A boat's sabotaged rudder, An antique gold locket, Two mysterious dreams, A horse's broken rein. These were the strange clues to the mystery that tormented a young English girl. In pursuit of them, her life changes dramatically and brought her from her father's fishing cottage to a grand English...  more

A boat's sabotaged rudder, An antique gold locket, Two mysterious dreams, A horse's broken rein. These were the strange clues to the mystery that tormented a young English girl. In pursuit of them, her life changes dramatically and brought her from her father's fishing cottage to a grand English manor. But the final clues to the mystery were in a distant palace in Venice and before her adventure was complete this fisherman's daughter would know to the full the terror lurking behind the ancient walls of that romantic city.

Born in a mission in China, Lucy Waring now finds herself with fifteen small children to feed. How she tackles this task gets her thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, and its mystery echoes through all that befalls Lucy in the...  more

Born in a mission in China, Lucy Waring now finds herself with fifteen small children to feed. How she tackles this task gets her thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, and its mystery echoes through all that befalls Lucy in the months that follow, even when she is brought to England, trying to make a new life with the Gresham family. Unused to English ways, she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the long and bitter feud between the Greshams and the family who live across the valley in the house called Moonrakers. In England Lucy discovers danger, romance, heartache, and mystery as strange events lead her to doubt her own senses. It is only when Lucy returns to China that she finds the answers to the mysteries of her past. It is there, at the moment when all seems lost, that she finally finds where her heart belongs.

The distance between a Tibetan monastery and Merlin's Keep, in the English countryside, was a long one and to Jani, reared in Tibet, nearly incomprehensible. Nor could she grasp the full meaning of the high Lama's words to her that wintry day: "I see the woman in red who will be your friend, and...  more

The distance between a Tibetan monastery and Merlin's Keep, in the English countryside, was a long one and to Jani, reared in Tibet, nearly incomprehensible. Nor could she grasp the full meaning of the high Lama's words to her that wintry day: "I see the woman in red who will be your friend, and through her will come the one to fear, who will be your enemy, the Silver Man." It was many years later, when she was living in another world, before she remembered those words. Events would make her understand them. But, by that time, Jani would no longer be the girl whose white skin marked her as forever foreign in the Tibetan village that was the only home she had ever known; the strange one who could talk to animals and who had a very special way of dealing with English soldier-demons. By then she would be a poised and beautiful young woman enjoying the glorious flush of romantic love, and almost unaware that some mysterious power was moving toward her, threatening her future..."the one to fear, who will be your enemy, the Silver Man..."

A beautiful young woman of Irish birth, heiress to a great fortune, Meg was only two when she was kidnapped from her parents, abandoned in the wilds of the Australian outback, and taken in by a kindly aboriginal tribe.

Heiresses of shame Bridie and Kate Chance had been raised in luxury, protected from the world by a father they adores. But suddenly, their father was dead -- and worse -- reavealed as a notorious jewel thief. Forced from their home, shamed, and virtually penniless, they began their lives...  more

Heiresses of shame Bridie and Kate Chance had been raised in luxury, protected from the world by a father they adores. But suddenly, their father was dead -- and worse -- reavealed as a notorious jewel thief. Forced from their home, shamed, and virtually penniless, they began their lives again in London, unaware that they held the secret to a fabulous fortune...

From the back of the book: In her historical novels about Kentucky, Janice Holt Giles has become known for the integrity with which she handles her materials and for the realism with which she writes. In The Believers, first published in 1957, she continues her series about the settlement of...  more

