"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the coming-of-age story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet fromative years in the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn. This poignant and moving classic of American literature is filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and incident.

Shug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteen-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him -- she calls him Sweet Mister and attempts to boost his confidence and give him hope for his future. Shuggie's purported father, Red, is a brutal man with a short fuse who mocks and despises the boy. Into this small-town Ozarks mix comes Jimmy Vin Pearce, with his shiny green T-bird and his smart city clothes. When he and Glenda begin a torrid...

Acid Row. The name the beleaguered inhabitants give to their 'sink' estate. A no-man's land of single mothers and fatherless children - where angry, alienated youth controls the streets. Into this battleground comes Sophie Morrison, a young doctor visiting a patient in Acid Row. Little does she know that she is entering the home of a known pedophile ...and with reports circulating that a tormented child called Amy has disappeared, the vigilantes are...

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.

"At fifty-one years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around them. Inside its walls, they make music, and in its garden, they grow everything they need to survive. To an outsider, it looks like poverty; to them, it is home. But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the world they've...

The cruel world of the early Victorian England. The novel describes the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man that has to support his family - his mother (a Dickens portrait own mother) and sister - after the death of his father.

"Ebenezer Scrooge is a penny-pinching, mean, old miser. He treats his family and employee poorly, and, in turn, is not a well-liked man. He especially does not like Christmas! But, one fateful Christmas Eve, he is visited by three ghosts that change his life forever!" -- Page [4] of cover.

"The work of a young novelist at the height of his powers, "Nicholas Nickleby" is one of the touchstones of the English comic novel. Around the central story of Nicholas Nickleby and the misfortunes of his family, Dickens created some of his most wonderful characters: the muddle-headed Mrs Nickleby, the gloriously theatrical Crummles, their protege Miss Petowker, the pretentious Mantalinis and the mindlessly cruel Squeers and his wife. "Nicholas Nickleby"'s...