The first novel of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, this work introduces the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and many of its clerical inhabitants. Originally published in 1855, the story centers on Mr. Septimus Harding who has been granted the comfortable wardenship of Hiram's Hospital, an almshouse from a medieval charity of the diocese. Mr. Harding, a fundamentally good man and an excellent musician, conscientiously fulfills his...

John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...

"Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything...

"Standing nearly five hundred stories tall, Los Verticalés once bustled with life and excitement. Now this marvel of modern architecture and nontraditional urban planning has collapsed into a pile of rubble known as the Heap. In exchange for digging gear, a rehabilitated bicycle, and a small living stipend, a vast community of Dig Hands removes debris, trash, and bodies from the building's mountainous remains..."--Amazon.com.

In Erewhon, an anagram for "nowhere," sickness is a punishable crime, criminals receive compassionate medical treatment, and machines are banned, lest they evolve and take over. Originally published in 1872, the proto-steampunk novel Erewhon won its author immediate recognition as a satirist. SamuelButler followed in the tradition of Voltaire and Swift in creating Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, which are widely recognized as the nineteenth century's...

"From best-selling novelist T.C. Boyle, a satirical yet ultimately moving take on contemporary American life in the glare of climate change"--

Sentenced to death for forgery and swindling, Meist Von Lipwig accepts a pardon in exchange for revamping an ancient post office, but his efforts are thwarted by murderous characters who want the post office shut down.

George F. Babbitt is a hustling, prosperous real estate broker in a city of about 350,000. Back of his business and clubs and 100% activities is a wistful wonder as to what this business of living is all about.

World War Z is a fictional account of a worldwide outbreak of the living dead in the near future. WWZ is done in an interview-style format with each chapter consisting of first-person interviews of individuals who lived through the Zombie War from its initial outbreak to it's final battles and mop-up operations.

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.