The World My Wilderness was published in 1955 and follows the story of Barbary Deniston, a 17-year-old girl growing up in London during World War II. Barbary’s parents are divorced, and she divides her time between her mother’s bohemian lifestyle and her father’s more conventional life. The novel explores themes of identity, family, and the impact of war on individuals and society. It is considered one of Macaulay’s most personal and autobiographical works.

Gogol's great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian literature. It takes a sharp but humorous look at life in all its strata but especially the devious complexities in Russia, with its landowners and serfs. We are introduced to Chichikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead 'souls', or serfs, whose names still appear on the government census. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol's characters.

Completed six years after Dostoyevsky's own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to 10 years of hard labor for murdering his wife.

In the quiet world of rural English clergy, lives are full of challenges, conflicts, desires and expectations. George Eliot’s first published work of fiction (1857) comprises three separate stories and has the hallmarks of her famous later works–her gentle wit and clever satire, her psychological insight, and her keen observation of human nature and frailty. These are beautifully written and poignant tales, set in and around the fictional Midlands town of Milby.

Published in 1801, Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda is an absorbing novel that mirrors social and domestic life among the English gentry. In her pursuit of a suitable marriage, Belinda encounters an array of characters including the dazzling socialite Lady Delacourt, the feminist Harriet Freke, the wealthy and handsome West Indian Mr Vincent and the impulsive Clarence Hervey.

"Lady Anna" (1874) is a novel by Anthony Trollope. It describes Lady Anna's attempts to resolve the conflict between her duty to her social class and her duty to the man she loves. The story takes place at about the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. Lady Anna is the daughter of the late Earl Lovel. Her mother married him out of ambition, despite his evil reputation. Soon after their marriage, he told her that he had a living wife, which made their union invalid and their unborn daughter illegitimate.

Set in the turbulent years following the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, George Eliot's fourth novel, Romola, moves the stage from the English countryside of the 19th century to an Italy four centuries before her time. It tells the tale of a young Florentine woman, Romola de' Bardi, and her coming of age through her troubled marriage to the suave and self-absorbed Greek Tito. Slowly Tito's true character begins to unfurl, and his lies and treachery push Romola toward a more spiritual path, where she transcends into a majestic, Madonna-like role.

The Napoleonic Wars are at their height, and upheaval and uncertainty plague British soil. In the midst of it all, the impoverished beauty Anne Garland finds herself at the center of a love quadrangle. She is torn between the persistent and annoying Festus Derryman, her womanizing childhood sweetheart Bob Loveday, and the reliable and thoughtful John Loveday, the eponymous Trumpet-Major. Who will she choose?

Opportunistic, shrewd and beautiful, Ethelberta resolves to disguise her humble beginnings and elevate her position in society. Crafting her career as a society poet and staging her family as her servants, she proves admirably adept at sustaining her own web of deceit as she reinvents herself and navigates the attentions of four different suitors. The wealthiest is not the one she loves... what will she do? This is a light-hearted urban tale, offering a different side of Thomas Hardy.

"The Shuttle" (1907) is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Sir Nigel Anstruthers comes to New York to search an heiress, as he no longer has enough money to keep up his estate, Stornham Court. He marries the pretty and treasured Rosalie, the daughter of an American millionaire. But on their return to England, Nigel and his mother control and isolate Rosalie from her family. Many years later, Rosalie's sister Bettina, who has spent a decade wondering why Rosy has lost contact with the family, arrives at Stornham Court to investigate.