful that his interactions with human beings are rare. Even so, he is haunted by his aloneness in the world and by a feeling that his life is meaningless. His c...

Emily Starr never knew what it was to be lonely -- until her beloved father died. Now Emily's an orphan, and her mother's snobbish relatives are taking her to live with them at New Moon Farm. She's sure she won't be happy Emily deals with stiff, stern Aunt Elizabeth and her malicious classmates by holding her head high and using her quick wit. Things begin to change when she makes friends: with Teddy, who does marvelous drawings; with Perry, who's sailed all over the world with his father yet...

Once a long time ago a little girl named Laura Ingalls lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little house made of logs. She grew up and wrote nine books about her childhood - the famous Little House stories. Laura had a daughter of her own named Rose, who grew up in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, also in a little house made of logs. "Little House on Rocky Ridge" is the beginning of Rose's story, which starts where the book "The First Four Years" ends.

Rose and her family are still living in the little town of Mansfield, where they are doing their best to get back on their feet and return to Rocky Ridge Farm. It's a big year for Rose and one filled with many changes. She witnesses the dawn of a new era as she celebrates the turn of the twentieth century, and she helps with the first apple harvest out on Rocky Ridge Farm. There is even love in the air for Rose.

One morning, attorney Dan Geary, seventy-seven years old, finds himself in the middle of a rolling, polychrome landscape. The greens are bold and bright. Birds sing in the distance. Tall grasses surge like a sea before the wind. He has never seen anything quite like it. But somehow--with the doctors and beeping monitors suddenly gone--he knows exactly where he is: the afterlife.What a relief not to be floating on a cloud, playing a harp. Instead, a hiking pack full of gear sits on his back, a...

The eighth and final installment in the Rose Years series, which tells the story of the spirited daughter of the author of the beloved Little House series. Rose Wilder has become an independent young woman. She leaves Rocky Ridge Farm, first for Kansas City to learn how to be a telegrapher, then for San Francisco. Her dream is to work for a year or two, save a little money, and then marry Paul Cooley, her childhood sweetheart. But the big city has all sorts of surprises in store for Rose, and...

The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula remains a compelling read, rattling along at break-neck speed, a true page-turner. Here is a new edition of one of the great horror stories in English literature, the novel that spawned a myth and a proliferation of vampire tales in film, television, graphic novels, cartoons, and teen fiction, including the craze revolving around the Twilight and True Blood series.  This volume includes a lively and fascinating introduction by Roger Luckhurst th...

Barely out of college, Isaac trades the quiet of his family ranch for the excitement of the big city with his dream job at an up-and-coming advertising agency. Until his perfect new world is shattered by bad choices, a pretty girl, a moment's temptation-and a late night walk that quickly spirals out of control. Reeling with the horror of a mistake that can't be undone, Isaac struggles to get his soul in order. Can he forgive himself? Can he make things right with God? What about Rebecca? With...

It all happened one morning. It was as if the world had gone mad. Well, maybe not the whole world, but enough of it to get noticed. People were waking up as if possessed; suffering souls resorting to tearing at their skin, crying out loud to no one in particular, haunted by a sudden internal torment that no one around them could decipher. For investigative reporter Elijah, this news story was way bigger than a scoop. Unless he could unmask the truth behind the madness, how could he stop it, o...

Book 4 of Faith & Kung Fu Series Truth comes to light and love is revealed after Tanner confesses her devotion to Gabriel. But when a former fling and co-star offers his assistance on her debut movie, he's a constant reminder of all the ways Tanner has messed up. Add a crazed kung fu rival, paparazzi on the prowl, and a controlling stage mom, and things get ugly fast. Can Gabriel and Tanner find truth in the chaos? Or is their newly-found romance doomed before it's even begun?

The fourth book in the Rose Year series, the story of the spirited daughter of the author of the beloved Little House series. On The Other Side of the Hill continues the story of Rose, Laura, and Almanzo as the young Wilder family struggles to overcome a series of natural disasters that beset their little farm.

