Penguin USA. 11/01/1994. Dickens's second novel was a far cry from THE PICKWICK PAPERS, his first. The story of an orphan who flees the workhouse only to fall in with a gang of thieves and prostitutes in London's sleazy underworld, it was a trenchant criticism of England's poor laws. Enacted in the 1830s, these laws provided assistance for the poor only through workhouses, which were deliberately squalid and miserable to encourage the poor--who were considered lazy and immoral--to better themselves and get out. The inequities between rich and poor were one of Dickens's constant themes, and with OLIVER TWIST he established himself as a staunch champion of the downtrodden, particularly children. The novel also, however, has its cheerful moments, and contains some of Dickens's most memorable characters, including Fagin, the Artful Dodger, the evil Bill Sykes, and the unfortunate Nancy. Originally published at $4.99 You save 60% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 06/01/1995. Reissue. The tale of the orphan, Pip, and his mysterious benefactor provides a grotesque but pointed comedy that explores the many levels of English society with insight and sympathy as well as a satiric eye. Considered by many to be Dickens's best novel, GREAT EXPECTATIONS is the story of a young man who rises out of a rough, deprived childhood to a life in which his expectations--or some of them--are fulfilled: he is a gentleman and a success, though he soon finds that happiness doesn't necessarily accompany money and position. The novel is full of fascinating scenes and characters, among them the coldhearted Estella, the vengeful and dotty Miss Havisham, Joe Gargery the noble blacksmith, the ever-lovable Herbert Pocket, and of course Magwitch, the grotesque and terrifying but ultimately benevolent convict, one of Dickens's most vital creations. As the compelling plot progresses, Pip's fortunes rise and fall, and he slowly gains in wisdom, learning to value what is important and to abandon most of his illusions. But the moral of the story is never heavy-handed or didactic, and in telling his tale, Dickens epitomizes all the best qualities for which he became famous: a comic vision, an inventive imagination, and a bountiful appreciation for the wonderful variety and boundless possibility inherent in the most ordinary humans. Originally published at $4.99 You save 61% off the cover price!

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New Amer Library Classics. 01/01/2001. Reissue. 382 pgs. Five plays by the celebrated 19th-century Russian dramatist. Originally published at $5.95 You save 67% off the cover price!

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Harcourt School. 01/01/1997. A CHRISTMAS CAROL is Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge--a favorite ever since it was written, in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and Scrooge said "Bah!" but not "Humbug!" Originally published at $18.25 You save 95% off the cover price!

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Thomson Learning. 01/01/1949. Originally published at $27.95 You save 96% off the cover price!

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Harcourt School. 12/01/2000. 360 pgs. At a dinner party in suburban London, the Time Traveller, known to the reader only as the Eminent Scientist, speaks to his guests about the fourth dimension of space--i.e. time. He states that it is possible to travel through time much as one travels through space. The guests are not persuaded, even after seeing the Eminent Scientist's time machine itself. At a later dinner party, the scientist arrives a little late, rumpled and dirty. He tells them he has spent the equivalent of eight days in the year 802,701. He encountered the Eloi, a race of delicate gentle vegetarians who exist in an idyllic garden, and the Morlocks, who live underground and operate the machinery and industrial equipment of the world. The Eloi, in other words are descendents of capitalism, and the Morlocks are the progeny of the proletariat. The Time Traveller then hurries into the year 30,000,000, where he sees a single life form--a round, tentacled thing near the ocean. He concludes that this represents the end of life on earth. Originally published at $18.65 You save 92% off the cover price!

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St Martins Pr. 10/30/2004. Reprint. 210 pgs. This is Julius Lester's novel about the Reverend Joshua Smith, who has had the gift of preaching since he was a boy on his family farm in Mississippi. Now that he is dying, his memories flicker through the novel across three generations. He doubts his religion, questions his past, and tries to come to terms with his history. Originally published at $12.95 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 08/01/1994. Reprint. In the year 1900, a Kentucky farm wife named Christianna Wheeler gives birth to quintuplets. Thousands of strangers mob her home; the fate of the babies (and what happens afterwards) sends Christie and her husband far from home, in a turbulent time in America. Originally published at $14.00 You save 86% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 09/01/1997. 501 pgs. The story of a family haunted by the miseries and griefs of mothers, all of which are eventually (if unknowingly) visited upon the children. Emma, a young beauty growing up in New Mexico in the 1930s, dreams of going to Hollywood and becoming famous. When she falls in love with Hollis, a young screenwriter working on location nearby, and he brings her back to California with him, it seems that her dreams are about to be realized--until she becomes quickly pregnant and is unable to audition for any roles. She returns to New Mexico and gives birth to Lucy, then dies a few years later. Lucy grows up unhappy and malcontent, and can never understand the sadness that consumed her mother's last years. Unfaithful to her own husband Gordon and neglectful of her daughter Laurie, Lucy only discovers the roots of her family's discontent late in life, at which point she attempts to start living, as it were, for the first time. Originally published at $24.00 You save 96% off the cover price!

