Thirty years after its original publication, THE STRANGER remains among the most influential books of our time. A terrifying picture of a man victimized by life itself -- he is a faceless man, who has committed a pointless murder -- it is a book whose unrelenting grip upon our consciousness has...  more

Thirty years after its original publication, THE STRANGER remains among the most influential books of our time. A terrifying picture of a man victimized by life itself -- he is a faceless man, who has committed a pointless murder -- it is a book whose unrelenting grip upon our consciousness has not diminished to this day.

These deluxe editions are packaged with French flaps, acid-free paper, and rough front. "This brilliant work is a frightening parody on man's return. . . to that state of darkness from which it took him thousands of years to emerge. . . Superbly written." --The New York TimesOther Penguin Great...  more

These deluxe editions are packaged with French flaps, acid-free paper, and rough front. "This brilliant work is a frightening parody on man's return. . . to that state of darkness from which it took him thousands of years to emerge. . . Superbly written." --The New York TimesOther Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century:The Grapes of Wrath by John SteinbeckHeart of Darkness by Joseph ConradLove in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia MarquezThe Adventures of Augie March by Saul BellowThe Age of Innocence by Edith WhartonA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James JoyceSwann's Way by Marcel ProustMy Antonia by Willa CatherOn the Road by Jack KerouacWhite Noise by Don DeLillo

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All...  more

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords.This edition of The Scarlet Letter includes a Preface, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Keith Neilson.The Puritans thought Hester Prynne's crime was unforgivable. She was convicted, imprisoned--and then forced to wear, forever, a public reminder of her sin. The Scarlet letter. The Letter was unending punishment: it set hester apart from society, it tormented her days and haunted her soul.But the Letter haunted others, as well, its mystery turned Roger Chillingworth from a gentle healer into a man driven by revenge. Its meaning burned into Rev. Arthur Dimsdale's heart, as deadly as cancer. And its power loomed over the life of Hester's daughter, the uncontrollable child Pearl.Four people would be destroyed by a entangled web of guilt and secrets, unless one of them had the courage--and love--to reveal the truth of--The Scarlet Letter.

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small...  more

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.

‘Now that I had finished, the beauty of my dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart …’ Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity....  more

‘Now that I had finished, the beauty of my dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart …’ Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley’s chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron’s villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world’s most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third edition of 1831, this contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s preface to the first edition. It also includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with ‘’A Fragment’ by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre: A Tale’.

Travelling across America in search of who you are -- now they do it on cycles, in cars, by bus or in the time-honored tradition of foot and thumb. The wanderers of today may wear their hair long and speak a different jargon, but their trip is one that men (and women) have taken for as long as...  more

Travelling across America in search of who you are -- now they do it on cycles, in cars, by bus or in the time-honored tradition of foot and thumb. The wanderers of today may wear their hair long and speak a different jargon, but their trip is one that men (and women) have taken for as long as this country has been pushing at its frontiers. John Steinbeck writes of such a trip in OF MICE AND MEN: the desperate longing of men for some kind of home -- roots that they can believe in, land that they can care for -- and the painful search for self. This beautiful, timeless novel speaks of the love that men can feel for each other -- one inarticulate, dumb, sometimes violent in his need; the other clever, hopeful, and tied to a responsibility he thinks he doesn't want.

With Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, author of such classics as Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, takes center stage as one of America's most important writers. 'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has written one of the major novels of the year . . . haunting . . . irresistible reading ....  more

With Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, author of such classics as Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, takes center stage as one of America's most important writers. 'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has written one of the major novels of the year . . . haunting . . . irresistible reading . . . poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement . . . work of art.' --Boston Globe 'Splendid art and simplicity . . . Nerve Wracking control . . . A funny book at which you are note permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears, a tale told in a slaughterhouse.' --Life Magazine

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and...  more

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years. Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. Laced with bon mots and vivid depictions of upper-class refinement, it is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world and a manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.” The ever-quotable Wilde, who once delighted London with his scintillating plays, scandalized readers with this, his only novel. Upon publication, Dorian was condemned as dangerous, poisonous, stupid, vulgar, and immoral, and Wilde as a “driveling pedant.” The novel, in fact, was used against Wilde at his much-publicized trials for “gross indecency,” which led to his imprisonment and exile on the European continent. Even so, The Picture of Dorian Gray firmly established Wilde as one of the great voices of the Aesthetic movement, and endures as a classic that is as timeless as its hero.

Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put...  more

Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

Alexander’s Bridge, Willa Cather’s first novel, is a taut psychological drama about the fragility of human connections. Published in 1912, just a year before O Pioneers! made Cather’s name, it features high society on an international stage rather than the immigrant prairie...  more

Alexander’s Bridge, Willa Cather’s first novel, is a taut psychological drama about the fragility of human connections. Published in 1912, just a year before O Pioneers! made Cather’s name, it features high society on an international stage rather than the immigrant prairie characters she later became known for. The successful and glamorous life of Bartley Alexander, a world-renowned engineer and bridge builder, begins to unravel when he encounters a former lover in London. As he shuttles among his wife in Boston, his old flame in London, and a massive bridge he is building in Canada, Alexander finds himself increasingly tormented. But the threatened collapse of his marriage presages a more fatal catastrophe, one he will risk his life to try to prevent.

A portrait of a woman who reflects the conventions of her age even as she defies them and whose transformations embody the decline and coarsening of the American frontier.

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief  novel so disturbed critics and the public that it  was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read  and admired, The Awakening has  been hailed as an early vision of woman's  emancipation. This...  more

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief  novel so disturbed critics and the public that it  was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read  and admired, The Awakening has  been hailed as an early vision of woman's  emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's  abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her  awakening to desires and passions that threated to  consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary  Soul," this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old  Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction,  rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman  Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in  search of self-discovery turns away from convention and  society, and toward the primal, from convention  and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly  attracted to nature and the sensesThe  Awakening, Kate Chopin's last novel, has been  praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully  written." And Willa Cather described its style as  "exquisite," "sensitive," and  "iridescent." This edition of The  Awakening also includes a selection of  short stories by Kate Chopin. "This seems to me a  higher order of feminism than repeating the story  of woman as victim... Kate Chopin gives her female  protagonist the central role, normally reserved  for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture,  consciousness and art." -- From the  introduction by Marilynne Robinson.

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner -- a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the...  more

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner -- a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England -- and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test.

THE GREAT GATSBY captures all the romance and glitter of the Jazz Age in its portrayal of a young man and his tragic search for love and success. It is a rare combination: a literary masterpiece - and one of the most popular novels of our time.

The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog whose life is changed forever. Kidnapped from his sunny California home, Buck is taken to the cold, hard world of the Klondike. Buck is hitched into the traces of a dog sled, but the traces cannot hold his spirit, his will, or his true nature-to be...  more

The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog whose life is changed forever. Kidnapped from his sunny California home, Buck is taken to the cold, hard world of the Klondike. Buck is hitched into the traces of a dog sled, but the traces cannot hold his spirit, his will, or his true nature-to be wild-to be free.

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting";...  more

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers-and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here...  more

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.  

