"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta. At once retrospective and radically new, [this book] portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester Prynne...

"Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters...

"All Paris taunts and torments Quasimodo, the hunchback who lives among the carved stone gargoyles of the great cathedral spires. Nobody thinks he has human feelings and emotions, but Quasimodo will show enormous love and loyalty as this dramatic and unusual story unfolds. In this vivid tapestry are woven the stories of beautiful Esmeralda and the men who love her, including the tragic Quasimodo, who risks everything even his own life, for the young...