When the starving French masses rise in hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent government, both the guilty and innocent become victims of their frenzied anger. Soon nothing stands in the way of the chilling figure they enlist for their cause - La Guillotine - the new invention for efficiently chopping off heads. Charles Dickens' compelling portrait of the results of terror and treason, love and supreme sacrifice continues to captivate readers around...

"Alexandra, daughter of a Swedish immigrant farmer in Nebraska, inherits the family farm and finds love with an old friend." "The heroic battle for survival of simple pioneer folk in the Nebraska country of the 1880s. John Bergson, a Swedish farmer, struggles desperately with the soil but dies unsatisfied. His daughter Alexandra resolves to vindicate his faith, and her strong character carries her weak older brothers and her mother alng to a new zest...

"Written from the perspective of a male narrator, Willa Cather's classic novel is an American version of "Madame Bovary". It is a portrait of a talented woman trapped in the conventions and economic restraints of a marriage. It is the story of a woman who defies expectations, and whose personal changes coincide with the transforming American Frontier. In this work, Willa Cather expressed her profoundly modern feminist views in the life of an ordinary...

As a little girl, Stephen Gordon always felt different. A talent for sport, a hatred of dresses and a preference for solitude was not considered suitable for a young lady of the Victorian upper-class. But when Stephen grows up and falls passionately in love with another woman, her standing in the county and her place at the home she loves become untenable. Stephen must set off to discover whether there is anywhere in the world that will have her.

Shadows on the Rock Willa Cather - Set in 17th century Canada. A year in the life of a widow and his young daughter and the trappers, missionaries, craftsmen, friends and others who come to their house and shop, it highlights the men and women who struggled to adapt to the "new world" and make a new life for themselves even as they clung to the one they had left behind

Fervently pursuing the life of an artist, a young music student leaves behind her small midwestern town existence and comes to know the elation and heartache of a life in the creative world.

Charles Dickens' classic story of a young boy who seeks his fortune on the streets of London. After Oliver Twist asks nasty Mr Bumble for more food, he has to flee the workhouse for the streets of London. Here he meets the Artful Dodger, who leads him to Fagin and his gang of pickpockets. When a thieving mission goes wrong, Oliver narrowly avoids prison and finds himself in the care of kind Mr Brownlow. But Fagin and the brutal Bill Sikes go in search...

"The people of Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, are in the grip of a deadly plague that condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. The plague begins with a series of unheeded warnings: panic, isolation, and claustrophobia soon follow, as the townspeople are force into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror."--Provided by publisher. "The...

Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz gives us a bitter tale of stardom won and wasted in THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA a film à clef about a Rita Hayworth-style Spanish dancer (Ava Gardner) who becomes an international movie star. Her sympathetic guide is Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart), a nearly-has-been writer/director trying to restart his career. Edmond O’Brien won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® playing the public relations lackey of a Howard Hughes-like...

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause celebre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty...