This is Mark Twain's humorous and poetic evocation of the history of the river. He recounts his years as a boy during the heyday of the steamboat era, the fulfillment of his dream of becoming a steamboat pilot, and above all, his love for the river. It also records his return to the Mississippi two decades later, to a way of life that had all but passed.

The Puritans thought Hester Prynne's crime was unforgiveable. She was convicted, imprisoned -- and then forced to wear, forever, a public reminder of her sin. The Scarlet Letter. The Letter was unending punishment: it set Hester apart from society, it tormented her days and haunted her soul. But the Letter haunted others, as well. Its mystery turned Roger Chillingworth from a gentle healer into a man driven by revenge. Its meaning burned into Rev....

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.

An authoritative edition of all the tales and sketches in a single comprehensive volume.

Tells the stories of a saint-like slave, a religious woman's courtship in eighteenth-century Newport, R.I., and life in a small Massachusetts town.

Here in one volume are all five of Nathaniel Hawthorne's world-famous novels. "The House of the Seven Gables" moves across 150 years from an ancestral crime condoned by the Puritan theocracy to a new beginning in the bustling and democratic Jacksonian era. Hawthorne's masterpiece, "The Scarlet Letter," is a dramatic allegory of the social consequences of adultery and the subversive force of personal desire in a community of laws. "The Blithedale Romance"...