Frederick Davidson

At Talavera in July of 1809, Captain Richard Sharpe, bold, professional, and ruthless, prepares to lead his men against the armies of Napoleon in what will be the bloodiest battle of the war. Sharpe has earned his captaincy, but there are others, such as the foppish Lieutenant Gibbons and his uncle, Colonel Henry Simmerson, who have bought their commissions despite their incompetence. After their cowardly loss of the regiment's colors, their resentment...

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls...

Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...

"Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in." -Evelyn Waugh "Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a...

A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Called in its subtitle A Novel Without a Hero, Vanity Fair has instead two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young...

Les Misérables, Volume IV: Saint-Denis takes readers deeper into Victor Hugo's sweeping epic, where love, sacrifice, and revolution collide in the tumultuous streets of 19th-century Paris. This volume chronicles the stories of unforgettable characters who find themselves swept up in the tides of history, grappling with personal struggles and societal upheaval.The volume begins by exploring the political and social unrest that has Paris teetering...

In the debut mystery in Dorothy L. Sayers’s acclaimed Lord Peter Wimsey series, the case of a dead bather draws Lord Peter into the 1st of many puzzling mysteries
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....

Originally published in Polish in 1896 by Nobel Prize-winning author Henryk Sienkiewicz, "Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero" is the story of a love that develops in Rome between a young Christian woman, Lygia, and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician, during the reign of Nero in 64 AD. The title "Quo Vadis" is translated from Latin as "Where are you going?" The quote is a reference to the New Testament verse John 13:36, which states "Simon...

An unfinished duel, a midnight murder, and the treachery of a beautiful prostitute lead to the imprisonment of Sharpe. Caught in a web of political intrigue for which his military experience has left him fatally unprepared, Sharpe becomes a fugitive—a man hunted by both ally and enemy alike.

“Audacious and amusing . . . may be the best book yet in this deservedly celebrated series.”—The Wall Street Journal

It was only the second time Inspector Morse had ever taken over a murder enquiry after the preliminary—invariably dramatic—discovery and sweep of the crime scene. Secretly pleased to have missed the blood and gore, Morse and the faithful Lewis go about finding the killer who stabbed...