Sisters Magdalen and Norah Vanstone's lives are dismantled when their illegitimacy is made public, causing them to lose access to their family home and income. The women must fight to regain their financial footing, building a new legacy all their own. Following the deaths of their parents, Magdalen and Norah Vanstone learn they were legally single at the time of their births. This makes both daughters illegitimate and unable to collect their ample...

Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...

Originally published as a serial story, Wives and Daughters is told with an episodic narrative, following a young woman named Molly Gibson as she comes of age. Molly is the only child of a widowed doctor. Raised in an English provincial town, Molly's childhood is filled with trips to aristocratic mansions and bonding experiences with her father. As she grows older however, men become more interested in her because of her attractive appearance. When...

A couple's life and love are destroyed when they win the lottery in this tragic tale of turn-of-the-century San Francisco. McTeague and Trina are in love, and with the modest income from McTeague's dentistry office, their needs are few. But when Trina wins a small fortune from a lottery ticket, jealousy and distrust begin to unravel their happy home. As tension erupts between McTeague and Trina's cousin Marcus, Trina's impulse to save her winnings...

Maria Edgeworth takes on issues of gender and race in her early editions of "Belinda", and although later editions tone down some controversial material to appease audiences, the alterations were most likely made by Edgeworth's father. Edgeworth's story centers around Belinda, a young woman who is navigating the complicated path of courtship and the limitations of domesticity. When Belinda is sent to live with the fashionable Lady Delacour, in hopes...

An impetuous character, Judith Paris arouses feelings of both tenderness and despair in those around her and excites the passions of two very different men: the sturdy, affectionate Reuben, her half-cousin; and Georges, a Frenchman, whose wilful nature seems to respond to her own.The old woman, Mrs. Henny, had finished her washing and laying-out of the bodies of the child's father and of the child's mother. She had done it alone because

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Three siblings search for a mystical sword and unearth family secrets in this adventure novel. Returning to "Pirate's Haven," their ancestral home in the Louisiana bayou country near New Orleans, is something of an adventure for Ricky Ralestone and her two brothers, Rupert and Val. None of them had ever laid eyes upon the great old house, which was built by their pirate kin during the eighteenth century and was witness to so much romance and excitement...

First published in 1919, "Within a Budding Grove" is the second novel in the "In Search of Lost Time" series by famed French author Marcel Proust. Originally intended to be published in 1914, but delayed by the onset of World War I, "Within a Budding Grove" was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919 and instantly catapulted Proust to international fame. The novel follows the narrator from the first volume, "Swann's Way", from childhood to adolescence....

Extrait : "Ma chère biche, je suis dehors aussi, moi ! Et si tu ne m'a pas écrit à Blois, je suis aussi la première à noter joli rendez-vous de la correspondance. Relève tes beaux yeux noirs attachés sur ma première phrase, et garde ton exclamation pour la lettre o je te confierai mon premier amour." À PROPOS DES ÉDITIONS LIGARAN Les éditions LIGARAN proposent des versions numériques de qualité de grands livres de la littérature classique...

Extrait : "En 1881, par une matinée brumeuse et peu après le lever du soleil, Denis Howmore fut réveillé en sursaut par ces mots prononcés à voix haute à travers la porte : «Le patron veut vous parler sur-le-champ.» L'individu chargé de ce message connaissait à coup sûr les lieux, car, arrivé en haut de l'escalier, il s'était arrêté droit devant la chambre à coucher de Denis Howmore, premier clerc de sir Giles Montjoie, banquier à...