Originally written as a political satire and now read as an adventure story, the travels of Gulliver include adventures in a land where people were only inches tall, in a land of giants, on an island that floated in the air, and in a country ruled by horses.

The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, “Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale.” It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth,...

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878?1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Many readers were most concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper....

When millions suffer under iron-fisted oppression, when anger and resentment boil into bloody rebellion, when triumph leads to savage vengeance - does one individual life matter? In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens interweaves the intensely personal dramas of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton with the terror and chaos of the French Revolution. Lucie struggles desperately to restore the health of a father driven mad by years of...

When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017--revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)--critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other...

In medieval Paris, Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, struggles to save the gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

Young and impulsive, Robinson Crusoe defies the advice of his parents and runs away to sea. He is plagued by misfortune at every turn, but it is when he is shipwrecked on a deserted island that he faces his greatest test. A new illustrated gift edition of a beloved classic.

Presents the adventures of Mowgli, a boy reared by a pack of wolves and the wild animals of the jungle. Also includes other short stories set in India.

Presents Shakespeare's dark comedy about young lovers and a Jewish money lender who demands a pound of flesh in payment for a debt. Includes explanatory notes on facing pages, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a key to famous lines and phrases, a modern perspective essay, and an introduction to the play and the language of Shakespeare.