"The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story - a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking." "Professor James Murray, an astonishingly...

Who is the mole buried within British intelligence, planted by Karla in Moscow years ago? George Smiley is back, in the first novel of The quest for Karla trilogy.

At Talavera in July of 1809, Captain Richard Sharpe, bold, professional, and ruthless, prepares to lead his men against the armies of Napoleon in what will be the bloodiest battle of the war. Sharpe has earned his captaincy, but there are others, such as the foppish Lieutenant Gibbons and his uncle, Colonel Henry Simmerson, who have bought their commissions despite their incompetence. After their cowardly loss of the regiment's colors, their resentment...

"The stench of death hung in the air as John Altar studied the massacre and tried to convince himself that his younger brother, Bobby, couldn't have been part of this. Torn apart by the Civil War, the two brothers had fought on opposite sides, and in defeat, Bobby had fallen in with a group of Confederate raiders when released from a Prisoner of War camp. Their mother's consuming wish was for her wayward son to be brought back to her, and Altar has...

Presents Charles Darwin's 1859 text in which he defines his theory of evolution, arguing that species change over time, evolving or dying out entirely, through the process of natural selection.

Discusses the rise to power of Julien Sorel who uses his love affairs to serve his ambitions. He tries to murder his first mistress when she betrays him to her successor.

The final novel of "a social satire of epic proportions and one that does not suffer by comparison with Thackeray's Vanity Fair" (The New York Times).   From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932   Set against the backdrop of a post–World War I Britain, now rocked by a general strike, Swan Song captures the staunch resilience-and ridiculousness-of the British upper middle class, who view this new national crisis as just a...

The Silver Spoon is the fifth of the nine novels in the Forsyte Chronicles, John Galsworthy's epic story of the moneyed Forsyte family during the decline of the Victorian age. It is part of the second trilogy, called A Modern Comedy, and continues his fascinating study of the British propertied class in a changing society. In this novel, Soames Forsyte's daughter, Fleur, experiences an inherent dissatisfaction with her marriage not unlike her father's,...

Maid in Waiting is the beginning novel in the last trilogy of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles. In this seventh installment, the story continues of the lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths of the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes.

Victor Hugo's towering novel of Jean Valjean, his unjust imprisonment, and his lifelong flight from a relentless police officer