"The story that started it all and spawned a series of film adaptations that have become the stuff of silver screen legend: 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' by L. Frank Baum is in fact the first in a series of novels set in Oz, but it is by far the most famous. Published right at the turn of the century in the year 1900, the novel's fantastical setting---a world inhabited by zany creatures and terrifying villains---is a perfect sort of quaint escapism...

A man of science must overcome public ignorance and the petty greed of associates as he seeks knowledge.

Set against the sweeping panoply of Napoleons invasion of Russia, "War and Peace" is often considered the greatest novel ever written. By turns philosophical and poetic, this sweeping Russian novel recounts the events surrounding the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic era. It covers the years between 1805 and 1813 and is based on extensive historical research. Readers are introduced to the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins, and the...

Jane, a plain and penniless orphan in nineteenth-century England, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself in love with her melancholy employer, Mr. Edward Rochester, a man with a terrible secret.

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...

"Carol, a young and progressive librarian living in St. Paul, Minnesota, falls in love with and marries Will Kennicott, a doctor who dreams of returning to the small town of his childhood. Carol agrees and they move to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, a town modeled on Sinclair's own hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Carol is disappointed by the town's drab appearance and it's provincial, small-minded inhabitants. Brimming with optimism and tenacity,...

Heart of Darkness is a novella written in 1899 by Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad. It is about a voyage into the Congo Free State in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Marlow, an introspective sailor who takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. Marlow, aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames in London, recounts to his friends the story of his assignment to journey up...

Henry James's tragicomic masterpiece pits a headstrong Mississippi lawyer against his feminist cousin in a no-holds-barred fight for the heart of an impressionable young suffragette. When Basil Ransom, a headstrong Mississippi lawyer, comes to Boston to call on his wealthy activist cousin, Olive, an epic battle of wills ensues. Basil is a conservative of the most ardent type while Cousin Olive is steadfast in her radicalism. Perhaps for a laugh, perhaps...

Battle: The Story of the Bulge, John Toland's first work of military history, recounts the saga of beleaguered American troops as they resisted Hitler's deadly counteroffensive in World War II's Battle of the Bulge-and turned it into an Allied victory. It is a gripping work, painstakingly researched and imbued with such vivid detail that listeners will feel as though they themselves witnessed these events. This is a book not to be missed by anyone...