Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South.

Overview: "Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfill his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to Mellors, her husband's gamekeeper with whom she embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find true equality with Mellors, despite the vast gulf...

First serialized in 1924 and published as a complete novel in 1925, "The Painted Veil" is the powerful novel of transgression and redemption by popular and prolific British author W. Somerset Maugham. "The Painted Veil" tells the story of the lovely and superficial Kitty Garstin and her unhappy marriage to Walter Fane, a quiet and honorable man. Kitty agrees to marry Walter not because she loves him, but because she fears being upstaged by her younger...

The publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, with its vivid depictions of sex and adultery, incited a backlash of immorality charges. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor's wife bored and unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. She embarks upon a series of affairs in search of passion and excitement, but is unable to achieve the splendid life for which she yearns. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a downward spiral that inexorably leads...

"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...

Plotting revenge against her unfaithful husband, a policewoman has a one-night stand that inadvertently triggers a series of events that spiral dangerously out of control.

When adulteress Thérèse and her lover Laurent murder her sickly husband Camille, the ghost of Camille haunts them after their marriage, transforming their passion for each other into hatred.

"Born the child of a poor farmer in Missouri, William Stoner is urged by his parents to study new agriculture techniques at the state university. Digging instead into the texts of Milton and Shakespeare, Stoner falls under the spell of the unexpected pleasures of English literature, and decides to make it his life. Stoner is the story of that life"--Publisher description (January 2007).

Jude Fawley's aspirations to the dignity and rewards of life are continually thwarted by tragic obstacles of fate.