Ruby Pitt shocks her well-to-do family by running off with an abusive migrant worker and later marrying an uneducated tenant farmer.

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause celebre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty...

Lyric and sensual, D.H. Lawrence’s last novel is one of the major works of fiction of the twentieth century. Filled with scenes of intimate beauty, it explores the emotions of a lonely woman trapped in a sterile marriage and her growing love for the robust gamekeeper of her husband’s estate. The most controversial of Lawrence’s books, Lady Chatterly’s Lover joyously affirms the author’s vision of individual regeneration through sexual love....

"From Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding novel that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush modern fairytale in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling"-- "Once upon a time, in a world just like ours, there came "the time of the strangenesses."...

Claire, hiding from a dangerous past, finds solace in working as a private nurse for the elderly George Bellamy, but when George's grandson, Ross, returns home from war, Claire struggles against the attraction she feels for him.

This is the story of two small-town former high school sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks. Now middle-aged, they have taken wildly divergent paths, but neither has lived the life they imagined, and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever altered their world. When they are both called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter, they will be forced to confront the choices each has made,...

Middle Age portrays a uniquely contemporary phenomenon: the propensity of the affluent middle-aged in America to reinvent themselves romantically when the energies of youth have faded or they have become disillusioned. The setting is Salthill-on-Hudson, NY, a wealthy community where "everyone is middle-aged"--but looks much younger. In this intensely social environment, Adam Berendt, a charismatic and mysterious sculptor, dies unexpectedly, plunging...

Having harbored an unrequited love for a man she met in childhood, Cassandra impulsively breaks an engagement to become the now-widowed man's nanny, but realizes that her chance for winning his heart is threatened by dark secrets.

A story of Americans living on the French Riviera in the 1930s is a portrait of psychological disintegration as a wealthy couple supports friends and hangers-on financially and emotionally at the cost of their own stability

Tiring of commitment-phobic boyfriends, Lottie readily accepts her ex's offer of marriage in fulfillment of a safety pact made years earlier that they would marry if they were still single in their thirties, a rushed arrangement that prompts family disapproval and an unexpected renewal of passion.