Wanda McCaddon
4) Emma
“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” So begins Jane Austen’s comic masterpiece Emma. In Emma, Austen’s prose brilliantly elevates, in the words of Virginia...
5) Whose body?
Lord Peter Wimsey spends his days tracking down rare books, and his nights hunting killers. Though the Great War has left his nerves frayed with shellshock, Wimsey continues to be London’s greatest sleuth—and he’s about to encounter his oddest case yet....
"When you sell a man a book," says Roger Mifflin, the sprite-like book peddler at the center of this classic novella, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life." In this beguiling but little-known prequel to Christopher Morley's belovedHaunted Bookshop,...
A repackaged edition of the revered author's retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche—what he and many others regard as his best novel.
C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—brilliantly reimagines the story of Cupid and
...10) Howards End
12) Northanger Abbey
In the classic work that launched a play, a movie, and a song, Muriel Spark tells the darkly intriguing story of an eccentric Edinburgh teacher and the intense relationship she develops with six of her students.
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods,
...The outcry when Conan Doyle pushed Sherlock Holmes over the Reichenbach Falls and the dismay when Freeling shot Van der Valk are as nothing compared to the chaos that ensues when Lorinda Lucas tries to dispose of Miss Petunia and her siblings, Lily and Marigold. Not only does the lid blow off the fictional village of St. Waldemar Boniface, but the literary colony of Brimful Coffers is shaken to its foundations.
Old feuds are resurrected and new
...A "marvelous history"* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years' War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal
The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours;
...Doctor Dolittle, a little, lovable old doctor, had so many animal pets spread throughout his house and garden that patients would not come to him anymore. As a result, he became poorer and poorer.
But Doctor Dolittle occupied nearly all of his time tending to his pets, and his fame as an animal doctor spread all over the world. When the monkeys in Africa were stricken with an epidemic, they gave the good doctor a call. He set sail at once.
The
...There was only one mystery Agatha Christie could not solve: her own.
Dame Agatha Christie is best known for her detective novels and short stories. She is one of the most popular authors of all time, her novels having sold over four billion copies and having been translated into 103 languages.
On the evening of December 8, 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, leaving only a note for her secretary indicating
...