Of Human Bondage (1915) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Inspired by his experiences as an orphan and young student, Maugham composed his masterpiece. Adapted several times for film, Of Human Bondage is a story of tragedy, perseverance, and the eternal search for happiness which drives us as much as it haunts our every move. Orphaned as a boy, Philip Carey is raised in an affectionless household by his aunt and uncle. Although his Aunt Louisa tries...

"At the house on the beach, everything is always the same. Summer unspools in days of sticky heat and lazy beach walks, the family only reconvening for lantern-lit suppers in the garden with the sea a constant roar in the background. Predictable, familiar--and easy. But everything changes with the arrival of the Godden brothers: Kit, magnetic and lazily seductive, and Hugo, intense and unknowable. By the end of summer, nothing will be the same."--Book...

Moving to Vermont the summer after seventh grade, a young gymnast hides a secret as she makes new friends and investigates her grandmother's claim that someone is trying to destroy her cricket farm.-- Provided by Publisher.

"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America. In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed...

"After the tragic death his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem,...

"It's 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place-until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the...

"The panic unleashed by a mysterious contagion threatens the bonds of family and community in a seemingly idyllic suburban community. The Nash family is close-knit. Tom is a popular teacher, father of two teens: Eli, a hocky star and girl magnet, and his sister Deenie, a diligent student. Their seeming stability, however, is thrown into chaos when Deenie's best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class. Rumors of a hazardous outbreak...

Velva Jean dreams of being a big-time singer in Nashville until she falls for Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned preacher, and soon she must choose between keeping her hard-won home and pursuing her dream.

"At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers--one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her...

"The Magic Mountain is simply one of the greatest novels ever written." - The Guardian With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps - a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World...