Meet the Sisters of the Last Straw, a community of Sisters working hard to overcome their bad habits. Join these loveable misfit nuns as they learn to love God and forgive one another. When Amanda Kate comes to visit, Sister Krumbles gets the idea to run the Saint Patrick's Day Marathon. But will she be up to the challenge? What is Mr. Lemon up to? Will he win the prize money for himself? Will the Sisters solve the mystery of the missing items?

Under the Sun of Satan, Georges Bernanos's powerful debut novel, throws the reader headlong into the mystery of evil and the drama of salvation. Saturated with dramatic intensity and marked with Bernanos's inimitable fitful style, the novel follows young Fr. Donissan, a man of fervent faith but limited intelligence, striving to serve the Lord in his rural ministry. The priest's ability to plumb the depths of his flock's inner lives, along with his awareness of Satan on the prowl, grant him fo...

This is a story about a coming, slowly creeping, once in a millennium climatological disaster event. Yet the residents of a small Pacific Northwest town, especially their Mayor, seem more concerned with the taking up of a homeless man and his cohort in downtown, a development threatening to ruin their idyllic self-perceptions. Even as the storm readies to deliver a direct hit, many view the homeless men as the true "plague" rather than a dust storm, acid spitting, Tornado funnel-front that ha...

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers GrimmPerhaps no other stories possess as much power to enchant, delight, and surprise as those penned by the immortal Brothers Grimm. Now, in the new, expanded third edition, renowned scholar and folklorist Jack Zipes has translated all 250 tales collected and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, plus twenty-nine rare tales omitted from the original German edition, as well as narratives uncovered in the brothers' letters and papers.Truly the most comp...

Hollywood, 1956. Journalist and war widow Evangeline Kilhooley is assigned to write a star profile of the fading actor Bela Lugosi, made famous by his role as Count Dracula. During a series of interviews, Lugosi draws Evi into his curious Eastern European background, gradually revealing the link between Old World shadows and the twilight realm of modern horror films. Along the way, Evi meets another English expatriate, Hugo Radelle, a movie buff who offers to help with her research. As their ...

Don Giuseppe Pace, who wrote this novel under the pseudonym Walter Martin, takes on the excesses and inversions of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council in this novel, with its host of lovable and infuriating characters and often surprising storyline. The new leader of the Church, a relative unknown who has been elected as a mere transitional pope, upsets the entire process of Reform that held sway over the Church up to his election. Opposed on almost all sides by shrewd careerists, he ...

Meet Rose Wilder... the last of the Little House girls. Rose is turning nine years old, and it's an exciting time on Rocky Ridge Farm. The Wilders have settled into their new home in the Ozarks, and Rose is helping as all their Mansfield neighbors bring in the harvest. The year is filled with danger, excitement, and joy, as Rose battles an ice storm, starts her second year as the top student in her class, helps to build the family's new farmhouse, and celebrates her first real Ozarks Christma...

What secrets lie behind the doors at Misselthwaite Manor? Recently arrived at her uncle's estate, orphaned Mary Lennox is spoiled, sickly, and certain she won't enjoy living there. Then she discovers the arched doorway into an overgrown garden, shut up since the death of her aunt ten years earlier. Mary soon begins transforming it into a thing of beauty--unaware that she is changing too. But Misselthwaite hides another secret, as mary discovers one night. High in a dark room, away from the re...

There's no place like homeDo fairies really come for the dish of milk we leave them? Is Mrs. McClenahan really a witch? How is it possible to find a new baby in a bed of parsley? These are all questions Pat Gardiner wants to know. And it seems her Irish housekeeper, the incomparable Judy Plum, always has an answer...For Pat, there is no place more magical on earth than her home of Silver Bush, with its majestic birch trees and enchanting gardens. If it were up to her, nothing there would ever...

75th Anniversary Edition  The gorgeous 75th-anniversary edition of Brideshead Revisited, the novel selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best of the century and called "Evelyn Waugh's finest achievement" by the New York Times. The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece -- a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles...