From the back of the book: In her historical novels about Kentucky, Janice Holt Giles has become known for the integrity with which she handles her materials and for the realism with which she writes. In The Believers, first published in 1957, she continues her series about the settlement of Kentucky with a moving story of love and marriage set in a Shaker community. Rebecca Fowler is only seventeen when she marries Richard Cooper. She cannot remember a time when she has not loved and trusted him and followed where he led. At first the marriage is happy; it is only after their child is stillborn that Richard shows preliminary signs of religious fanaticism in his insistence that this is God?s punishment visited upon them. The Shaker missionaries newly arrived in Kentucky find him an easy convert. When Richard joins the Shaker community, Rebecca goes with him, as a dutiful wife should, hoping that her love will ultimately win him back to her and to the larger world. She becomes part of a strange world in which men and women ? even husbands and wives ? live apart, coming together only for meals and for worship. As time passes and she sees Richard?s affection recede, only her stubborn honesty gives her the strength to deny lip service to a doctrine she cannot truly accept and, at the last, courage to follow the dictates of her heart. In this novel, Mrs. Giles gives us a unique picture of everyday life in a Shaker village, one of the experiments in utopian communal living that are a part of American history. Realistically but with understanding, she shows us a society animated not only by saintliness but by bigotry and ordinary human frailties. She also shows us why utopia fails.

BLOOD--FEUD! "Once in man's life, he commits his whole self to the greatest deeds, the greatest emotions, the greatest exultation.  For Johnny Fowler that was a time of being one of the Osage Indian braves." Johnny Fowler's nerves and flesh were attuned to the...  more

BLOOD--FEUD! "Once in man's life, he commits his whole self to the greatest deeds, the greatest emotions, the greatest exultation.  For Johnny Fowler that was a time of being one of the Osage Indian braves." Johnny Fowler's nerves and flesh were attuned to the savage eloquence of the Osage Indians---riding the prairie, going on long buffalo hunts, fighting the Pawnees.  Then in 1821, the Cherokee and the Osage clashed over access rights to the prairie and to the buffalo, shattering the harmony of the Arkansas Territory.  Caught between his loyalty to the Osage tribe and his conviction to avoid lawless, vindictive violence, Johnny had to come to terms with a grisly personal grief before he could meet the demands of the forbidding frontier---and the righteous indignation of a beautiful woman.

Written when women -- and workers generally -- had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-nineteenth century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a...  more

Written when women -- and workers generally -- had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-nineteenth century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess. Pampered and protected at home, she is unprepared for the harsh reality of a governess's life. At the Bloomfields and later the Murrays, she suffers under the snobbery and sadism of the selfish, self-indulgent upper-class adults and the shrieking insolence of their spoiled children. Worse, the unique social and economic position of a governess -- "beneath" her employers but "above" their servants -- condemns her to a life of loneliness.

Over a short period in the 1840s, the three Brontë sisters working in a remote English parsonage produced some of the best-loved and most-enduring of all novels: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a book that created a scandal when it...  more

Over a short period in the 1840s, the three Brontë sisters working in a remote English parsonage produced some of the best-loved and most-enduring of all novels: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a book that created a scandal when it was published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell.     Compelling in its imaginative power and bold naturalism, the novel opens in the autumn of 1827, when a mysterious woman who calls herself Helen Graham seeks refuge at the desolate moorland mansion of Wildfell Hall. Brontë's enigmatic heroine becomes the object of gossip and jealousy as neighbors learn she is escaping from an abusive marriage and living under an assumed name. A daring story that exposed the dark brutality of Victorian chauvinism, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was nevertheless attacked by some critics as a celebration of the same excesses it criticized.     "Every reader who has felt the power of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights comes, sooner or later, to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," observed Brontë scholar Margaret Lane. "Anne Brontë, with all the Brontë taste for violence and drama, and with her experience of the same rude scenes and savage Yorkshire tales that had fed the imaginations of her sisters, did not shrink. She used the material at hand, and shaped it with singular honesty and seri-ousness....Anne is a true Brontë."      This edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the companion volume to the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre WGBH television presentation broadcast on PBS.The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.The Modern Library of the World'sBest BooksThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a dramatic serial on Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, a public television series presented by WGBH-TV, Boston, made possible by a grant from the Mobil Corporation.                                                            "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was conceived in the same atmosphere as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Wildfell Hall has power and imagination, and is so close to one of the tragedies in the sisters' own lives, that no perceptive reader can be indifferent to it."                                                          --Margaret Lane"I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it."                                                             --Anne Bronte

Suddenly he could work miracles. After a dozen years of practicing medicine, Dr. Alan Bulmer discovers that he can cure any illness with a mere touch of his hand. But there is a balance to be struck... a price to be paid for this healing touch. And Alan Bulmer has only begun to pay