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St Martins Pr. 03/01/2004. Reprint. 352 pgs. Penny Culligan is a diabetic. Seven years before the novel begins, she lost her lover to a grizzly bear accident. Now a graduate student, she has about a year to live and decides to take a bicycle trip back to Alaska where her lover was killed. However, on the way, she accepts a ride from Ndele Rimes, who is possibly a professional basketball player, and who forces her to make a decision about her future. Originally published at $14.00 You save 86% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 04/01/1997. Reprint. Sarah Durham is 65 years old and in love--first with a 28-year-old actor, and then with a 35-year-old director. The novel details Sarah's love, longing, desire, the sexuality of an older woman, grief, and a lifetime of love experiences. Originally published at $13.00 You save 85% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins Childrens Books. 10/01/2001. Illustrated. 60 pgs. A CHRISTMAS CAROL is Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge--a favorite since it was written in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and Scrooge said "Bah!" but not "Humbug!" Originally published at $17.95 You save 94% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 10/01/2002. Reprint. 288 pgs. William is terminally ill and his family has abandoned him. Only his closest friends, Susan and Henry, can care for him as he grows worse. Yet Willam grows ever more afraid that they, too, will leave him. It is not a simple loving friendship he requires, but a pledge of loyalty till death, a handing over of their lives to him. Jones explores the outer limits of friendship, the ties that bind and strangle, ridden with ambivalence and redemption. Originally published at $12.95 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 09/01/1998. Reprint. 484 pgs. JUDE THE OBSCURE is perhaps the most vivid illustration of Hardy's belief that our lives are governed by dark and malevolent forces. Jude Fawley is torn between his sensual nature and his equally strong lust for learning, two sides of his character that are personified by the two women in his life--the earthy Arabella and the intellectual Sue Bridehead. Jude comes to a tragic end because of his inability to reconcile them. His attempts to rise above his humble origins, in spite of all his efforts, prove impossible, as do his attempts to live an unconventional life outside of marriage with the woman he loves. The novel represents Hardy's strongest attack on the insularity of English university life, and on marriage as a religious institution. It was called JUDE THE OBSCENE by critics at the time (1895) because it was considered to be "steeped in sex"; after its hostile reception, Hardy gave up writing novels and, for the rest of his life, wrote only poetry. Originally published at $9.00 You save 80% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 03/01/1993. Reprint. The Friends, an Oakland gang, is victimized by a drive-by shooting. Another shooting occurs, this one directed at the Crew, and the two gangs unite to discover that a drug dealer named Deek is trying to incite gang riots and take over both gangs’ territories while they are warring. Originally published at $13.95 You save 93% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins. 02/01/1996. In this first novel from Myerson, she recounts the psychological depths of Susan, who, haunted with memories of a childhood scarred by an emotionally distant father, enters into an impossible marriage. A family suicide and an extramarital love affair begun in the eighth month of pregnancy force her to reexamine her life and the dark, complex family history that comprises its blueprint. Originally published at $12.00 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Harpercollins Childrens Books. 06/01/1996. Illustrated. 127 pgs. Dickens's second novel was a far cry from THE PICKWICK PAPERS, his first. The story of an orphan who flees the workhouse only to fall in with a gang of thieves and prostitutes in London's sleazy underworld, it was a trenchant criticism of England's poor laws. Enacted in the 1830s, these laws provided assistance for the poor only through workhouses, which were deliberately squalid and miserable to encourage the poor--who were considered lazy and immoral--to better themselves and get out. The inequities between rich and poor were one of Dickens's constant themes, and with OLIVER TWIST he established himself as a staunch champion of the downtrodden, particularly children. The novel also, however, has its cheerful moments, and contains some of Dickens's most colorful characters, including Fagin, the Artful Dodger, the evil Bill Sykes, and the unfortunate Nancy. Originally published at $3.99 You save 50% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 11/01/1990. Reprint. 138 pgs. A CHRISTMAS CAROL is Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge--a favorite since it was written in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and Scrooge said "Bah!" but not "Humbug!" Originally published at $10.00 You save 90% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 05/01/1987. Reprint. The lives of two sisters, Rose and Mary, change once the First World War ends. The women find themselves increasing alienated from the world they knew, and their sense of isolation is increased by the departure of their cousin Rosamund, who was a source of strength to them, for a married life in Germany. Rose and Mary then move back to the comfort of old friends and a home near the Thames. It is there that Rose begins to discover both the power of love and her own sexuality. This novel is the third volume in a trilogy, the first two volumes of which are THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS(1956) and THIS REAL NIGHT (1983). Originally published at $20.00 You save 95% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 03/01/1992. An anthology of Graham Greene's previously uncollected stories, dating from 1923 to 1989. Originally published at $8.95 You save 89% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 11/01/1999. 191 pgs. Graham Greene's 1951 novel centers on the attempt of Maurice Bendix, a London novelist, to learn why his lover, Sarah, had abandoned him without a word of explanation several years before. In the course of the story, Sarah dies, and Maurice comes into possession of her journal, which provides an explanation that is hardly less perplexing to him than the original mystery itself. The novel is permeated with the concepts of sin, guilt, and redemption, and is considered one of Greene's most "Catholic" works, though Greene himself rejected that label. The story is drawn partly from his 10-year affair with Catherine Walston, a married woman (and convert to Catholicism) he met in 1946. Originally published at $14.00 You save 93% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 10/01/1999. 