What a study in contrasts is the friendship between Henry Jekyll and his boon companion, Edward Hyde. Where Jekyll is a handsome and respected man of science, Hyde is a surly and brutish misanthrope. Nevertheless, Jekyll has allowed Hyde free access to his home and laboratory and, surprisingly, made him the sole beneficiary of his will. Given the closeness of their bond, it seems peculiar that no one has ever seen the two men together in public. And yet they share a remarkable chemistry . . . First published in 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is Robert Louis Stevenson’s...

Young Jim Hawkins has no reason to suspect that Billy Bones, the pensioner who has taken up residence in his father’s inn, is anything other than an aging former mariner. But when violent altercations with visitors to the inn leave Billy on death’s doorstep, Jim discovers that they all are members of the crew of the notorious pirate Captain Flint, and that Billy has a map that shows the whereabouts of Flint’s buried treasure. . .  First serialized in a children’s magazine between 1881 and 1882 as a coming-of-age story for young readers, Treasure Island has transcended its time and...

Twenty-five-year-old Anthony Patch appears to have it all: a Harvard education, an apartment in New York City, memberships at all of the best clubs, and a generous trust fund to draw from. Sure, his grandfather is not happy with Anthony’s lack of initiative and feckless lifestyle, but can Anthony be blamed knowing that, as an orphan, he is destined to be the sole heir to his grandfather’s immense fortune?   When Anthony is introduced by friends to the beautiful Gloria Gilbert, whose hedonism rivals his own, he is so smitten that he proposes marriage. Gloria accepts—and so begins the...

For most children, reading the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm is an essential experience; but when these stories were first collected, fairy tales were considered entertainment for adults as well. This edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales brings together the best-known fairy and folk tales set down by the Brothers Grimm, including “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Frog-Prince,” and “Rumpelstiltskin,” in a package aimed at readers returning to the beloved stories of their youth.   

Only yesterday, Gregor Samsa was a meek salesman, browbeaten by his unappreciative employer and depended on fiercely by his ungrateful family. This morning, Gregor awakens to discover that, overnight, he has been transformed into a monstrous insect. As Gregor frantically tries to conceal his predicament, neither his family nor his unsympathetic employer accept that a terrible metamorphosis has upended his existence. Is Gregor’s condition only temporary? Will he eventually revert back to the person he was and resume his normal life? Or might he have to accept that his transformation is only...

When Charles Marlow travels to Africa to serve as steamboat pilot for an ivory-trading company, he learns he is to rendezvous with Kurtz, a trading-post agent held in high regard. But the deeper Marlow penetrates into the jungle, the grimmer the assessments of Kurtz become. Described by Conrad himself as “something quite on another plane than an anecdote of a man who went mad in the Centre of Africa,” Heart of Darkness has long been regarded as a powerful appraisal of the fragility of civilization and the consequences of imperialism. This collection includes another five of Conrad’s...

Fresh from his escapades with Tom Sawyer, with six thousand dollars in the bank, Huck Finn faces a new challenge: his father, Pap, who wants Huck's fortune and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it. Escaping from Pap, Huck meets Miss Watson’s slave, Jim, who has run away after learning that Miss Watson may sell him. Jim plans to head north, find work, and buy his wife and children out of slavery. Huck joins him on a salvaged raft, beginning a raucous journey that transforms into a deep reckoning with human frailty and the hypocrisy of the antebellum South.

Handsome, clever, and rich, Emma Woodhouse delights in interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégée, Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. 

The Ramsays spend their summers on the Isle of Skye, where they happily entertain friends and family and make idle plans to visit the nearby lighthouse. Over the course of the book, the lighthouse becomes a silent witness to the ebbs and flows, the births and deaths, that punctuate the individual lives of the Ramsays.