Basil Davenport

Disappointed in friendship and love, and embittered by a false accusation, weaver Silas Marner retreats from the world with his loom, but soon finds his monastic existence forever changed by the arrival of an orphaned girl, whom he takes in and raises as his own daughter.

I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year, observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest and most appealing women in all of literature. Becky is just one of the many fascinating figures that populate William Makepeace Thackeray 's wonderfully satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Scorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use...

The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft -- but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The wicked Prince John plots to usurp England's...

"Jane Eyre is a novel of passion - of anger, defiance, and of overwhelming desire. No novel, before or since, has caught so precisely the complex emotions of childhood, where feelings of powerlessness can mix with rage, and a bitter sense of injustice. From the early scenes, where Jane is locked in the red room, and learns to defy her aunt, through the oppressive regime of Lowood School, we follow the turbulent swell of Jane's feelings. Her psychological...