Author: Thomas Hardy; Publisher: Kessinger Publishing

Desperate Remedies (1871) is Thomas Hardy's first published novel. After a failed attempt at satire, Hardy turned his talents to writing romances, and thus his first three novels are romances -- very different from his later, darker Wessex novels. Desperate Remedies tells the story of Cytherea Gray, who becomes as lady's maid, although she is in love with Edward Springrove, who is already engaged to marry another young woman. Cytherea then makes a misalliance with the dreadful and possibly murderous Aeneas Manston. With suspense, Aeneas' villainy and treachery are finally revealed, with happy results for Cytherea and Edward. Far different in tone from Hardy's later novels, Desperate Remedies has more Gothic suspense than brooding depression.

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9780548059876)

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Author: Louis Figuier; Publisher: Kessinger Publishing

The World Before the Deluge

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9780548042793)

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Author: Jesse Lee Kercheval; Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Wisconsin is not where Alice, a girl raised in Florida, meant to end up. But when she falls in love with Anders Dahl, a descendant of Norwegian farmers born for generations in the same stone farmhouse, she realizes that to love Anders is to settle into a life in Wisconsin in the small house they buy before their daughter, Maude, is born. Together, Alice and Anders move forward into a life of family, friends, and the occasional troubled student until they face their biggest challenge. Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Jesse Lee Kercheval's The Alice Stories tells the tale of a family: the pain of loss and the importance of the love of friends in the midst of turmoil. As timely as the news yet informed by rich humor and a deep understanding of human character, the interlinked Alice Stories form a luminous tale of family life.

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9780803211353)

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Author: Michael Loyd Gray; Publisher: PublishAmerica

Its 1966 and as the Rolling Stones conquer America, 17-year-old Billy Ray Fleener flees the Republican gravitational pull of Argus, Illinois, the conservative strictness of his father, and a future career in plumbing supplies for a road trip to Helena, Arkansas, to visit the grave of his Uncle Milt, who was killed in Vietnam. Along the way Billy Ray meets Elvis Presley, militant nuns, a con man, and a would-be rock band called Gravy Is Groovy.

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9781424174638)

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Author: Edna Ferber; Publisher: Gramercy Books

Edna Ferber's classic paean of love to the Mississippi River and the showboats that ran up and down it is once again available in hardcover as a facsimile of the first edition. First published in 1926, this timeless tale of the Cotton Blossom, Cap' n Andy, his shrewd wife Parthy, and their beautiful daughter Magnolia her remarkable daughter Kim was made famous on Broadway in 1927, when the legendary Jerome S. Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II collaborated on the musical. Since then it has become a beloved favorite, revived repeatedly to entertain generations with haunting and lyrical songs such as Old Man River and Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine.

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9780517229934)

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Author: Ernest Poole; Publisher: Kessinger Publishing

1921. Poole worked as a journalist campaigning for social reforms including an end to child labor. On the outbreak of the First World War he worked as a war correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post. His novel, His Family, won the first Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1918. Beggars' Gold begins: In New York, toward the end of an afternoon in the autumn of 1894, through the strident hubbub, the jostling, nervous rush of the crowds pouring into the old Grand Central Station, came two figures so incongruous that even in that whirling haste they drew curious glances. One was a large, heavy, young man of about twenty-eight, an American. The other, who barely reached to his waist, was a stout, little Chinese boy, in a padded coat of dark, blue silk, a black cap with a big, red button, blue trousers and white stockings. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9780548032190)

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Author: Emerson Hough; Publisher: IndyPublish.com

1907. Hough's literary career grew out of his taking camping trips and writing about them for publication. His body of work eventually included 27 novels and hundreds of short stories and articles. The Way of a Man begins: I admit I kissed her. Perhaps I should not have done so. Perhaps I would not do so again. Had I known what was to come I could not have done so. Nevertheless I did. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9781435340473)

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Author: Ivan Turgenev; Publisher: IndyPublish.com

A House of Gentlefolk

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9781435306806)

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Author: Charles A. Lindbergh; Publisher: Kessinger Publishing

The Last Hero

Genre: Literary (ISBN: 9781432620455)

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