NCW Libraries

An exquisitely beautiful young man in Victorian England retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption.

Overview: Alexandre Dumas's novel of justice, retribution, and self-discovery - one of the most enduringly popular adventure tales ever written - appears here in a newly revised translation. "This novel tells the story of Edmond Dantes, wrongfully imprisoned for life in the supposedly impregnable sea fortress the Chateau d'If. After a daring escape, and after unearthing a hidden treasure revealed to him by a fellow prisoner, he devotes the rest...

In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell (The Tipping Point) aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers-to "analyze, critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them," in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety. He uses a variety of examples from history and recent headlines...

"The Call of the Wild," by Jack London, is one of America's best-known novels. Currently published in more than twenty separate editions in English alone, this novel about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 to 1899 has been continuously in print since it first appeared in 1903. Many editions of "The Call of the Wild" have distorted the original text: the violence is modified, the language is sanitized, and the punctuation and spelling are modernized....

"This new version of Romeo and Juliet, written in accessible modern English, breathes new life into Shakespeare's famous tragedy. By closely examining the familiar language and focusing on the subtleties of the text, Jung illuminates a surprising and more nuanced world in the well-known tale of star-crossed lovers"--

Indifferent to the plight of France's downtrodden and pained by unrequited love for Lucie Darnay, London barrister Sydney Carton finds meaning through an act of sacrifice.

Heidi, a Swiss orphan, is heartbroken when she must leave her home and grandfather to go to school and care for a sick girl named Clara in the city.

A prophetic and gripping work from the father of science fiction, The War of the Worlds forever cast into doubt the notion that we are alone in the universe. It endures as one of the most captivating accounts of interplanetary invasion ever written. This edition includes transcripts of Orson Welles's infamous 1938 radio broadcast.

"A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities...

A feisty young boy fakes his own death to escape his abusive father and heads off down the Mississippi River with his newfound friend Jim, a runaway slave.