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With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs Translated by Louise Maude This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution....

The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Literally meaning "The tailor re-tailored," "Sartor Resartus" is Thomas Carlyle's 1836 novel which was first serialized in "Fraser's Magazine" in 1833-1834. The novel poses as a review for the work "Clothes, Their Origin and Influence" by the fictional philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, Professor of "Things in General" at Weissnichtwo University. Intended by Carlyle as a new kind of book, "Sartor Resartus" is at once a work of fiction and social...

Cousin Bette (1846) is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Part of Balzac's La Comédie humaine sequence, the novel is recognized as being the author's last fully-realized work, and features several characters who appear elsewhere throughout his legendary series. It has inspired several film and television adaptations, as well as earned comparisons to Shakespeare's Othello and Tolstoy's War and Peace. The novel focuses on the life and exploits...

In Baroness Emma Orczy's 1905 novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel", the year is 1792 and the French Revolution is complete. People die by the guillotine every day, often unjustly. Stepping in to right these wrongs and rescue the innocent is the elusive "Scarlet Pimpernel", a mysterious agent named for the red flower that is his signature. Meanwhile, foppish Sir Percy Blakeney and his French actress wife Marguerite are having marital difficulties when Marguerite...

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a master of the short story. The son of a former serf in southern Russia, he attended Moscow University to study medicine, writing short stories for periodicals in order to support his family. What began as a necessity became a legitimate career in 1886 when he was asked to write in St. Petersburg for the Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned by millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin. Chekhov began paying more attention to his...

First published in 1870, this novella has since become the best-known of Sacher-Masoch's works. This Austrian author imagined an epic series of stories entitled "The Legacy of Cain". Ultimately only two volumes of these stories were ever penned, of which "Venus in Furs" remains the most famous. The nested narrative begins with a nameless narrator who dreams of speaking to the goddess Venus about love as she wears furs. When he confides these dreams...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a prolific writer born in Scotland, who started out as a medical doctor and took an occupational detour that made him world-famous. While studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he augmented his income by writing stories-a pursuit that led to the creation of Sherlock Holmes, one of literature's best-loved detectives. Doyle also wrote many works of history and science fiction, plus plays and poetry. Set against...

Jonny Tremain, a silversmith's apprentice, lives in Boston at the brink of the American Revolutionary War. Here, Johnny reveals the events that lead up to the famed Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington.

Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...