Frank Carlson Library

The breathtaking love story of an illegitimate girl and the young noble who would choose her above all. Gender issues and economic hardships are dealt with deftly in Doctor Thorne, the third novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, and arguably the saga's finest love story. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, this Victorian novel is one of Anthony Trollope's most optimistic and engaging works. When Henry Thorne seduces local...

In the picaresque series of sketches in Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens wrote one of the masterpieces of comic fiction, and presented readers with some of the most colorful and beloved characters of all time. In Dickens' first novel, initially based on a series of illustrations, members of the eponymous club recount their various experiences and encounters as they travel around England. Without the dark themes that dominated so many of his novels,...

Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer.

"Daphne Beekman is a mystery writer by day, inquiry agent by night. She happily works behind the scenes, staying away from danger. But when Herman Henderson arrives on the doorstep, desperate for someone to investigate numerous attempts on his life, Daphne finds herself in the thick of a case she's determined to solve, and her heart put in jeopardy"--

The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense friendship. There is a piercing honesty about Ferrante's prose that makes My Brilliant Friend a compulsively readable portrait of two young women,...

"When Dr. Croft takes in orphan Eleanor Beady, he doesn't realize that he's gained an apprentice. Raised amidst Croft's experiments, "Nora" becomes his most trusted assistant-an unthinkable and unlawful pursuit for a woman. Nora helps Croft's groundbreaking research and his clinic gain recognition, and she finds she doesn't mind working in the background, as long as she can continue to hone her skills. But the arrival of a new surgical resident threatens...

Set in the Georgian period, about 20 years before the Regency, These Old Shades is considered to be the book that launched Heyer's career. It features two of her most memorable characters: Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon, and L�eonie, whom he rescues from a life of ignominy and comes to love and marry.

Two young women, one innocent and the other clever and unscrupulous, seek husbands and happiness in Europe around the time of the Napoleonic campaigns.

The second Edith Wharton volume in The Library of America series contains five tales of Edith Wharton along with her autobiography and a previously unpublished autobiographical fragment.