"In the figure of the half-starved Oliver in the workhouse asking for 'more', Dickens created the nineteenth century's most famous image of protest against cruelty. Yet Oliver Twist develops from a topical satire on the inhumanity of the New Poor Law into something greater. What unfolds is a powerful and violent struggle between Good and Evil, as Oliver becomes ensnared in the labyrinth of London and the nightmare world of Fagin. With its macabre...

Overview: This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous. Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy's great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene-and the devoted shepherd, obsessed farmer, and dashing soldier who vie for her favor-move through a beautifully realized late nineteenth-century...

Lyra and Will find themselves at the center of a battle between the forces of the Authority and those gathered by Lyra's father, Lord Asriel.