With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully...

A bizarre burglary involving jewels being dissolved in super-strong acid and a note with a square on it left behind sends Inspector Van In on a strange investigation involving Latin phrases, kidnapping, and stolen, priceless art.