A former member of Great Britain’s diplomatic corps, the celebrated author of the Alexandria Quartet offers eleven sketches of life in service of the crown.
 After decades spent representing Britain around the globe, Antrobus has earned a shirtful of medals and the right to pass afternoons in his London club, musing over old times. His memory is long, and every old embarrassment still rankles—no matter how ridiculous....

A young Gascon nobleman, d'Artagnan, sets off for Paris in hopes of joining the Musketeers. He proves himself fighting with them and earns a place in their ranks. With d'Artagnan the three preserve the honor of the king and thwart the schemes of Cardinal Richelieu.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

Ben Hur could be said to be the first blockbuster. When it was published in 1880, it sold over two million copies and was translated into numerous languages. It combines all the best elements of popular classic, epic and action story against a background of authoritative historical detail. The pace and immediacy of Ben Hur was the basis of its appeal to film-makers – Charlton Heston's portrayal of the title role is one of the classics of the cinema....

The adventures of a spirited boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century, as he tries a new method for curing warts, witnesses a murder, runs away to an island and pretends to be a pirate, watches his own funeral, and falls for the new girl in the neighborhood.

"There was one passenger in the coach,-a small dark-haired person in a glossy buff calico dress. She was so slender and so stiffly starched that she slid from space to space on the leather cushions, though she braced herself against the middle seat with her feet and extended her cotton-gloved hands on each side, in order to maintain some sort of balance. Whenever the wheels sank farther than usual into a rut, or jolted suddenly over a stone, she bounded...

Rumored to be haunted, the Palais Garnier opera house in nineteenth-century Paris is the setting for this story of a dangerous love triangle involving a young Swedish soprano, her mysterious Phantom tutor, and her childhood friend. When Carlotta, the lead soprano, takes ill and Christine Daa'̌s understudy performance is a rousing success, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny falls in love with Christine. Meanwhile, her tutor, the Angel of Music, whom she believes...

"A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen is a groundbreaking and thought-provoking masterpiece that challenges societal norms and explores the complex dynamics of marriage and identity. Set in 19th-century Norway, the play revolves around Nora Helmer, a seemingly content wife and mother, and her husband Torvald. As the plot unfolds, the audience is drawn into a web of secrets, lies, and personal revelations. Nora's journey from a docile, doll-like existence...

Includes the play as well as much additional information concerning the life and times surrounding Shakespeare.

A landmark in American fiction, Light in August published in 1932, explores Faulkner's central theme: the nature of evil. Joe Christmas-a man doomed, deracinated and alone-wanders the Deep South in search of an identity, and a place in society. After killing his perverted God-fearing lover, it becomes inevitable that he is, pursued by a lynch-hungry mob. Yet after the sacrifice, there is new life, a determined ray of light in Faulkner's complex and...