"Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York's cultural elite. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth seems to have the perfect everything, all except her husband, whom she'd quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is ironclad, and Emily can't bring herself to...

First serialized in 1908, "Martin Eden" is Jack London's classic and tragic tale of its title character and his struggle to become a writer. Martin Eden is an idealistic and self-educated young man who struggles to overcome poverty and a lack of opportunities in a quest to become an educated and successful artist. He hopes to find acceptance in the world of the wealthy and refined, though he finds it hard to shake off his coarse working-class background....

"On an ordinary Saturday morning in 1996, the residents of Nightingale Point wake up to their normal lives and worries. Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after. Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years. Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. No wonder he's falling in...

When Maricarmen meets Rey el Cantante, beloved small-time Robin Hood and local musician on the rise, she begins to envision a life beyond the tight-knit community of el Caserío, Puerto Rico--beyond cleaning houses, beyond waiting tables, beyond the constant tug of war between the street hustlers and los camarones. But breaking free proves more difficult than she imagined, and she soon finds herself struggling to make a home for Rey, his young brother...

"The Talnikov Family (1848) follows Natasha, a girl growing up in a psychologically and physically abusive household of Petersburg actors. Modeled on Panaeva's own life prior to her marriage to radical Ivan Panaev at 18, the piece was published in the important thick journal The Contemporary but was swiftly suppressed. Censors called it "cynical," "immoral," and "undermining of parental power." Published the same year as Karolina Pavlova's A Double...