Stowe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain: these are just a few of the world-class novelists of nineteenth-century America. The nineteenth-century American novel was a highly fluid form, constantly evolving in response to the turbulent events of the period and emerging as a key component in American identity, growth, expansion and the Civil War. Gregg Crane tells the story of the American novel from its beginnings in the early republic to the end of the nineteenth century. Treating the famous and many less well-known works, Crane discusses the genre's major figures, themes and developments.

The breakout novel "Sanctus" by Simon Toyne has all the qualities of a good story; it has characters that cause things to happen and react to what has happened. It has action and suspense from the first chapter to the last. The novel has an intriguing premise; an ancient holy relic lies hidden in a Citadel built into the sides of a mountain in the city of Ruin in Turkey guarded by an order of monks. The monks in the stronghold are divided by levels of status distinguished by cassock colors. Only those in the highest order, the green cassocks of the Sacramental order know the secret of the ancient relic.

With the publication in 1989 of her first novel, "The Joy Luck Club", Amy Tan was immediately recognized as a major contemporary novelist. Her work explores the lives of the women in four Chinese-American families and the daughters who struggle to fulfill or reject the cultural and familial expectations placed on them. This new edition offers a selection of diverse critical voices that explore and elucidate the intricate relationships that course through the novel. Complete with an introduction from literary scholar Harold Bloom, this study guide also features a chronology, a bibliography, an index, and notes on the contributors.

Honor killings, witchcraft murders, and the machinations of rival gang lords...
Kali, Indian goddess of destruction and change, weaves her dark spell in a complex crime novel of fear, deception, brutal killings, and power mongering.

From his grandmother, Alex Cross has heard the story of his great uncle Abraham and his struggles for survival in the era of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, Alex passes the family tale along to his own children in a novel he's written--a novel called Trial.