CLASSIC FICTION (PRE C 1945). Meet Elizabeth and discover there is no greater happiness to be found than when lost in a wilderness of a garden, with bird cherries, lilacs, hollyhocks and lilies crowding the vision. This is her sanctuary from a host of unreasonable demands, whether from the Man of Wrath (husband), babies, servants and (worst of all horrors) house guests. Plunge into her charming diaries and be warned: you won't be able to remain indoors....

"Written from the perspective of a male narrator, Willa Cather's classic novel is an American version of "Madame Bovary". It is a portrait of a talented woman trapped in the conventions and economic restraints of a marriage. It is the story of a woman who defies expectations, and whose personal changes coincide with the transforming American Frontier. In this work, Willa Cather expressed her profoundly modern feminist views in the life of an ordinary...

The coachman tried to warn young Mary Yellan away from the ruined, forbidding place on the rainswept Cornish coast. But May chose instead to honor her mother's dying request that she join her frightened Aunt Patience and foreboding Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. From her first glimpse on that raw November eve, she could sense the inn's dark power. Mary never imagined that she would become hopelessly ensnared in the vile, villainous schemes being...

New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve. The Passion of New Eve is an extraordinary journey into the apocalyptic vision of the author Lorna Sage" -- BOOK JACKET.

"World War I, in the background of Rebecca West's first novel, was "the first war that women could imagine," writes Samuel Hynes in his eloquent introduction, "and so it was the first that a woman could write into a novel." Narrated by a woman who, like West, has never experienced war and yet for whom the war was very real, The Return of the Soldier (1918) takes place not on a battlefield, but in an isolated country house. It examines the relationships...

Maurice Guest comes to Leipzig, the music capital of Europe, to realize his dream of becoming a great pianist. However, in its bohemian and heady atmosphere, he encounters not exaltation and inspiration but coarseness, greed, and ambition. For his muse, he turns to Louise Dufraryer, an exotic and languid pianist. Louise has recently been deserted by her own obsessive love, the resident composer and reigning genius, Schilsky. Now her capricious demands...

It is the turn of the century and Angelica Deverell is fifteen. Her widowed mother runs a grocery shop, working hard so that Angel can 'better herself.' The headstrong Angel, however, rejects her mother's sacrifice and retreats into a world of romantic dreams. She knows that she is different, that she is destined to become a celebrated authoress and the possessor of great riches. Charting the rise and fall of a popular writer. "Angel" is a classic...