Behind a Mask
by Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott's little-known novella is an ingenious study of deception, betrayal, and the ruthless power of a woman scorned. Foreword by Doris Lessing. When demure Scottish governess Jean Muir arrives at a wealthy household, the family couldn't be more thrilled with their young new resident and find themselves beguiled by her grace and beauty. But this surrender to her "innocent" charms soon sets the men quarreling for her attention, with the women beside themselves with jealousy. Delighted with her success, Miss Muir sets her sights on the highest prize, but she has only three days to claim victory before the truth, behind her mask, will be exposed.

Lost Laysen
by Margaret Mitchell
Until 1995, Gone with the Wind--the 1937 Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the bestselling novel of all time--was the only published work of fiction credited to Margaret Mitchell. But 45 years after her death, the Road to Tara Museum unveiled what amounts to a national treasure--a novella written by America's most beloved storyteller. Lost Laysen is an exciting tale of love and honor on a South Pacific island. A rough-edged Irish boatsman is smitten with the feisty and independent Courtenay Ross. "Charley boy, I sure did love that little woman, I couldn't help it, tho I knew I never had a chance--she wasn't my kind. I wonder why it's always the little women that appeal to us big fellows?" Courtenay is engaged to a dapper young American who loves her so much, he follows her to the remote island of Laysen to persuade her to come home. What's so remarkable about this story is that Mitchell was just 16 when she put pen to paper and wrote the entire piece in less than a month's time.

Tathea
by Anne Perry
Anne Perry is the critically acclaimed author of the William Monk and the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt Victorian mystery series, and lives in Portmahomack, Scotland. Tathea is her first work of fantasy, which she describes as her most important book to date. One moonlit night, Ta-Thea--as she is known while Empress of Shinabar, her world's most ancient, advanced civilization--is awakened by screams. Her husband and young son murdered, Ta-Thea flees her home and takes on a new name and an epic journey as she seeks both understanding of her personal tragedy and a reason to continue living. With Ishrafeli, a steadfast comrade who lends support to her quest, Tathea encounters new lands and engages in their inhabitants' clashes with mortal dilemmas of the flesh and the spirit alike. When she has tested her mettle sufficiently and not found it wanting, Tathea witnesses a debate between the Man of Holiness and his adversary, Asmodeus, which leads her to a precious Book, whose teachings she undertakes to divine and share with the world against opposition beyond her imagining.

The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf
by Virginia Woolf
Woolf's short stories originally appeared in various magazines and anthologies, often sloppily or intrusively edited. The 45 texts collected here were carefully prepared by Susan Dick after comparison of all surviving manuscript and printed versions; 17 have never before been published, assuring this volume an important place in the Woolf canon. The earliest pieces date from 1906 and the last were in progress when Woolf drowned herself in 1941. Taken together, they show the evolution of Woolf's experimental methods and the origin of some of the major themes in her novels. Dick's meticulous but unobtrusive editing gives us for the first time a reliable text for some of Woolf's best writing.

The Professor
by Charlotte Bronte
The Professor was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed. Rejected by the publisher who took on the work of her sisters in 1846--Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights--it remained unpublished until 1857, two years after Charlotte Brontë's death. Like Villette (1853), The Professor is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator that she used, the work formulated a new aesthetic that questioned many of the presuppositions of Victorian society. Brontë's hero escapes from a humiliating clerkship in a Yorkshire mill to find work as a teacher in Belgium, where he falls in love with an impoverished student-teacher, who is perhaps the author's most realistic feminist heroine. The Professor endures today as both a harbinger of Brontë's later novels and a compelling read in its own right.

Travels with Charley and later novels, 1947-1962
by John Steinbeck
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. John Steinbeck was never content to repeat himself, and his restless search for new forms and fresh subject matter is fully evident in the books of his later years. This volume collects four novels that exhibit the full range of his gift, along with a travel book that has become one of his most enduringly popular works.