When Rachel Verinder is given the Moonstone for her birthday, its theft at her party triggers a series of increasingly horrific events that seem set to ruin everyone and everything she loves.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Elizabeth Gaskell, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Abandoned by her cruel Aunt Reed, the young and spirited Jane Eyre finds herself living in a spartan, oppressive orphanage. After the death of her best friend, Jane resolves to search out a brighter and more independent life for herself. She finds work as a governess for Adele, the ward of Edward Rochester, enigmatic master of Thornfield Hall. As days pass, Jane feels the intensity of love build between her and Rochester as he reveals all but the...

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emmanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels,...

The Don Quixote of 18th century England. 'Adams dealt him so sound a compliment over his face with his fist, that the blood immediately gushed out of his nose in a stream. The Host being unwilling to be outdone in courtesy, especially by a person of Adams's figure, returned the favour with so much gratitude, that the parson's nostrils likewise began to look a little redder than usual.' Inspired by the masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha, Henry Fielding,...