For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the...

This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy’s most unforgettable creations: his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath. The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moor where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a clandestine meeting with her lover, Damon Wildeve. But Eustacia’s dreams of escape are not to be realized—neither...

"Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home--a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse--but John's not here. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb. Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers"--...

"Nichole, a woman in her early thirties, is recovering from a broken heart after learning her husband was having an affair and separating from him. The twist is that her mother-in-law, Leanne, is the one who told her that her son was cheating. Leanne has looked the other way for decades as HER own husband cheated, and can't bear to see her son repeating the same pattern. In telling Nichole, she also gathers the courage to leave her husband, and the...

"A woman around her thirties begins to question the routine and predictability of her days. In everybody's eyes, she has a perfect life: a solid and stable marriage, a loving husband, sweet and well-behaved children and a job as a journalist she can't complain about. However, she can no longer bear the necessary effort to fake happiness when all she feels in life is an enormous apathy. All that changes when she encounters an ex-boyfriend from her...

"Sally Grissom is a top secret service agent in charge of the Presidential Protection team. She knows that something is amiss when she is summoned to a private meeting with the President and his Chief of Staff without any witnesses. But she couldn't have predicted that she'd be forced to take on an investigation surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the First Lady with strict orders to keep it a secret. The First Lady's absence comes in the...

"The coming-of-age story of a young woman in 1950s Hollywood who grew up idolizing Ingrid Bergman and is forced to reassess her beliefs and desires in the face of Ingrid's scandalous affair with Roberto Rossellini and her fall from grace"--

Edna Pontellier, a Victorian-era wife and mother is awakened to the full force on her desire for love and freedom when she becomes enamored with Robert LeBrun, a young man she meets while on vacation.

"Does a fruit taste its sweetest when it is forbidden? Is that which is prohibited always the most pleasurable? In this ... collection, Tatiana de Rosnay paints a portrait of the most forbidden of loves"--Amazon.com.

"When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband's three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his...