Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this...
The House of Mirth (1905), by Edith Wharton, is a novel about New York socialite Lily Bart attempting to secure a husband and a place in rich society. It is one of the first novels of manners in American literature.
The Age of Innocence centers on one society couple's impending marriage and the introduction of a scandalous woman whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and mores...
The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family, particularly focusing on the sexual dynamics of, and relations between, the characters. Lawrence's...
A triangle romance provides the basis for a questioning of the meaning of masculinity, as well as an examination of agribusiness in California. Jack London said of this novel: "It is all sex from start to finish...
Severin is so infatuated with Wanda that he requests to be treated as her slave and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways. At first Wanda does not want to, but later embraces the idea;...
The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece and Rome had returned to Earth -- with all their awesome powers intact. Overnight, Earth was transformed. War on any scale was outlawed, along with boom-and-bust economic...
The Monk is remembered for being one of the more lurid and "transgressive" of Gothic novels. It is also the first book to feature a priest as the villain. The story concerns Ambrosio - a pious, well-respected...
In this fourth volume, Proust’s novel takes up for the first time the theme of homosexual love and examines how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Sodom and Gomorrah is also an unforgiving...
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland. Written in 1748 while Cleland was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered the first modern "erotic novel" in...
Women in Love is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence published in 1920. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow (1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun...
Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice is a 1919 fantasy book by James Branch Cabell - the eighth among some fifty-two books written by this author - which gained fame (or notoriety, in the view of some) shortly after...
The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers with its forthright treatment of sex and suicide. Departing from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the...
