This richly textured novel of romance and class conflict explores the dichotomies between the pastoral South and industrial North during England's mid-Victorian era. Praised by Dickens as "an admirable story," this is a turbulent tale of a woman torn between her sympathy for discontented millworkers and her love for the factory's owner.

"Conflating her own childhood experiences with those of a celebrated Wagnerian soprano of her day, Willa Cather here introduces Thea Kronborg, a Scandinavian-American singer who rises from a one-story town in Colorado to the Metropolitan Opera House. Along the way she learns her own capacity for the rigorous demands of artistic excellence, and how few of her colleagues are willing to sacrifice ordinary vanities for exacting professional standards....

"18-year-old Meg Hennessey just found out her entire childhood was a lie. Instead of taking a gap year before college to find herself, she ends up traveling north to meet what's left of the family she never knew existed. While there, she meets Micah Allen, a former pastor's kid whose dad ended up in prison, leaving Micah with his own complicated relationship about the church. The clock is ticking on Pastor Allen's probation hearing and Micah, now...

Relive the glory of a Pennsylvania canal town through the eyes of those who ministered to the needs of the workers. Betsy Nelson reluctantly returns to her childhood home to care for her failing father, a faithful minister who served the town for years. William Covington, a confirmed bachelor, comes to town to become the new pastor and set aside the luxuries of his birth for service to God. Can Betsy and William find common ground on which to work...

While playing golf, Bobby Jones and Dr. Thomas discover a dying man at the base of a cliff. Before he dies, the man manages to get out the words, "Why didn't they ask Evans?" Days later, remembering things that don't seem to add up about the death, Bobby decides to investigate, and his friend Frances Derwent immediately agrees to help. Was it a misstep that sent a handsome stranger plummeting to his death over a cliff? Or was it a something more sinister?...

The breathtaking love story of an illegitimate girl and the young noble who would choose her above all. Gender issues and economic hardships are dealt with deftly in Doctor Thorne, the third novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, and arguably the saga's finest love story. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, this Victorian novel is one of Anthony Trollope's most optimistic and engaging works. When Henry Thorne seduces local...

Life changes drastically for Ruth the day her father puts a young child in her arms and sends her under an assumed name to a small village in New Jersey, where she dutifully awaits Reverend Livingstone's acquittal. When tragic events transpire, Ruth finds solace tending a garden along the banks of Toms River. It is here she meets Jake Spencer, who both frustrates and intrigues her. Ruth knows she must maintain her identity as Widow Malloy. Can the...

As a preacher's daughter, Monique is expected to be an example at church although she hates its restrictive rules. When she discovers she physically cannot have sex, and after her boyfriend breaks up with her for that reason, two unexpected teens from church become her main supports as she desperately tries to break the rules against all the odds.

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.