Sovereign imprint: 731 books

Oliver is born into poverty and misfortune. Following his mother’s early death he is soon delivered to the workhouse where he meets the cruel Mr Bumble. In London, Oliver meets the Artful Dodger and his gang, as well as the beautiful Nancy. As Oliver is drawn deeper into the dark and murky underworld, he remains unaware that the kind Mr Brownlow is searching for him.

An upper-class Russian woman falls for a Bulgarian revolutionary in the summer of 1853, the eve of the devastating war that set the Russian empire against the Ottoman, British and French empires. The Crimean war broke out in October of that year.

Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolai, gladly receives the two young men at his estate, called Marino, but Nikolai's brother, Pavel, soon becomes upset by the strange new philosophy called nihilism which the young men advocate.

The story follows a young man and a young woman, torn between love and politics. They struggle to make headway against the stifling conventions of provincial life, complacency of the powerful, and the misery of the powerless.

It was in a little woodland glen, with a streamlet tumbling through it. She sat with her back to a snowy birch-tree, gazing into the eddies of a pool below; and he lay beside her, upon the soft, mossy ground, reading out of a book of poems. Images of joy were passing before them; and there came four lines with a picture...

About noon of a day in May during the recent year the converted tug Uncas left Key West to join the blockading squadron off the northern coast of Cuba. Her commander was Lieutenant Raymond, and her junior officer Naval Cadet Clifford Faraday. The regular junior officer was absent on sick leave, and Cadet...

A young lawyer, Allan Montague moves to New York City from Mississippi, along with his mother and cousin Alice. He joins his younger brother Oliver, who had taken up residence there several years before. The newcomers soon discover that Oliver has become a highly networked member of a fast-paced social circuit comprising some of the most powerful members of the business class.

Oedipus enters the village of Colonus and sits down on a stone. They are approached by a villager, who demands that they leave, because that ground is sacred to the Furies, or Erinyes. Oedipus recognizes this as a sign, for when he received the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother,...

A priest and the chorus of Thebans arrive at the palace to call upon their King, Oedipus, to aid them with the plague. Oedipus had sent his brother-in-law Creon to ask help of the oracle at Delphi, and he returns at that moment. Creon says the plague is the result of religious pollution, caused because...

Oscar Wilde's is most famous for his satirical plays which he wrote at the time of great literary enlightenment, when all Britons were able to embrace literature previously only available to the wealthy and educated. At the height of the prosperity sweeping through London in the Victorian Era Oscar Wilde...

The play is set in Sicily, at a time when Paganism and Christianity meet, thus again outlining this theme. It is one of the most controversial works by Schiller attempting to combine antique and modern theatre.

Eugenie's father Felix is a former cooper who has become wealthy through both business ventures and inheritance. However, he is very miserly, and he, his wife, daughter and their servant Nanon live in a run-down old house which he is too miserly to repair. His banker des Grassins wishes Eugenie to marry...

Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Etudes philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels.

Balzac's masterpiece novel follows lives of three central characters: the law student Eugene de Rastignac, a mysterious agitator named Vautrin, and an elderly retired vermicelli-maker named Jean-Joachim Goriot. The old man is ridiculed frequently by the other boarders, who soon learn that he has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters.