Dorothy and her friends follow the enchanted road to Oz and arrive in time for Ozma's birthday party.

A dark and thrilling novel from the author of The Secret Garden sees a strong-willed heroine defy conformity, lunging head first into a world filled with violence, manipulation, passion, and murderSet in late 17th-century England, amid the ribbons and romance of courtship, this gothic tale tackles violence and manipulation, blackmail, and even murder. When Clorinda is born, the odds seem stacked against her. First and foremost, she is a girl like...

First performed in 1882, "Ghosts" is the controversial and tragic play by the famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is the story of Helen Alving, a wealthy widow who was unhappily married to her unfaithful husband. Helen has tried to shelter her son, Oswald, from the corrupting influence of his father's immoral behavior and has sent him away only to discover that he is suffering from syphilis inherited from his father. Oswald has also unfortunately...

Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) is a metatheatrical drama by Luigi Pirandello. Viewed as an important work of absurdist literature, the play was a critical failure when it was first, staged in Rome. Revised by its author and bolstered by successful performances in New York City, Six Characters in Search of an Author has been, recognized as a pioneering examination of the nature of creativity, the relationship of the director and actors...

The Children of the New Forest (1847) is a novel by Frederick Marryat. Although Marryat is more widely known for novels inspired by his experience as a captain in the Royal Navy, The Children of the New Forest is a historical children's novel set in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Bringing his readers into the world of danger and political intrigue that was England in the 17th century, Marryat earns his place as one of the leading adventure...

Published in 1913, Swann's Way is the first of the seven parts of Marcel Proust's masterpiece, "Remembrance of things past," one of the major achievements of 20th-century literature. The narrator discovers that an involuntary memory triggered by some casual action, say, eating a madeleine cake or stooping to remove one's shoe, has the power to recover large areas of the past, and he sets out to resurrect his past life and the people and places that...

In this rollicking, irreverent tour de force, Kate Grenville rewrites the familiar past. Joan is a wife and mother of no great distinction, but in the life of her imagination she is on the front line of events, effortlessly subverting the solemnity of momentous occasions and cheerfully altering the course of history. First published in 1988, Joan Makes History was funded by the Australian Bicentennial Authority to celebrate 200 years of history.--Provided...

This 1872 sequel to Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland finds the inquisitive heroine in a fantastic land where everything is reversed. Looking-glass land, a topsy-turvy world lurking just behind the mirror over Alice's mantel, is a fantastic realm of live chessmen, madcap kings and queens, strange mythological creatures, a garden of talking flowers, and rude insects. Brooks and hedges divide the lush greenery of looking-glass...

Humphrey Van Weyden is thrown overboard while unsuccessfully investigating a smuggling ring. The ship's formidable captain, Wolf Larsen puts Humphrey to a series of violent tests, but nothing can prepare Van Weyden for a final confrontation with Larsen himself.

Emile Zola's novel Le R�eve (1888) is a love idyll between a poor embroideress and the son of a wealthy aristocratic family set against the background of a sleepy cathedral town in northern France. A far cry from the seething, teeming world evoked in Zola's best-known novels, it may at first seem a strange interlude between La Terre and La B�ete Humaine in the 20-volume sequence known as the Rougon-Macquart cycle. However, belying its appearance...