The celebrated Victorian author of Middlemarch explores the turbulent world of Florence during the Italian Renaissance in this sweeping historical novel. Florence, 1492. Lorenzo de Medici has just died, leaving governance of the Florentine Republic to his son Piero, an unskilled ruler. Meanwhile, Tito Melema, a shipwrecked stranger, finds love with a young woman named Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar. Though her brother has a vision...

The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

The main character, Ann, is born into poverty in 1947. It shows how her family controls her and keeps her in poverty through their attitudes regarding gender inequality, immigrants, and minorities. We learn from her how to break this cycle to get out of poverty. She grows up in Brooklyn with a single mother and an absentee father and tells the story through her memories. You hear about the three generations of women who were chained to poverty because...

A lost generation searches for meaning in chaotic post-WWI London in this satirical novel by the acclaimed author of Brave New World. First published in 1923, Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay was banned in Australia and burned in Cairo for its frank depiction of bohemian life in the grim and listless aftermath of the Great War. Set in London, the comic novel follows a large cast of artists and intellectuals through their nihilistic yet determined pursuits....

The novel "Little Dorrit", published originally between 1855 and 1857, is a work of satire on the shortcomings of the government and society of the period. Much of Dickens' ire is focused upon the institutions of debtor's prisons-in which people who owed money were imprisoned, unable to work, until they have repaid their debts. The representative prison in this case is the Marshalsea where the author's own father had been imprisoned. Most of Dickens'...

Nobody rides for free.Not even a talented opera singer . . .My initial encounter with the diva had been on a Hollywood Blvd bus in the mid-70s. I was sitting in the middle somewhere on my way to another nothing job interview that I doubted I had a chance to land. Nam vet, you see. With a case of PTSD.She had boarded and claimed the bench seat across from the driver. Next thing we knew, she was squatting. . . . Well, let's just say the air suddenly...

Alexander Amador es uno de los empresarios más exitosos de Panamá. Joven, apuesto, altivo y de una gran soberbia, nadie imagina el sufrimiento del que se esconde detrás de ese muro impenetrable que ha moldeado con los años. Vive en una rutina inamovible, pero varios hechos comienzan a hacer temblar su perfecto mundo organizado. Mauricio, recién graduado de la universidad, espera impaciente ingresar al empleo que su padre le ha prometido. Honesto,...

La conmovedora historia de Rolando, nos lleva a reflexionar sobre las condiciones de vida de muchos niños y jóvenes en nuestro país que, sin tener oportunidades, salen adelante y superan toda adversidad de una manera insospechada. Luis Calderón Cubillos sabe cómo sorprendernos. Primero, con sus historias policiales y, ahora, con esta novela que nos hace llorar al comienzo, pero, luego, nos entrega las herramientas para superar los obstáculos...

Han pasado muchos años desde que el protagonista de este relato, que escribe desde una mazmorra en la que, sin saber cómo ni por quién, ha sido confinado, observaba desde su ventana el deprimente espectáculo de la existencia en el Barrio Viejo, e imaginaba una vida emocionante en los extramuros, alejado de sus hermanos, de su abnegada e inexpresiva madre y de una niñera sumida en la desesperanza. La llegada intempestiva de una extraña joven...