The Oregon Trail is the gripping account of Francis Parkman's journey west across North America in 1846. After crossing the Allegheny Mountains by coach and continuing by boat and wagon to Westport, Missouri, he set out with three companions on a horseback journey that would ultimately take him over two thousand miles. His detailed description of the journey, set against the vast majesty of the Great Plains, has emerged through the generations as...

Weaned on sentimental novels, Emma Bovary longs for a life of luxury and high romance. She is married to a kind but mediocre country doctor and is plagued by expectations of something more, some more intense experience, some wider horizon if she could only find it. She seeks to escape from boredom in extravagant shopping sprees and eventually, adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and so begins her descent into ruin and despair.

In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret. Charlotte Bronte's novel about the passionate love between Jane Eyre, a young girl alone in the world, and the rich, brilliant, domineering Rochester has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic, ever since...