Often referred to but rarely read, The Communist Manifesto is one of the great documents of world history. Written by Marx and Engels and published in London in 1848 (in German originally), it presented a totally different view of social and political organization, as revolutionaary as Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The Manifesto's effect on world politics was incalculable, but though it might seem to have been discredited by the late 20th century,...

A criminal feigns insanity and is admitted to a mental hospital, where he challenges the autocratic authority of the head nurse and tries to find the freedom and independence denied him in the outside world. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse Ratched. McMurphy swaggers into...

An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy -- abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape...

After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries.

A corporate lawyer in Washington goes to war against his own company to defend the homeless. It happens after Michael Brock is abducted by a homeless man and held hostage. The homeless man is killed by a police sharpshooter and the lawyer is rescued, but the experience changes his life. Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better;...

"Something wicked was brewing in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It started when two girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, began having hysterical fits. Soon after, other local girls claimed they were being pricked with pins. With no scientific explanation available, the residents of Salem came to one conclusion: it was witchcraft! Over the next year and a half, nineteen people were convicted of witchcraft and hanged while more...

Law firm partners Oscar Finley and Wally Figg see a chance for huge financial gain when they learn of a pending class action lawsuit against the makers of Krayoxx, a popular cholesterol-reducing drug suspected of causing heart attacks.

Explores 2-D and 3-D shapes.

"A timeless classic, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is both a coming-of-age story and a parody of the Gothic novels of the nineteenth century. Catherine Morland is destined to be the heroine of her own life story as she navigates friendships and romantic relationships, and as she learns to let go of childish notions of fantasy regarding the lives of others. Held from publication for more than a decade, this story was an instant success when it was...

"Discusses the fall of shogunate rule in Japan and the rise of modern Japan in the late nineteenth century." --