Showing results by publisher "CSA Word" in Romance

Lucy Honeychurch, accompanied by her vigilant guardian, Charlotte Bartlett, makes her first foray into the world, touring Italy and discovering a country very different to the English countryside she was brought up in.

The head of the Mortmain family is Cassandra Mortmain’s father, a writer suffering from writer's block who has not published anything since his first book, a hit entitled, Jacob Wresstling. Ten years before the story begins, he took out a forty-year lease on a dilapidated but beautiful castle, hoping to find either inspiration or isolation there; now, his family is selling off the furniture to buy food.

Here is the first novel of the famous Balkan Trilogy, previously successfully adapted for BBC television, starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Brannagh. The book is perfectly suited to audio. Charting the experiences of a young couple caught up in the politics of war when living abroad, it is a compelling story of love, loss and reconciliation.

The Portrait of a Lady was first published in 1881 and is arguably Henry James' finest novel. It is set in England and Europe, but the main characters tend to be American, including one of fiction's great heroines, Isabel Archer, around whom the plot revolves. A young innocent abroad, Isabel visits her American relatives in England, the Touchetts, and soon befriends her cousin, Ralph.

Emma is set in Highbury, a sizeable village in Surrey, where social life is dominated by the intelligent and wealthy Emma Woodhouse, who has too little to occupy herself and turns to matchmaking on behalf of her friends and neighbours to relieve boredom. Her schemes meet with varying degrees of success, until she finally learns to concentrate on her own life and leave others to live theirs without her interference.

Elizabeth Gaskell highlights the difference between the middle and working classes in this tale set in the time of the Industrial Revolution. A largely autobiographical story, she also highlights the good that each group can do for each other, and the friendships and understandings that can blossom between two seemingly irreconcilable means and modes of life. Gaskell shows her great love of people, and of love itself, in this touching and enlightening tale.

Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, and their very different responses to love, loss, and the crushing of their hopes and dreams. Austen chooses this novel to comment on the financial situation of women. The Dashwood Sisters are virtually penniles in a world where the "marriage market" is largely governed by money. They lose their home on their father's death and receive more kindness from strangers than from their own brother.

Sons and Lovers is the moving and explicit account of a young man growing up in a closed mining community. Born into a difficult marriage, Paul Morel is shy, introverted, and impressionable. As a young adult he becomes violently caught between the attentions of three women: his influential mother Gertrude; spiritual and devoted Miriam; and the sensual and mature Clara.

Jane Eyre, an orphan, has to suffer appalling conditions when she is sent away to a correctional school. She lands on her feet, or so it seems, when she becomes adult and obtains a job working for Mr Rochester, a brooding and formidable man who initially scares her, but whom she begins to warm to. At the same time, strange things are happening in the house. What is Adele, his ward, afraid of? And what are the strange banging noises coming from the attic at night time?

Anne Elliot made a big mistake: she let the love of her life get away. But seven years later, he comes back from the sea. As with all Jane Austen novels, this draws much of its appeal from the author's talent for observation and satire. The snobberies of a genteel world are exposed by its demurely mischievious heroine.

One of the great love stories of our time. Anna is attracted to the dashing Count Vronsky and has to make a hideous choice.