242 pgs. This 1948 story of moral decay was one of Graham Greene's greatest popular and critical successes, though not one of his own favorites. His hero Scobie is a colonial police commissioner in West Africa. He endures a loveless marriage and a nondescript career patiently enough until he falls in love with a young shipwreck survivor who, literally, washes ashore at his feet. To send his wife on an extended holiday to South Africa, he borrows money from a Syrian merchant, who then uses his position to blackmail Scobie into turning a blind eye to his smuggling. Once his wife returns home, Scobie finds that he can no longer reconcile his affection for his mistress with his duties as a husband, a policeman, and a Catholic, and is pressed to a desperate resolution of his confusions. One of Greene's aims in this novel was to open a philosophical exploration into the differences between pity (which he sees as destructive) and compassion (which is positive). Upon its publication, Greene commented, "I found myself regarded as a Catholic author in England, Europe, and America--the last title to which I had ever aspired." Originally published at $15.00 You save 88% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 01/01/1996. Reissue. Reeve thinks his life is over: his career is at a dead end, his face is a mess, and his landlord is evicting him from his apartment because he made too much noise when a hustler beat him up. As he lies in his hospital bed, he broods about the parallel ruin of his comrade and mentor Tom Slater, a famous American literary scholar (a composite portrait of the critics F.O. Matthiessen and Newton Arwin) who dabbled in Communism and was driven to suicide during the McCarthry era. There is further distraction in the patient in the next bed, a silent youth who arouses in Reeve dangerous longings for the sweetness and menace of straight men. Never at a loss for the telling detail or bitchy aside, the author offers a sweeping view of gay life in this century. Dark humor and decadent prose infuse this first novel of desire, betrayal and healing. Originally published at $13.00 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 01/01/1996. Reprint. Felicia, an Irish girl in her late teens, falls for Johnny Lysaght. Pregnant, she searches for him in the factory towns north of Birmingham, but has only his lies about himself to guide her. Instead, she encounters Mr. Hilditch, a fat, sweaty catering manager at a local factory, who allows her to stay with him and arranges for her to have an abortion. His stories about five previous relationships arouse Felicia's suspicions as she struggles to exchange her innocence for freedom. Originally published at $14.00 You save 93% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 03/01/1997. Reprint. Edward is about to marry Marian. At a dinner party on the night before their wedding, he receives a note from her canceling the wedding. Jackson, a servant and magician, and the man who brought Edward and his friends together in the first place, feels he must ensure that love triumphs. Originally published at $15.00 You save 87% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 01/01/1999. 480 pgs. The son of a wealthy inventor is incarcerated in a Santa Barbara mental hospital because of a psychosexual disorder that makes him attack women on sight. His male nurse is a womanizing alcoholic, and his long-suffering and devoted wife never loses hope for his recovery. This novel is based on the true story of Stanley McCormick (heir to the McCormick Reaper fortune) and his suffragist wife, Katherine. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998. Originally published at $15.00 You save 93% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 01/01/1999. 288 pgs. A novel with some of the characteristics of an almanac, including astrological tidbits, planting advice, and short biographies of the famous--as well as the story of two modern lovers, their families, and their star-crossed romance. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998. Originally published at $12.95 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 02/01/1999. Because of its sexual frankness and indictment of Victorian hypocrisy, Hardy's novel was considered shocking when it was published in 1891. It is the tale of Tess Derbeyfield, a young country girl whose rape by Alec D'Urberville, a distant aristocratic relative, leads to pregnancy. Tess's baby dies, and she finds work as a dairymaid at a farm where no one knows her story. There she falls in love with and marries a young farmer named Angel Clare, but when Angel finds out about his wife's past, he is horrified, and deserts her. Tess meets Alec again--now a reformed character who has become an itinerant preacher--and lives with him as his wife. When Angel returns for her and finds her with Alec, he leaves her again--and Tess, in despair, stabs Alec--the cause of all her woes--and kills him. She and Angel are reunited, but only briefly: Tess is taken into custody and will be tried for murder and hanged. The cynical and sophisticated Alec's seduction of a country girl, and the self-righteous Angel's destructive idealization of her, can be seen as symbols of the city's ruthless exploitation of the English countryside--a common theme in Hardy's fiction. Originally published at $7.95 You save 87% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 11/01/1964. Reissue. 280 pgs. A collection of short stories portraying life among the various strata of Russian society of the 19th century. Chekhov was a master of realism, and his stories remain models of economy and precision of language to this day. Originally published at $9.95 You save 90% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 10/01/1976. 682 pgs. Balzac's cycle of novels entitled LOST ILLUSIONS (ILLUSIONS PERDUES) was published between 1837 and 1843, and chronicles the life of Lucien de Rubempré and his rise from a small-town boy to a famous French poet in Paris, and then his fall as he returns, failed and suicidal, to his home town--only to be rescued from despair by a mysterious benefactor. Originally published at $16.00 You save 89% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 09/01/1982. A collection of short stories portraying life among the various strata of Russian society of the 19th century. Chekhov was a master of realism, and his stories remain models of economy and precision of language to this day. Originally published at $6.95 You save 86% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 01/01/1986. A collection of short stories portraying life among the various strata of Russian society of the 19th century. Chekhov was a master of realism, and his stories remain models of economy and precision of language to this day. Originally published at $8.95 You save 89% off the cover price!

