Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social-climbing Veneerings; and the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money.

Tragedy strikes when cunning old lawyer Tulkinghorn makes it his business to unravel the mystery that surrounds the beautiful, haughty Lady Dedlock.

Frankenstein is the most famous novel by Mary Shelley: a dark Faustian parable of science misused that was an immediate success on its publication in 1818. Purporting to be the record of an explorer, it tells of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but wayward student of science, who builds a human from dead flesh. Horrified by what he has done, he abandons his creation. The creature, an outcast for his horrific appearance, learns language and becomes...

Henry bargains with his father to keep his dog Ribsy out of trouble for two months. His reward will be a trip salmon-fishing if he is successful.

"Louisa May Alcott's beloved children's novel Little Women is one of the classics of American literature. The novel follows the lives of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, and details their passage from childhood to womanhood during the years of the American Civil War. The story was loosely based on Alcott and her sisters' own experiences of growing up in Concord, Massachusetts. The book became an immediate roaring success when it was published...

It is 1914, and twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently as an artist. But the word on everyone’s lips these days is “flickers”—the silent moving pictures enthralling theatergoers. Frances finds her true calling in writing stories for this new medium, and when she makes the acquaintance of Mary Pickford they...

"Introducing an extraordinary female lawyer-sleuth in a new historical series set in 1920s Bombay! Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a law degree from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's legal rights. Mistry Law has been...