Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections: between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed.

Belly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are very different.

Charlie is a teenager experiencing life and writing letters about it.

Immerse yourself in the evocative world of Proust's masterpiece, Swann's Way. In quaint Combray, a tapestry of childhood memories unfurls for young Marcel. Fragrances like madeleine cakes ignite a kaleidoscope of the past, transporting him to sun-drenched landscapes and the comforting rituals of his grandmother's embrace. Amidst this idyllic haven, Swann, a family friend, falls prey to an all-consuming love for Odette, a woman shrouded in enigmatic...

The story of a deformed youth whose handicap causes loneliness.

Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense readership for his Cork O'Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable--and to take on a maturity beyond his years.

From the author of House of Wonder, two sisters embark on a surprising journey after the death of their mother.

The hardscrabble Chase women—Mary, Hannah, and their mother, Diane—have been eking out a living running a tiny seaside motel that has been in the family for generations. Eighteen-year-old Mary Chase is a force of nature: passionate, beautiful, and free-spirited. Her much younger sister,

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When Obayda's father loses one of his legs in a bomb explosion, the family is forced to relocate from Kabul to a small village, where Obayda's aunt decides to invite good luck by dressing Obayda up as a boy, a bacha posh.

"All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?" Generations of readers have recognized the impassioned cry that introduces the young narrator of Demian, and embraced this tale of a troubled young man's struggle toward self-awareness. Initially published in Berlin in 1919, the novel met with instant critical acclaim, as well as great popular success among people seeking...

Sodom and Gomorrah (1921/22) is the fourth volume of Marcel Proust's seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time. Being the last volume that had Proust's direct involvement, Sodom and Gomorrah is a story of love, jealousy and family from a master of Modernist literature. Praised by Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Chabon, and Graham Greene, In Search of Lost Time explores the nature of memory and time while illuminating the history of homosexuality...