18 books like A Tale of Two Cities
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 novel of manners written by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Mr. Bennet, owner of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire, has five daughters,…
Shares: British and irish fiction, English literature, Drama, Historical Fiction
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.
Shares: British and irish fiction, Drama, Historical Fiction, Children's fiction
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young Italian star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
Shares: English literature, Drama, History
The Great Gatsby
Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts.
"There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to…
Shares: Classics, Drama
Macbeth
The play concerns a trusted general who secretly lusts for power. Encouraged by the prophecies of three witches and urged on by his ambitious wife Macbeth commits regicide. Left fearful and superstitious by this desperate act he is driven to a spiralling course of murder and outrage, almost inevitably culminating in his own death. One of Shakespeare’s most popular tragedies, Macbeth is ostensibly…
Shares: Drama, History
To Kill a Mockingbird
One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the United States. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South…
Shares: Classics
The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression is as vivid now as ever. The story focuses on a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, farmers who work another man’s land for a share of the crops. Driven from their home by drought and poverty they take to the road in a battered old truck and make their way to California to look for work. When they arrive they find hundreds of others like them being…
Shares: Historical Fiction
In Freedom's Cause
At the turn of the fourteenth century in Scotland, young Archie Forbes becomes involved with both William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in the struggle for Scottish independence from English rule.
Shares: Histoire, English literature, Historical Fiction, History
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a…
Shares: Historia, Historical Fiction, History, Children's fiction
The Prisoner of Zenda
An adventure novel, originally published in 1894, set in the fictitious European Kingdom of Ruritania. An English tourist is persuaded to impersonate the new king after he is abducted before he can be crowned. This act draws upon him the wrath of the Prince who has had the king abducted and his partner in crime the villainous Rupert of Hentzau.
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David Copperfield
It adds to the charm of this book to remember that it is virtually a picture of the author's own boyhood. It is an excellent picture of the life of a struggling English youth in the middle of the last century. The pictures of Canterbury and London are true pictures and through these pages walk one of Dickens' wonderful processions of characters, quaint and humorous, villainous and tragic. Nobody…
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Legion of the Dead
"The corpses swayed where they stood, their bony arms outstretched before them and tattered sleeves hanging limply in the foggy air. I smelled the sourness of the sewers about them; that, and the sweet whiff of death. Their sunken eyes bored into mine. I was surrounded. . . ." Barnaby Grimes is a tick-tock lad, delivering messages and running errands all over the city, day and night. Gangland…
Shares: Histoire, Historical Fiction, History, Children's fiction
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839, and as a three-volume book in 1838. The story follows the titular orphan, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London, where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of…
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Little Dorrit
Upon its publication in 1857, Little Dorrit immediately outsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of William Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughter and helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progress of the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction, David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift from which…
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Pride and Prejudice
The first edition of the novel (1813).
Introductory materials and revised and expanded footnotes by Donald Gray and Mary A. Favret.
Biographical portraits of Austen by family members and— new to this edition— by Jon Spence (from Becoming Jane Austen) and Paula Byrne (from The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things).
Fourteen critical essays—eleven of them new to this edition. "Writers on…
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Novels (Pride and Prejudice / Sense and Sensibility)
Shares: British and irish fiction, English literature, Drama, History
Shares: British and irish fiction, English literature, Drama, History
A Christmas Carol
A retelling of the story about a miser whose life is changed by Christmas.
Shares: British and irish fiction, Classics, Drama, Children's fiction
Sisters in Sanity
"Where are they taking me?""It's for your own good, Brit," Dad said.I was shoved into a small, stuffy room, and the door was locked behind me. I waited for my dad to realize he'd made a terrible mistake and come get me.But he didn't.For sixteen-year-old Brit Hemphill, it's hard to know who she can trust. Convinced she's out of control, her father has sentenced her to Red Rock: a center for…
Shares: Fathers and daughters, Children's fiction