Orphan boy Kim is reared in the teeming, vibrant streets of India at the turn of the last century. An impish child with an endless interest in the extraordinary characters he meets, Kim is a 'Friend of all the World'. One day, an old Tibetan lama sets him on the path that will lead him to travel the Great Trunk Road, and become a spy for the British...
One of the most beloved classics in children's literature, Kipling's masterpiece follows Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, and his animal friends as they fight for survival in the Indian jungle. Young readers will love the wise bear Baloo and Bagheera the black panther; shiver at the vicious tiger Shere Khan; laugh at the silly monkeys; and feel compassion for the grown-up Mowgli--who must fina…
Mrs Gareth, widowed chatelaine of Poynton, is fighting to keep her house with its priceless objets d'art from her son Owen and his lovely, utterly philistine fiancee. When she discovers that her young friend and sympathizer Fleda Vetch is secretly in love with Owen, she thrusts her into the battle-line. The power struggle that ensues between the three women leaves Owen vacillating. What is at s…
Hardy's masterpiece traces a poor stonemason's ill-fated romance with his free-spirited cousin. No Victorian institution is spared — marriage, religion, education — and the outrage following publication led the embittered author to renounce fiction. Modern critics hail this novel as a pioneering work of feminism and socialist thought.
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtit…
Michael Henchard, a callous grain merchant and mayor of the town, finds that his cruel actions in the past have come back to haunt him. In Thomas Hardy's classic novel, an ambitious man discovers that the blind energies and defiant acts that brought him to power can also destroy him. -- Penguin Putnam
Clym Yeobright returns from Paris to the village of his birth, inspired to improve the life of its men and women. But his plans are upset when he falls in love with a beautiful, darkly discontented girl, Eustacia Vye, who longs to escape from her provincial surroundings.