Bent Northrop Memorial Library

"Barnes & Noble Classics "pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Left penniless by the death of his improvident father, young Nicholas Nickleby assumes responsibility for his mother and sister and seeks help from his Scrooge-like Uncle Ralph. Instantly disliking Nicholas, Ralph sends him to teach in a school run by the stupidly sadistic Wackford...

Vanity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. This limited edition includes the author's original illustrations. Becky Sharp is sharp, calculating, and determined to succeed. Craving wealth and a position in society, she charms, hoodwinks, manipulates everyone she meets, rising in the world as she attaches...

Christopher Newman, a wealthy, American, goes to Europe to enjoy his wealth and becomes engaged. Her family is against the engagement and has it annuled. Newman is confronted with a moral dilemma when the possibility of revenge presents itself.

In the spring of 1863, as he faces battle for the first time at Chancellorsville, Virginia, a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.

"In a vividly drawn India of the late 19th century, orphan Kimball O'Hara is on the cusp of manhood. Living as a beggar, it isn't until Kim befriends an aged Tibetan Lama that his life transforms: the old man is on a quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment, and together they embark on an adventure through this impoverished, beautiful, chaotic nation in the grip of the Great Game, the conflict during which the British...

Called "the first and greatest of English detective novels" by T.S.Eliot, The Moonstone is a masterpiece of suspense. A fabulous yellow diamond becomes the dangerous inheritance of Rachel Verinder. Outside her Yorkshire country house watch the Hindu priests who have waited for many years to reclaim their ancient talisman, looted from the holy city of Somnauth. When the Moonstone disappears the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness ..." The most famous and possibly the most popular of Dickens's novels, A Tale of Two Cities shows a master of dramatic narrative extracting gold from the ore of history. If the bloody tableau of the French Revolution were...

A charming, young English woman is at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires when she finds herself attracted to someone socially unsuitable and is forced to choose between convention and passion.

When orphaned Mary Lennox comes to live at her uncle's great house on the Yorkshire moors, she finds it full of secrets. At night, she hears the sound of crying down one of the long corridors. Outside, she meets Dickon, a magical boy who can talk to animals. Then one day, Mary discovers the most mysterious wonder of all -- a secret garden, walled and locked, which has been forgotten for years and years. With the help of two unexpected companions,...

Thomas Hardy's first masterpiece, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a scene of such heartlessness and cruelty that it still shocks readers today. A poor workman named Michael Henchard, in a fit of drunken rage, sells his wife and baby daughter to a stranger at a country fair. Stricken with remorse, Henchard forswears alcohol and works hard to become a prosperous businessman and the respected mayor of Casterbridge. But he cannot erase his past....