NCW Libraries

"She will do as I have bidden her." Catherine Sloper is heiress to a fortune and the social eminence associated with Washington Square. She attracts the attention of a good-looking but penniless young man, Morris Townsend. His suit is encouraged by Catherine's romantically-minded aunt, Mrs. Penniman, but her father, a clever physician, is convinced that his motives are merely mercenary. He will not consent to the marriage, regardless of the cost to...

The tale of a Mohican brave's struggle to protect two English girls from an evil Huron.

"Thomas Gradgrind is the guiding luminary of the Coketown school, stern proponent of the Philosophy of Fact, whose ill-conceived idealism blinds him to the essential humanity of those around, with calamitous results. His daughter Louisa becomes trapped in a loveless marriage and falls prey to an idle seducer, and her brother Tom is ruined thanks to their father's pet theories. Meanwhile Sleary's circus offers a vision of escape and entertainment,...

The Pickwick Papers was Dicken's response to his publisher's request for a monthly series of sporting sketches. It became the most famous of all pre-Victorian novels. The central characters, Mr Pickwick and Sam Weller, are as familiar today as they became on publication, and there are over a hundred other speaking parts. The action is set in the late Georgian perid of the writer's earliest youth, drawing on experience and acute observation ranging...

A feisty young boy fakes his own death to escape his abusive father and heads off down the Mississippi River with his newfound friend Jim, a runaway slave.

"Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her behaviour leaves her open to gossip. Meanwhile, Elinor is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment."--P. [4] of cover.

Trilby (1894) is a novel by George du Maurier. Originally serialized in Harper's Monthly the novel went on to become an international bestseller, attracting controversy and interest for its depiction of bohemian life in 19th-century Paris. Although Trilby has been criticized by such readers as George Orwell for its anti-Semitic depiction of Svengali, the novel has been adapted countless times for theater and film, including a 1931 motion picture starring...

Anne Bronte's first novel, Agnes Grey, combines an astute dissection of middle-class social behavior and class attitudes with a wonderful study of Victorian responses to young children which has parallels with debates about education that continue to this day. In writing the novel, Bronte drew on her own experiences, and one can trace in the work many of the trials of the Victorian governess, often stranded far from home, and treated with little respect...

Plantagenet Palliser must face new challenges and a changing world if he is to hold his family together in the final installment of the Palliser Novels. After losing his devoted wife, Glencora, Duke Plantagenet Palliser takes on a task he has never had the time or skills to bother with before: dealing with his children. Palliser has never been a doting father, what with the responsibilities of title and duty constantly beckoning him away, but now...