Chaucer's work begins at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, England, where a group of pilgrims have assembled on their way to Canterbury. Harry Bailly, the innkeeper, suggests a contest: whoever tells the best tale will win a supper when they reach Canterbury.

Tells a story about the strange relationship of two migrant workers, who are able to realize their dreams of an easy life until one of them succumbs to his weakness for soft, helpless creatures and strangles the farmer's wife. Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him. With illustrations from the movie starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

Spirited Elizabeth Bennet copes with the suit of the snobbish Mr. Darcy while trying to sort out the romantic entanglements of two of her sisters, sweet and beautiful Jane and scatterbrained Lydia.

Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excrutiating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime and Punishment...

The Metamorphoses of Ovid (8 AD) is an epic poem by Ovid. Published the same year, the poet was, sent into exile for the rest of his life, the Metamorphoses are the crowning achievement of the first major poet of the Roman empire. Written in dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and of Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's work is an epic poem of transformations, of shape-shifting matter and beings bound to the power of love. Taking as its...

A dialogue attempting to apply Plato's principles of philosophy to political affairs. Covers his vision of an ideal state.

The classic story of the March family whose four daughters are growing up in New England in the mid-1800s. There are numerous sequels, for example, Little Men and Jo's Boys. Annotation. Little Women is the heartwarming story of the March family that has thrilled generations of readers. It is the story of four sisters--Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth-- and of the courage, humor and ingenuity they display to survive poverty and the absence of their father during...

"Science fiction's supreme masterpiece, Dune will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, it is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who will become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. Paul's noble family is named stewards of Arrakis, whose sands are the only source of a powerful drug called "the spice." After his family is brought down in a traitorous plot, Paul must go undercover to seek revenge, and...

The enchanting story of a shipwrecked family --a minister, his wife, and four sons-- who are cast up on a desert island, build a wonderful house in a tree, and survive so cleverly and happily apart from the world that they never want to be rescued.

After a scandal breaks out involving a famous Irish Nationalist politician, Stephen Dedalus finds his family being torn apart over their differing opinions of the matter. Shaken by all the fighting and animosity, Stephen begins to wonder where he can place his faith. Questioning the Irish and Catholic ideology that he was raised on, Stephen begins to rebel against expectations as he departs for college. While he excels in his studies, Stephen struggles...