In 1831, the then twenty-seven year old Alexis de Tocqueville, was sent with Gustave de Beaumont to America by the French Government to study and make a report on the American prison system. Over a period of nine months the two traveled all over America making notes not only on the prison systems but on all aspects of American society and government. From these notes, Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America", an exhaustive analysis of the successes...

Mrs and Mrs Spragg are hoping to forge an entree into society and arrange a suitably ambitious match for their only daughter. We follow the career of the selfish, spoiled Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York and determined to conquer high society. Her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity and her father's money.

Old Ebenezer Scrooge is too mean to spend money on coals for the fire in his counting-house, where his clerk Bob Cratchit shivers in the winter cold. Declining an invitation to his nephew Fred's Christmas party, and refusing to give money to charity, he is ready for his usual miserly Christmas in his cold, dingy apartment. But that night, the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley appears and tells him to expect a visit from three spirits over the...

"Written from the perspective of a male narrator, Willa Cather's classic novel is an American version of "Madame Bovary". It is a portrait of a talented woman trapped in the conventions and economic restraints of a marriage. It is the story of a woman who defies expectations, and whose personal changes coincide with the transforming American Frontier. In this work, Willa Cather expressed her profoundly modern feminist views in the life of an ordinary...

As a little girl, Stephen Gordon always felt different. A talent for sport, a hatred of dresses and a preference for solitude was not considered suitable for a young lady of the Victorian upper-class. But when Stephen grows up and falls passionately in love with another woman, her standing in the county and her place at the home she loves become untenable. Stephen must set off to discover whether there is anywhere in the world that will have her.

Twenty-six-year-old Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to Russia after spending several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by the society of St. Petersburgh for his idiocy, generosity and innocence, he finds himself at the centre of a struggle between a beautiful kept woman and a gorgeous, virtuous girl, both of whom win his affection. Unfortunately, Myshkin's very goodness seems to precipitate disaster, leaving the impression that, in a world...

Charles Dickens' classic story of a young boy who seeks his fortune on the streets of London. After Oliver Twist asks nasty Mr Bumble for more food, he has to flee the workhouse for the streets of London. Here he meets the Artful Dodger, who leads him to Fagin and his gang of pickpockets. When a thieving mission goes wrong, Oliver narrowly avoids prison and finds himself in the care of kind Mr Brownlow. But Fagin and the brutal Bill Sikes go in search...

"The people of Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, are in the grip of a deadly plague that condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. The plague begins with a series of unheeded warnings: panic, isolation, and claustrophobia soon follow, as the townspeople are force into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror."--Provided by publisher. "The...

Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz gives us a bitter tale of stardom won and wasted in THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA a film à clef about a Rita Hayworth-style Spanish dancer (Ava Gardner) who becomes an international movie star. Her sympathetic guide is Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart), a nearly-has-been writer/director trying to restart his career. Edmond O’Brien won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® playing the public relations lackey of a Howard Hughes-like...

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause celebre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty...