Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure...more

Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Ju...more

Grace Livingston Hill gives us a Cinderella-type heroine to sympathize with in part two of the Miranda trilogy. Day after day Phoebe is subjected to living as a servant in her brother's home, picked on by her hateful sister-in-law, and forced to endure matchmaking schemes influenced by greed. Marriage to an ill-tempered man with several mis...more