Dust on the King's Highway tells of Francisco Garcés, the Spanish Franciscan friar whose missionary efforts brought the Catholic faith to the peoples of the Pápago, Yuma, Pima, and Apache tribes. In the summer of 1771, Fray Garcés concludes his offering of Holy Mass and is met by a delegate of four men of the Yuma nation. Having heard of the generosity and good deeds of the "Old Man," they request his presence among their people, the Yumas of the great rivers, that they might give him welcome...

Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, first published in 1886, became an instant classic, a Gothic horror originating in a feverish nightmare whose hallucinatory setting in the back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. Its revelatory ending is one of the most original and thrilling in English Literature. This new edition of Stevenson's most famous work includes three additional short stories, two short essays, and ex...

Father Christopher Hart, a young New York priest and classic film buff, is unwittingly drafted by the mob to hear the confession of a man slated for execution. This was not one of the duties he expected when he became a first-time pastor. Learning how to balance the books and safely navigate parish politics, yes; but playing a key role in the White Death--a mafia ritual in which a person condemned to death is allowed to confess his sins before he's killed--was not included on the Parish Leade...

Father Francis Chisholm is a good priest-somewhat peculiar, perhaps, but a good priest all the same. Forged as a youth in the fires of suffering and tragedy, Francis accepts his vocation and strives to serve his people in humility and good humor, with compassion and courageous heart. After two spiritually eventful but conventionally unsuccessful assignments as a curate, Father Chisholm is sent as a missionary to China. Upon arrival, he finds his mission in ruins: the property deserted, the ch...

Historical in substance, romantic in spirit, heroic in scale, A Distant Trumpet is a novel of the American West. At its center is Matthew Carlton Hazard, born in 1857 at Fox Creek, Indiana; raised by his mother after his father's death in the Battle of Chickamauga; and designated, at the solemn age of seven, by President Abraham Lincoln himself to the Army of the United States. Commissioned in 1880 as second lieutenant of cavalry, Matthew reports for duty to Fort Delivery, Arizona, where he w...

The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm. A fictional record of how women helped forge the communities that formed a nation, My Ántonia is also a hauntingly eloquent celebration of the strength, courage, and spirit of America's early pioneers.

Meet Rose Wilder...the last of the Little House girls. Hard times at Rocky Ridge Farm force Rose and her family to move into the little town of Mansfield, and Rose wonders how she will ever survive. In town everything seems so different. Noisy trains race by at all hours, the streets are crowded with people, and the town folk seem so much fancier. Will Rose and her family learn to enjoy town life, far away from Rocky Ridge Farm?

The second book in the Rose Years series, the story of the spirited daughter of the author of the beloved Little House series. Rose Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, is the last of the Little House girls. Going fishing for the first time, starting in a new school, saving the farmhouse from a fire--these are just a few things that happen during young Rose Wilder's first year at Rocky Ridge Farm. She and her parents, Laura and Almanzo, have moved to the Missouri Ozarks to begin a new lif...

Dante Alighieri's masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a timeless epic rooted in the history and culture of the early Italian Renaissance. Now available in a sparkling new translation, The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno captures all the power and meaning of Dante's original work. This comprehensive edition features Mark Musa's celebrated translation into blank verse that perfectly preserves Dante's simple and natural style, allowing readers to fully appreciate the richness of this classic poem...

Fascinating for Latin learners and for Tolkien fans of all ages, The Hobbit has been translated into Latin for the first time since its publication 75 years ago. In foramine terrae habitabat hobbitus. ('In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.') The Hobbit, is one of the world's most popular classic stories, appealing to adults as much as to the children for whom J.R.R. Tolkien first wrote the book. Translated worldwide into more than 60 modern languages, now Hobbitus Ille is finally pu...

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older— the natural consequence of an unnatural beginning." Eight years ago, Anne Elliot drew back her consent to marry Fredrick Wentworth, the headstrong and spirited naval commander of a yet-certain career or established fortune, in the conviction that she acted for his own good. Forbearing, selfless, and pensive, she would as yet have married him against the wishes of her vain and rank-obsessed father, Sir Walt...

