Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He'd ride up on his white steed and break the curse I've been fated to carry since the day I was born. Funny how things changed over time, how the fairytale twisted into something far more crooked—and darker—than I ever imagined. In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.

Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

Original cast members from the beloved TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reunite for an all-new adventure about connections that never die—even if you bury them. A decade has passed since the epic final battle that concluded Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV). The game-changing spell that gave power to all potential Slayers persists. With new Slayers constantly emerging, things are looking grim for the bad guys.

The story of "The Age of Innocence" is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, during the so-called Gilded Age. Newland Archer has the perfect life. He is rich, young, good looking and member of the New York High Society. Newland is engaged to a lovely, delightful girl, May Welland and later they get married. When her cousin (Ellen Olenska), comes back from Europe, her presence threatens their happiness as Newland develops feelings for her... Wharton manages to dissect the hypocrisy of a society where customs and position take center stage.

Beautiful, sophisticated and endlessly ambitious Lily Bart endeavours to climb the social ladder of New York's elite by securing a good match and living beyond her means. Now nearing 30 years of age and having rejected several proposals, forever in the hope of finding someone better, her future prospects are threatened. A damning commentary of 20th-century social order, Edith Wharton's tale established her as one of the greatest British novelists of the 1900s.

The House of Mirth is the story of Lily Bart, a penniless woman of the high society of New York City, who was raised and educated to become wife to a wealthy man, a hothouse flower for conspicuous consumption. As an unattached woman with gambling debts and an uncertain future, Lily is destroyed by the society who created her. Written in the style of a novel of manners, the writing itself is an illustration of American literary naturalism.

Beautiful New York socialite Lily Bart finds herself alone and nearly penniless as her thirtieth birthday approaches. To maintain her station in high society, Lily must wait for her miserly aunt to bequeath her fortune, or marry well. Blessed with wit and charm, she doesn’t lack for suitors, yet the most socially acceptable candidates fail to capture Lily’s interest. Instead, she’s intrigued by a young lawyer who is unafraid to speak his mind.

Single woman of 29, Lily Bart is Edith Wharton's quintessential trapped heroine. Orphaned following the death of her parents, Lily understands that she must use her beauty, grace, and charm to attain the social position she longs for, but she is caught between her desire for wealth and a strong moral conscience, which sabotages every opportunity she encounters.

"Explore the poignant and powerful world of 'Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life' by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. Set against the backdrop of the bustling city of Manchester during the industrial revolution, this novel takes you on a compelling journey through the lives of the working class in the 19th century. Gaskell's writing is a vivid window into the struggles and triumphs of the ordinary people during a time of social and economic upheaval.

Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are young, attractive but impoverished New Yorkers. They are in love and decide to marry, but realise their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth and society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick and Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition.

"Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874) is the first novel set in Hardy's fictional county of Wessex in rural southwest England. It deals with the themes of love, honor and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships - especially with her lonely neighbor William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy. The novel was listed at number 48 on the BBC's survey The Big Read in 2003.

Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.

France, 1939: A talented singer, Ruth Lacroix has left Maine to live with her aunt and uncle, dreaming of performing at the Casino de Paris. But with the outbreak of war, and the heartbreaking news that her cousin has been killed by German forces, that goal is supplanted by another—to support France in any way she can.

Eventually Dona lands in remote Navron, looking for peace of mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds the passion her spirit craves in the love of a daring French pirate who is being hunted by all of Cornwall. Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him

For years, guitarist Quinn Porter has been on the road, chasing gig after gig, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness records-obsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness for his paternal shortcomings by completing the requirements for one of his son's unfinished Boy Scout badges. For seven Saturdays Quinn does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the spry 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly.

Single-minded and spoilt, Undine Spragg arrives in New York determined to procure for herself a social status to match her family’s wealth. Ambition, greed and an arresting beauty soon secure her path to marriage...and also to divorce. The Custom of the Country is a sophisticated commentary on both, touching on the implications for a woman of ending a marriage at a time when the author herself was navigating that situation. As the mismatched Undine and Ralph travel to Europe, Wharton contrasts the pecuniary motivation of the nouveau riche in America with European tradition.

Considered to be Dickens' finest novel, Bleak House is a suspenseful tale about the injustices of the 19th-century English legal system. This novel set the standard for modern day legal thrillers.

Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in 1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore's Calvert Street, abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone: Jenny, high-spirited and determined, nurturing to strangers but distant to those she loves; the older son, Cody, a wild and incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet, clumsy Ezra, Pearl's favorite, who never stops yearning for the perfect family that could never be his own. Now Pearl and her three grown children have gathered....