The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him."

A landmark in American fiction, Light in August published in 1932, explores Faulkner's central theme: the nature of evil. Joe Christmas-a man doomed, deracinated and alone-wanders the Deep South in search of an identity, and a place in society. After killing his perverted God-fearing lover, it becomes inevitable that he is, pursued by a lynch-hungry mob. Yet after the sacrifice, there is new life, a determined ray of light in Faulkner's complex and...

Stingo, a young southerner, who journeyed north in 1947 to become a writer becomes intellectually and emotionally entanglement with his neighbors in a Brooklyn rooming house. Nathan, a tortured, brilliant Jew, and his lover, Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman whose wrist bears the grim tattoo of a concentration camp ... and whose past is strewn with death that she alone survived.

Obsessed with his desire to have a son as an heir, Paul Dombey all but ignores his eldest daughter Florence. Mr Dombey's dream becomes a reality when his wife gives birth to a baby boy. Unfortunately, his wife tragically dies during childbirth, leaving Paul alone with Florence and his newborn son, Paul. Mr Dombey's son is not a healthy child and even after being sent to the Brighton seaside for his illness, young Paul passes away. Mr. Dombey is crushed...

A seductive and beautiful love story. Tells about an aristocrat, Sir Clifford Chatterley, who has come home from the war paralyzed from the waist down. His wife devotes herself to his care, but her husband's bitter arrogance soon makes her existence a nightmare. Selfishly he suggests that she produce an heir. He never dreams that she will break all the rules, and forgetting her social class, take their gamekeeper as her lover.

"Basil Ransom, an attractive young Mississippi lawyer, is on a visit to his cousin Olive, a wealthy feminist, in Boston when he accompanies her to a meeting on the subject of women's emancipation. One of the speakers is Verena Tarrant, and although he disapproves of all she claims to stand for, Basil is immediately captivated by her and sets about 'reforming' her with his traditional views. But Olive has already made Verena her protégée, and soon...

Howards End concerns the relationships that develop between the imaginative, life-loving Schlegel family -- Margaret, Helen, and their brother Tibby -- and the seemingly cool, pragmatic Wilcoxes -- Henry and Ruth and their children Charles, Paul, and Evie. Margaret finds a soulmate in Ruth, who before she dies declares in a note that her family's country house, Howards End, should go to Margaret. Her survivors choose to ignore her wishes, but after...

From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, author Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles. At their second home on the Isle of Skye, the Ramsay family surrounds itself with friends and colleagues. They contend with World War I, family deaths, and hardships both spoken and unspoken. All the...

"I was born in Tuckahoe. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant."So begins the now-classic personal account of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who was born into slavery in Maryland and after his escape to Massachusetts...

"Nella Larsen's second novel, Passing, first published in 1929, is a fascinating exploration of race and identity set amidst the blossoming Harlem Renaissance. Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly light-skinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing for...