John

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky explores human nature at its most loathsome and cruel but never flinches at what he finds. The novel tells the stirring tale of four brothers: the pleasure-seeking, impatient Dmitri; the brilliant and morose Ivan; the gentle, loving, and honest Alyosha; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, shy, silent, and cruel. They are behind the murder of one of literature's most despicable characters: their father. This was Dostoevsky's final and perhaps his finest work.

Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power, only to achieve a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction."

The Count of Monte Cristo is the tense and exciting story of Edmond Dantes, a man on the threshold of a bright career and a happy marriage, who is imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'If on a false political charge. After staging a dramatic escape, he finds the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo, which makes him wealthy. He then sets upon the course of revenge against his old enemies.
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great thrillers of all time. In 1853 William Thackeray wrote to a friend: "began to read Monte Cristo at six one morning and never...