J. D. Salinger's famous and enduring chronicle of Holden Caulfield's journey from innocence to experience is the quintessential coming-of-age novel--though it's an unusual one, in which the hero tries to cling to the simplicity of childhood, achieving a kind of maturity almost in...  more

J. D. Salinger's famous and enduring chronicle of Holden Caulfield's journey from innocence to experience is the quintessential coming-of-age novel--though it's an unusual one, in which the hero tries to cling to the simplicity of childhood, achieving a kind of maturity almost in spite of himself. As the novel begins, Holden runs away from his stifling prep school, which is full of "phonies" and where he has, in fact, flunked out. Holing up in a New York City hotel, he has a series of small adventures and missed opportunities, all of which emphasize his loneliness and alienation from the world. A visit to his kid sister Phoebe (in which he memorably articulates his confused notion of being a "catcher in the rye") provides a ray of hope for Holden, as do the ducks in Central Park that he worries about so compulsively: though they do indeed disappear in the winter, they return in the spring. The novel's final image, of Phoebe riding the carousel in the park while her brother looks on, in tears, holds out the idea that there may be a future for Holden as well. Salinger's 1951 novel was a bestseller and became an immediate cult favorite, but it has also, over the years, been subject to criticism and even censorship because of its liberal use of profanity, its frank conversations about sex (though no actual sex takes place), and its generally irreverent view of the adult world.

One of the most chilling novels ever written about the oppression of totalitarian regimes -- and the first to open Western eyes to the terrors of Stalin's prison camps, this book allowed Solzhenitsyn, who later became Russia's conscience in exile, to challenge the brutal might of the...  more

One of the most chilling novels ever written about the oppression of totalitarian regimes -- and the first to open Western eyes to the terrors of Stalin's prison camps, this book allowed Solzhenitsyn, who later became Russia's conscience in exile, to challenge the brutal might of the Soviet Union.

At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her...  more

At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and?most important?in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème. Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set?Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy?is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me." And they do. But one of them will betray her.

THE RED PONY is the story of a boy who dreamed great dreams, of the sorrel colt that was the focus of those dreams, of the land that nourished them, of the mountains that hid their fulfillment. Raised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a...  more

THE RED PONY is the story of a boy who dreamed great dreams, of the sorrel colt that was the focus of those dreams, of the land that nourished them, of the mountains that hid their fulfillment. Raised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher's life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him for the special connection he will forge with Gabilan, the hot-tempered pony his father gives him. With Billy Buck, the hired hand, Jody tends and trains his horse, restlessly anticipating the moment he will sit high upon Gabilan's saddle. But when Gabilan falls ill, Jody discovers there are still lessons he must learn about the ways of nature and, particularly, the ways of man. Includes: Gift Great Mountains Promise  Leader of the People

Spine-tingling and entertaining, The Invisible Man is a science fiction classic–and a penetrating, unflinching look into the heart of human nature. To its author, H. G. Wells, the novel was as compelling as “a good gripping dream.” But to generations of readers, the terrible...  more

Spine-tingling and entertaining, The Invisible Man is a science fiction classic–and a penetrating, unflinching look into the heart of human nature. To its author, H. G. Wells, the novel was as compelling as “a good gripping dream.” But to generations of readers, the terrible and evil experiment of the demented scientist, Griffin, has conveyed a chilling nightmare of believable horror. An atmosphere of ever-increasing suspense begins with the arrival of a mysterious stranger at an English village inn and builds relentlessly to the stark terror of a victim pursued by a maniacal invisible man. The result is a masterwork: a dazzling display of the brilliant imagination, psychological insight, and literary craftsmanship that made H. G. Wells one of the most influential writers of his time.

While tending to her dying father, a 45-year-old woman examines her life and their relationship.

'I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.' Who is this strange man Ethan Frome? What is his dreadful secret? ...  Amidst a bleak New England winter landscape, powerful emotions lead to...  more

'I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.' Who is this strange man Ethan Frome? What is his dreadful secret? ...  Amidst a bleak New England winter landscape, powerful emotions lead to far-reaching consequences, when Ethan Frome struggles to break free from a loveless marriage ...  Cambridge Literature is a series of study texts which presents writing in the English-speaking world from the 16th century up to the present day. The series includes novels, drama, short stories, poetry, essays and other types of non-fiction. Each edition has the complete text with an appropriate glossary. The student will find in each volume a helpful introduction and a full section of resource notes encouraging active and imaginative study methods.

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