New 6x9 inch paperback edition. "Riders of the Purple Sage" tells the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome her persecution by members of her polygamous Mormon Church. A second plot follows Venters and his escape to the wilderness with a girl named Bess, whom he has accidentally shot. Venters falls in love with the girl, and together they escape to the East, while Lassiter, Fay, and Jane, pursued by both Mormons and rustlers, escape into a paradise-like valley by toppling a giant balancing rock, forever closing off the only way in or out. Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the American frontier. Grey wrote over 100 books, mostly westerns, but also a few history books and many sporting stories about baseball and his favorite pastime, fishing. Grey's books became very popular during his lifetime with countless movies being adapted from them.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. "A Tale of Two Cities" is a novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, and depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. Charles Dickens was a 19th-century English writer and social critic who created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. Considered by many to be the first existentialist novel, "Notes from Underground" is an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator-the underground man. The first part attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's "What Is to Be Done?" The second part describes events that are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition with restored text. Challenging the prevailing morals of the Victorian era, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered by many to be the first feminist novel. This is a story of marital betrayal set within a moral framework tempered by an optimistic belief in universal salvation. The main character, Helen, is spirited and forthright, unafraid to speak with frankness to the men in her life. Anne Bronte portrays this approvingly, in contrast to the meekness of Milicent who is trampled and ignored by her unrepentant husband. Helen leaves with her beloved son in tow, arriving at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years. The second and final novel by Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was first published in 1848 in three volumes under the pseudonym Acton Bell. It achieved instant success, however, after Anne's untimely death the next year, her sister, Charlotte, prevented its re-publication. Six years later the text was edited to fit one volume, and most editions since then have the same omissions. Through careful comparison with the original version, this Peruse Press edition restores the missing sections.

This new paperback edition includes ten black and white illustrations of Joshua Reynolds's art. As the most successful portrait painter in 18th century England, and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered fifteen eloquent discourses at the annual or semi-annual awards presentations, instilling encouragement in the students, and providing a concise summary of art theory that continued to influence artists well into the 19th century. This volume presents a selection of seven of the discourses, that are essential reading for understanding the development of British art.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. An early example of Joyce's modernist, free indirect speech style of writing, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is a semi-autobiographical novel that traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist and poet considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century, and is well known for writing in the stream of consciousness technique he perfected.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first twelve short stories featuring the world's most famous detective, which were originally published as a series of single stories in The Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892, before being published as a book in 1892. This edition includes cover and frontispiece illustrations by Frederic Door Steele (no other illustrations). A London-based "consulting detective" whose abilities border on the fantastic, Sherlock Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to adopt almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases. Holmes's primary intellectual detection method is abductive reasoning, and readers enjoy analyzing just what Holmes is doing when he performs his "deductions," which consist primarily of drawing inferences based on straightforward practical principles and careful observation, resulting in an analysis of physical evidence that is both scientific and precise. Sherlock Holmes remains a great inspiration for forensic science in literature, especially for the way his acute study of a crime scene yields small clues as to the precise sequence of events.