Set within the richly imagined confines of Puritan Boston, The Scarlet Letter is Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale of the social consequences of adultery and the subversive force of personal desire in a strict religious community.

Beginning on the night of the Grand Illumination, an unearthly festival of lanterns held on Martha's Vineyard, the novel chronicles a marriage and a bittersweet exploration of an extraordinary passion.

A cornerstone of American letters, Walden is Henry David Thoreau's chronicle of the two years he spent living by himself at Walden Pond, contemplating the individual's relationship to society. Thoreau first published this book in 1854, and its themes of self-reliance, independence, individuality, and integration with nature still resonate with readers today. This elegant gift edition reprints the full text of Thoreau's classic and features a stylish...

When her father and step-mother are found brutally murdered on a summer morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden - thirty two years old and still living at home - immediately becomes a suspect. But after a notorious trial, she is found innocent, and no one is ever convicted of the crime. Meanwhile, others in the claustrophobic Borden household have their own motives and their own stories to tell: Lizzie's unmarried older sister, a put-upon Irish housemaid,...

The title piece of this collection follows the story of a man who is so disgruntled with his neighbors that he moves his family to a remote island off the coast of Maine, vowing to live with his wife and daughter in isolation. Though he fulfills his vow, his wife and daughter are unhappy with this lonely way of life and are left to pay the consequences of his stubbornness. Also included in the collection are "The Landscape Chamber" and "Miss Peck's...