Suddenly fatherless and penniless, young Nicholas Nickleby can find no help for himself and his family. His uncle Ralph may be rich, but he is neither a kind nor an honorable man, so it is up to Nicholas to take responsibility. His adventures in Victorian England will take Nicholas to a job at a boys' school run by a brutal and dictatorial headmaster, a London slum, and a theater troupe where he works under an assumed name and into a web of revenge,...

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...

A "historical novel that explores the rising influence of Dickens's work in mid-19th century London through the journey of a young woman's struggle against poverty and injustice"--Dust jacket flap.

In 1890s Boston, a 15-year-old upper-class girl is banished to a convent following an affair with a married doctor which left her pregnant. The girl is forced to surrender the child for adoption, but she subsequently goes to court to recuperate it, and eventually marries the doctor. A study in the mores and manners of the day.

"Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes - grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity. Oliver Twist features some of the author's most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (who dares to ask for more), the tyrannical...

"A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor-these form a series of events that change the orphan Pip's life forever, as he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens's haunting novel depicts Pip's education and development...

"Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob and his open-minded mother, Leah, are each other's whole world. But Jacob's prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better...

Young women are being scooped off the streets of 1839 London under the cover of darkness, and folks think the devil himself is driving the coach. When the bodies of two victims are later positioned near prominent London monuments, the fear factor rises. Even Liberty Lane, a female private investigator, is shaken by this development. She has been probing the disappearance of a young man's fiance£who has been murdered£and her client is AWOL. At the...

Based on real events, The Quickening Maze won over UK critics and readers alike with its rapturous prose and vivid exploration of poetry and madness. In 1837, after years of struggling with alcoholism and depression, the great nature poet John Clare finds himself in High Beach-a mental institution located in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London. It is not long before another famed writer, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and grows entwined...