Six siblings awaken from a mysterious sleep to find themselves in a beautiful but perilous land called Undlar that is missing some important things. The residents of Undlar are missing from their villages and fields, cowering in fear from the menace that haunts their skies and woods. The Lord of the land is missing from his throne, and is presumed to be asleep in his tower. The jewels which brought order and harmony to Undlar are missing from the Lord's Crown, and are scattered and lost.Also ...

Dr. Owen Whitfield is the elderly Oxford professor of history who first appeared in Michael O'Brien's novel The Father's Tale. In the events of The Sabbatical, which occur sometime later, Dr. Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of peace and quiet, gardening in his backyard, and tinkering with what he calls his latest unpublishable book. As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of seeming coincidences into involvement with a group of characters from across Europe, including a ...

Adeline Rye adores books, history, and art but feels unseen in a society that values advance in medicine and technology above all else. With her father as the leader of their island civilization called Mirror, she has little room for error. To ensure peace and eliminate violence, the islanders are divided across three separate communities and commanded to abide by the 613 laws given to their leadership by The Originator. Forty years prior, The Originator guided the people to the safety of the...

"The Gaze of Jesus" by Riccardo Bacchelli, translated by Anthony Esolen, explores the life of the Gerasene demoniac after his miraculous healing by Jesus. Rejected from following Jesus closely, he struggles with his newfound freedom and seeks understanding of who Jesus truly is. Through encounters with figures like Herod, Herodias, and Judas, and amidst the complexities of first-century Jewish society, he embarks on a psychological, historical, and theological journey towards faith. This nove...

"Nature and history, the Liturgy and the Kalendar, contemporary events both public and personal-all snake their way through the thickets of metaphor in these poems. And the relation between time and Eternity is never far away."-AIDAN NICHOLS, OP, formerly Pope John Paul II Memorial Lecturer in Roman Catholic Theology, University of Oxford"Anna Rist's second volume of poems is a joy to read. The collection exalts not just in the Body of Christ but in people and places of importance to her. All...

Ethan McQuarry is a young lighthouse keeper on a tiny island, the rugged outcropping of easternmost Cape Breton Island on the Atlantic Ocean. A man without any family, he sees himself as a silent vigilant, performing his duties courageously year after year, with an admirable sense of responsibility. He cherishes his solitude and is grateful that his interactions with human beings are rare. Even so, he is haunted by his aloneness in the world and by a feeling that his life is meaningless. His ...

Charlotte Brontë's first published novel, Jane Eyre, was immediately recognized as a work of genius when it appeared in 1847. Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime of Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges from this harsh childhood unbroken in spirit and integrity. She goes on to take the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, where the main adventure of her life will unfold. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics...

"She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions; and, in observing the appearance of the country, the bearings of the roads, the difference of soil, the state of the harvest, the cottages, the cattle, the children, she found entertainment that could only have been heightened by having Edmund to speak to of what she felt." In early 19th century England, Fanny Price, at ten years ol...

The Eddan Collective is a campus novel, a prophecy of the university in the near future, and a reflection on intellectual pride. In the year 2016, one Annika Trent, scholar of the late Roman Empire, founds the Eddan Collective, a group of Marxist faculty planning for the imminent collapse of American society. Annika's memoir details her struggles with her Eddan collaborators, her chronic illness, and her ability to "send herself away" to fifth-century North Africa, where she converses with St...

This book invites the reader into a cloister of poems, there to look with eyes of faith through the arches of rhythm and rhyme onto the wide vistas, terrible chasms, and hazy mountains of Mystery, Beauty, and Love. Written by monks of Silverstream Priory, some poems let memory and imagination search the corners of the earth, there to glean the sorrows, hopes, and joys of men, and so present them to the Father. Others draw from the deep wells of tradition, with verse translations of ancient La...

(and A Young Poet's Elegy to the Court of God) A Traditional Play in Blank Verse The preternaturally great poet Orpheus has responded to the loss of his wife Eurydice to the Underworld by forsaking the society of his fellow men in Thrace, where he was a poet-king, and endlessly wandering through field and forest, using his poetic genius to lament his loss. Apollo, the god of poetry, urges him to give up his excessive mourning and return to Thrace and once more sing the deeds of the great hero...