"In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of...

A 1915 novel in which the heroine, Sylvia Marshall, feels caught between the conservative standards of her home in which her parents subscribe to the Montessori method, and the more liberal values of the surrounding society.

"Alone in the city, a young woman meets a man who promises to make her dreams come true."

Written by a teenager living in the Australian bush in the 1890s and originally published in 1901, Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career is a candid representation of the aspirations and frustrations of a young woman constrained by middle-class social arrangements, especially the pressure to marry. My Brilliant Career has continued to delight readers and to cause them to locate their personal realities in the struggle of Franklin's heroine,

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This novel of Regency England centers upon a self-assured young lady who is determined to arrange her life and the lives of those around her into a pattern dictated by her romantic fancy.

"At twenty-two, Bibi Blair's doctors tell her that she's dying. Two days later, she's impossibly cured. Fierce, funny, dauntless, she becomes obsessed with the idea that she was spared because she is meant to save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell. This proves to be a dangerous idea. Searching for Ashley Bell, ricocheting through a Southern California landscape that proves strange and malevolent in the extreme, Bibi is plunged into a world of...

"Work: A Story of Experience" by Louisa May Alcott immerses readers in the compelling narrative of Christie Devon, a young woman navigating the post-Civil War landscape in pursuit of independence and purpose. Set against the backdrop of the societal constraints of the era, this semi-autobiographical novel chronicles Christie's multifaceted journey through various jobs, each offering a glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of a woman seeking self-reliance. Alcott's...

Forced by her parents' ambitions among her wealthy D'Urberville cousins, Tess Durbeyfield attracts the unscrupulous Alec. Seduced and discarded, she finds work as a milkmaid, and her steadfast integrity is finally rewarded by the love of Angle Clare. Violated by one man, forsaken by another, Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy's immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of...

"London, 1905: Twenty-four-year-old Rachel Vinrace is a free spirited but painfully naive young woman when she embarks on a sea voyage with her family to South America. Arriving in Santa Marina, a town on the South American coast, Rachel and her aunt Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates, among them the sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer who is drawn to Rachel's unusual and dreamy nature. The two fall in love, unaware of...

This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the...