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  Dombey and Son

  Charles Dickens

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  Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens's story of a powerful man whose callous neglect of his family triggers his professional and personal downfall, showcases the author's gift for vivid characterization and unfailingly realistic description. As Jonathan Lethem contends in his Introduction, Dickens's "genius . . . is at one with the genius of the form of the novel itself: Dickens willed into existence the most capacious and elastic and versatile kind of novel that could be, one big enough for his vast sentimental yearnings and for every impulse and fear and hesitation in him that countervailed those yearnings too. Never parsimonious and frequently contradictory, he always gives us everything he can, everything he's planned to give, and then more

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  The First Men in the Moon

  H. G. Wells

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  Published in 1901, The First Men in the Moon is one of the earliest science-fiction novels in the English language. An impecunious businessman, Bedford, retreats to the Kent coast where he meets the archetypal absent-minded scientist, Dr Cavor, who is on the point of producing a gravity-defying material. His experiments prove successful, making possible one of man’s oldest dreams: a journey to the moon. The two men embark on this fantastic voyage – Bedford motivated by the prospect of wealth, and Cavor by the thirst for knowledge. However, when they arrive, they find a world of freezing nights and sweltering days, and signs of a threatening alien presence, from which they may never escape.The novel invites obvious comparisons with its predecessor, Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, though Wells’s approach markedly differs from that of his French counterpart, with Wells being more concerned by the adventure on the moon, even at the expense of scientific plausibility.

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  The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll...

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most famous novella of Stevenson. The story is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson, who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde. The work is commonly associated with the rare mental condition often called "split personality", where, within the same body, there exists more than one distinct personality. The work is frequently interpreted as an examination of the duality of human nature, usually expressed as an inner struggle between good and evil. It has also been noted as "one of the best guidebooks of the Victorian era" because of its piercing description of the fundamental dichotomy of the 19th century "outward respectability and inward lust", as this period had a tendency for social hypocrisy.

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  Janet of the Dunes

  Harriet Theresa Comstock

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  This work by Harriet Theresa Comstock is filled with the air and waves of the sea! It richly inhabits the environment, just as its characters do, as well as relying on each other in tough spots. An old-fashioned story of life in a coastal town on Long Island. All is centered around a lighthouse and a life saving station, where Cap'n Billy Daddy works. He also takes care of Janet, whose mother is out of the picture. One day a young painter comes to the dunes to paint, sees Janet, and asks to paint her and the two fall in love...and then Janet's rich biological father shows up.

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  The Valley of the Moon

  Jack London

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  The road novel that gave Sonoma Valley its nickname from the renowned nineteenth-century American author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang.   In Oakland, California, former boxer Billy Roberts and his wife, Saxon, have a turbulent marriage, disrupted by the social issues of turn-of-the-century urban California—including labor strikes and violence. So Billy and Saxon embark on a quest through the rural countryside, encountering a Portuguese settlement and an artists’ colony before finally finding happiness on a farm of their own in the Sonoma Valley.   “Jack London’s novel Valley of the Moon describes the journey of a working-class couple from Oakland to a rural idyll in Glen Ellen, by way of labor strikes, boxing matches and an artist’s colony in Carmel.” —Sonoma Index-Tribune   “Pick up a copy of Jack London’s novel, The Valley of The Moon. . . . In the book you’ll get a feel for London’s love of the land Jack came to call home.” —Sonoma Valley Wine

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  Babbit

  Sinclair Lewis

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  "Babbit" is a seminal novel by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1922, which sharply satirizes the American middle class and its preoccupation with material success. The protagonist, George F. Babbitt, is a real estate agent in the fictional city of Zenith, who becomes increasingly disillusioned with his life dictated by social status, conformity, and business ethics. The narrative follows his struggles with societal norms and his attempts at rebellion, painting a picture of the conflicts within the American Dream during the Roaring Twenties.

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