Sara Nichols

Willa Cather's novel of one man's life as he encounters the harsh landscape of the New Mexico desert and the people who inhabit it, with an introduction by National Book Award finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine.

The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's musical talent sets her apart from her contemporaries. Driven by her determination to satisfy her artistic impulse, she moves to Chicago, where she falls in love with a wealthy married man. The novel follows Thea's growth from provincial Midwesterner to acclaimed international opera singer. Her ability to resolve the tensions between her personal and professional lives and...

The writer of several hundred stories and novels, English author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began his writing career in 1879. While he introduced the world to his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, in the 1887 novel "A Study in Scarlet", it would not be until the 1891 publication of "A Scandal in Bohemia" that his illustrative career in writing would truly begin. With this Sherlock Holmes short story, the imagination of the reading public was instantly...

Orlando: A Biography is a groundbreaking English novel by Virginia Woolf that explores English history, gender roles and sexual politics in a way few books have before or since. Inspired by the life of Woolf's friend and lover Vita Sackville-West, an accomplished poet and novelist, the story follows the life of an aristocratic nobleman who changes sex from man to woman and goes on to live for centuries, meeting all of the most influential and powerful...

Collected here are three of Dorothy Parker's earliest works: two collections of poetry-"Enough Rope" and "Sunset Gun" as well as her short, hilarious collection of stories recounting all of the men she managed to avoid marrying named (appropriately) "Men I'm Not Married To." One of the 20th century's most celebrated and renowned humorists, Parker burst upon the unsuspecting literary world with these best-selling books, delivering biting, satiric and...

The final (and longest) story in James Joyce's short story collection "The Dubliners," "The Dead" is one of Joyce's most beloved works of short fiction. Taking place at Christmastime, the tale revolves around Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta, who are attending a holiday party hosted by Gabriel's elderly aunts. In typical Joycean style, this seemingly mundane setting hides many of the guests' secrets and mysteries, not the least of which is...

One of E.M. Forster's most cherished and critically-acclaimed works, "Howards End" is an examination of social mores, class strife and personal relationships in turn-of-the-century England. The story revolves around three disparate families: the idealistic Schlegels (consisting of Margaret, Helen and brother Tibby), the wealthy Wilcox family (parents Henry and Ruth and their children) and the impoverished Basts (Leonard and his wife Jacky)....

Predating Bram Stoker's "Dracula" by twenty-five years, Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction; a Gothic novella narrated by a young girl who becomes a victim of the title character, a female vampire named Carmilla. The plot centers on Laura, an English girl living in Austria with her father, a retired and wealthy widower. As a child, Laura had dreamed of a nocturnal visitor, a phantom-like young woman...

"Mansfield Park," written in 1814, is the third of six books by legendary British author Jane Austen. In the story, we meet young Fanny Price, an impoverished young girl who is sent to live with her wealthy family in Mansfield Park, her aunt and uncle's country estate. Fanny, seen as uncultured and boorish by her relatives, is mistreated by all of them...save cousin Edmund, for whom she kindles a secret crush. What follows is a series of love triangles...

"So Big" is author Edna Ferber's breakout, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of life on an American farm and features one of the most iconic characters in 20th century fiction, the hardscrabble schoolteacher-turned-truck-farmer Selina Peake DeJong. A sensation when it was first published, "So Big" tells the story of young Selina, who moves to the tiny farming town of High Prairie to become a schoolteacher and winds up marrying local farmer, Purvis DeJong....