Published in 1839, Nicholas Nickleby is Charles Dickens' third novel. In it, Nicholas Nickleby must earn a living to support his mother and sister after his father dies unexpectedly. Turning to a wealthy uncle in London for help, Nicholas is hired on as assistant to Wackford Squeers, a sadistic and small-minded schoolmaster. Meanwhile, his sister must take a job in a milliner's studio and is occasionally pressed into service by their uncle who exploits...

The Beautiful and the Damned is Fitzgerald's character study of American Eastern elites and the insecurities underpinning the courtship and marriage of his protagonists Anthony and Gloria. Drawing upon his own trouble marriage to Zelda Sayres, Fitzgerald paints a picture of the realities and hardships of a relationship where the two members tend towards selfishness and alcoholism. Published in 1922, it was Fitzgerald's second novel and predecessor...

Augie March is a Jewish-American boy growing up fatherless and poor in Depression-era Chicago. He seeks a "special destiny," although his circumstances seem to position him for a uniquely disappointing life: his family consists of a simple-minded mother, a brother and "grandmother" who prove to be Machiavellian in their intentions, and an "idiot" youngest brother, Georgie.

The hero of this dazzling novel by American master E. L. Doctorow is Joe, a young man on the run in the depths of the Great Depression. A late-summer night finds him alone and shivering beside a railroad track in the Adirondack mountains when a private railcar passes. Brightly lit windows reveal well-dressed men at a table and, in another compartment, a beautiful girl holding up a white dress before her naked form. Joe will follow the track to the...

A white boy transplanted from Chicago to the Arctic tundra of Alaska finds himself struggling to adapt to his new home, where he must learn to hunt, fish, and live off the land, separated from the constant call of consumer culture. In the tradition of Jack London, Seth Kantner presents an Alaska far removed from majestic cliches of exotic travelogues and picture postcards. Kantner's vivid and poetic prose lets readers experience Cutuk Hawcly's life...

"The debut short novels--nearly thirty years out of print-- by the internationally acclaimed writer, newly retranslated and in one English-language volume for the first time, with a new introduction by the author. These first major works of fiction by Haruki Murakami center on two young men--an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, the Rat. Powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism, these novellas...

For Christmas, Charley Mason's father granted him a trip to Paris, all expenses paid. It should have been a lark, but on his first night Charley meets a woman whose story will forever change his life. For Lydia has seen tragedy. The Russian Revolution displaced her family, left her homeless, fatherless. And for reasons that elude Charley, Lydia pines for a man half a world away–a dope dealer and murderer whose sins Lydia seeks to absolve through...

"There's no such thing as the life you're 'supposed' to have... You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed because it wasn't necessary. Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his...

Now a major motion picture, starring Simon Baker, Elizabeth Debicki, and Richard Roxburgh.
Breath, by renowned Australian author Tim Winton, is a story of risk, of learning one's limits by challenging death.
On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrill-seeking teenage boys fall under the spell of a veteran big-wave surfer named Sando. Their mentor urges them into a regiment of danger and challenge, and

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