"The coming-of-age story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn. This poignant and moving tale is filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. From the moment she entered the world, Francie needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often harsh life of Williamsburg demanded fortitude, precocity,...

In a haunting story of the American dream, Bit, born in a back-to-nature commune in 1970s New York State, must come to grips with the outside world when the commune eventually fails.

Despite having jobs and men that they love, Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget know something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn't take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle...

Halley's junior year of high school includes the death of her best friend Scarlett's boyfriend, the discovery that Scarlett is pregnant, and Halley's own first serious relationship.

The lives of three people in a nineteenth-century provincial community become entwined as crusader Dorothea Brooke is prevented from being with the man she loves, the idealistic Dr. Lydgate succumbs to materialism, and religious hypocrite Bulstrode tries to hide his past crimes.

A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.

Published in 1839, Nicholas Nickleby is Charles Dickens' third novel. In it, Nicholas Nickleby must earn a living to support his mother and sister after his father dies unexpectedly. Turning to a wealthy uncle in London for help, Nicholas is hired on as assistant to Wackford Squeers, a sadistic and small-minded schoolmaster. Meanwhile, his sister must take a job in a milliner's studio and is occasionally pressed into service by their uncle who exploits...

The first and most autobiographical of Maugham's masterpieces. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, he settles in London to train as a doctor where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a tortured and masochistic affair.

"At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers--one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her...

This book is Sapphire's latest, a sequel to Push coming 15 years after its publication and one year after Precious, the film based on Push, got Academy Award attention. It is the story of Precious's son, Abdul, opening on the day of his mother's funeral. This book brings us deep into the interior life of Abdul Jones, son of Sapphire's unforgettable heroine, Precious. It is a story of survival and awakening, and of one young man's remarkable strength....