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An enchanting comedy of errors, Emma remains a classic two centuries after it was first published.

Emma Woodhouse is a privileged young woman whose greatest pleasure in life lies in matchmaking for anyone but herself. Written, by Austen’s own admission, as “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” Emma’s charm and wit exist in constant tension with her capacity for selfishness and vanity. Despite her intelligence, Emma stumbles from one catastrophe to the next—from a misguided attempt at securing a husband for her friend Harriet Smith to her disastrous meddling in the affairs of new arrivals Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax—before ultimately falling into her own unexpected happy ending.

Both a discerning look at the strictures of Regency England and an enchanting comedy of errors, Emma remains a classic two centuries since it was first published.

The cracking debut of A. J. Raffles, proper English gentleman and jewel thief extraordinaire.

Sometimes the greatest of partnerships are born in the direst of moments. For Bunny Manders and A. J. Raffles, such a moment comes when a bad night at the baccarat tables threatens to end in suicide. Hundreds of pounds in the red, Bunny grows so desperate that he asks Raffles, a former classmate who captained their public school’s cricket team, for help. When Raffles hesitates, Bunny pulls a gun out of his coat pocket and puts it to his head. “I never dreamt you had such stuff in you, Bunny!” says Raffles, a gleam in his eye. A few hours later, he and his old school chum break into a jeweler’s shop and steal thousands of pounds’ worth of diamonds and gemstones. Disaster averted, adventures begun.

In these thrilling stories, E. W. Hornung introduced the world to a duo as gifted at burglary as Sherlock Holmes and Watson are at detection. Full of sophisticated banter, hair-raising close calls, and nefarious schemes, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman is a masterwork of crime fiction and irrefutable proof that there truly is honor among thieves.

A mysterious hero’s astonishing adventures in revolutionary France.

The Age of Reason has come to France, bringing with it murder, cruelty, and terror. As the nation’s aristocrats are paraded to the guillotine, their children are handed over to revolutionary citizens for reeducation. Once a courtier at Versailles, Madeleine Lannoy now dances in the street, clinging to life so that she may one day visit revenge on Jean Paul Marat, the tyrant who stole her son. Her cause is hopeless until she meets a dashing Englishman named Sir Percy Blakeney, better known by his secret identity—the Scarlet Pimpernel.

In this electrifying installment in the world-famous historical suspense series, Sir Percy outwits bloodthirsty agents of the Terror time and time again. When the rest of Europe has turned its back on the French nobility, the Scarlet Pimpernel does not hesitate to risk his life for what is just.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece: A searing portrait of sin and redemption in Puritan New England.

When Hester Prynne, a young Puritan woman in seventeenth-century Boston, becomes pregnant out of wedlock, the unforgiving society in which she lives judges her harshly. Sentenced to wear a scarlet A emblazoned on her dress, Hester raises her daughter, Pearl, on the outskirts of town—an exile meant to cause her shame for the remainder of her life.

In refusing to name Pearl’s father, Hester seeks to protect the minister Arthur Dimmesdale from sharing her fate. As the years pass, Dimmesdale grows weaker, eroded by his guilt, while Hester finds renewal in a defiant reclamation of her strength and identity. Their diverging paths lead to a searing final scene that stands among the most powerful in American literature.