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New Amer Library. 06/01/1996. Norman and Rose have been married for 14 years, during which time he has abused her regularly. Finally, he beats her while she is pregnant, causing a miscarriage. Rose escapes him, and he begins to hunt for her, leaving gruesome corpses as he goes; thinking she is free of Norman, Rose begins a new life in the Midwest, becoming involved with a pawnshop owner and drawn to a painting of a goddess. Originally published at $7.99 You save 75% off the cover price!

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New Amer Library. 08/01/1997. Reissue. 547 pgs. Somewhere along Route 50 in the Nevada desert exists a dead-end town called Desperation. Those who cross the town line embark on a never-ending journey of desperation, lunacy, and terror, as they find true desperation in a town that no one leaves. The novel is a companion piece to "The Regulators", which is written under the name Richard Bachman and which involves many of the same characters in the same sort of setting, but exhibits an entirely different flavor than "Desperation". The books can be read separately, in either order, and each can stand on its own as a fully-realized work. But they are interdependent works of fiction as well. Originally published at $7.99 You save 90% off the cover price!

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Penguin USA. 03/01/1999. 160 pgs. An anthology of Graham Greene's previously uncollected stories, dating from 1923 to 1989. Originally published at $13.00 You save 92% off the cover price!

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Lightning Source Inc. 09/01/1991. Reprint. 369 pgs. The cannibals in this novel are a group of art collectors flying to an archeological site in Tehran; they value art for the money it is worth. The missionaries, on the same flight, are a fact-finding committee about to investigate state-sponsored terrorism in Iran; they value people over material things. The plane is hijacked by a group of terrorists who value ideology over everything, and who hope that the liberal activists will provide leverage for negotiations. What they find is that the art collectors, as a group, are ultimately more valuable to them. Originally published at $20.00 You save 93% off the cover price!

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