Thackeray's best-loved work, "Vanity Fair, is a satire of epic proportions, and proves that deep-seated cynicism and heartfelt morality don't have to get in the way of a good story. Filled with exceptionally drawn characters, biting social humor, and Thackeray's own illustrations, "Vanity Fair is not only one of the great English novels of the nineteenth century, its title has become synonymous with the follies of high society. Nicholas Dames is Assistant...

This sprawling novel follows the fortunes and losses of five families from the Stone Age through the present time. Each of the families can be identified through genetic characteristics handed down through the ages, not simply physical characteristics, but attitudes and morals, too. There is plenty of action to keep readers motivated to finish the book. Rutherford has a style and energy all his own that should appeal to young readers of historical...

George Eliot takes the well-worn tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire and out if it creates a portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people their labors and loves, their beliefs, their speech.

Called to the peaceful wooded churchyard of St-John's-at-Hampstead, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose faces one of the most audacious and unusual murders of his career. The body of the church's organist is found in an opened grave, together with a photograph of a manor house and a cryptic note. The image leads Archie to Cambridge, where the crisp autumn air has brought with it bustling life to the ancient university and town. Mystery author...

What Philippa Gregory has done for Tudor England, Jeanne Kalogridis does for Renaissance Italy. Her latest irresistible historical novel is about a countess whose passion and willfulness knew no bounds-Caterina Sforza Daughter of the Duke of Milan and wife of the conniving Count Girolamo Riario, Caterina Sforza was the bravest warrior Renaissance Italy ever knew. She ruled her own lands, fought her own battles, and openly took lovers whenever she...

A tale inspired by a true story follows the experiences of Scottish aristocrat's wife Maribel Campbell, a self-proclaimed Chilean heiress who in late Victorian London finds her husband's career threatened by a notorious journalist's investigation into her true past.

Realistic, moving, engrossing, and positively brilliant, this biography recreates Mozart, the man and his music, against the background of the world he lived in. For Marcia Davenport, the research and writing of Mozart was truly a labor of love, during which she retraced every journey he made, saw every dwelling (then extant) in which he had ever lived, every theatre where his works were first performed, and every library and museum where his manuscripts...

Looking forward to a quiet retirement in Cornwall after a lifetime of international travel, widow Eleanor is inadvertently drawn into a murder investigation involving her wrongly accused artist friend and her detective niece.

In this Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, historian Barbara Tuchman brings to life the people and events that led up to World War I.

This was the last gasp of the Gilded Age, of kings and kaisers and czars, of pointed or plumed hats, colored uniforms, and all the pomp and romance that went along with war. How quickly it all changed—and how horrible it became.

Tuchman masterfully portrays this transition from the nineteenth

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Bored with the routine cases coming her way, Agatha Raisin finally gets an intriguing case after the poisoning death of a wealthy widow, Mrs. Tamworthy, who had sent Agatha a letter warning that she believed that someone in her family intended to kill her.