David Case

Claudius, born weak and with a stutter, was shamed and dismissed by his family as an idiot. This allowed him to live under the public radar and avoid his family's scandal and eventual murder. Claudius survived to become the emperor of Rome in 41 A.D.

It took Charles Darwin more than twenty years to publish this book, in part because he realized that it would ignite a firestorm of controversy. The Origin of Species first appeared in 1859, and it remains a continuing source of conflict to this day. Even among those who reject its ideas, however, the work's impact is undeniable. In science, philosophy, and theology, this is a book that changed the world. In addition to its status as the focus of...

Originally published in 1859, "Adam Bede" is the first novel by George Eliot, which was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. Eliot was one of the leading British writers of the Victorian era, as well as a noted journalist, poet, and translator. "Adam Bede" concerns a small, tight-knit, and fictional rural community called Hayslope and the romantic drama that develops between four of its young residents: the title character Adam, a young carpenter, the...

The final novel of "a social satire of epic proportions and one that does not suffer by comparison with Thackeray's Vanity Fair" (The New York Times).   From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932   Set against the backdrop of a post–World War I Britain, now rocked by a general strike, Swan Song captures the staunch resilience-and ridiculousness-of the British upper middle class, who view this new national crisis as just a...

The moving story of a wealthy English clan and the infidelities and intrigues threatening to tear one marriage apart. In Chancery begins where The Man of Property, and its subsequent interlude, left off, pursuing Soames and Irene Forsyte across Edwardian England, meanwhile highlighting the failing marriage of Soames's sister, Winifred. Galsworthy juxtaposes the two relationships while bringing more members of the Forsyte clan into the drama, making...

A decade after their wild boat ride adventure on the Thames river, J, Harris, and George reunite for another vacation. Older, richer, and fatter, but not wiser, the three men stumble through mishaps and surprises as they journey to Germany. First saying their goodbyes, J and Harris seek the approval of their wives, worried about leaving their kids. Their wives are supportive, secretly considering their husbands' trip from home as a vacation for themselves...

Maid in Waiting is the beginning novel in the last trilogy of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles. In this seventh installment, the story continues of the lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths of the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes.

The White Monkey is the fourth of the nine novels in the Forsyte Chronicles and marks the opening of the second trilogy in the series, called A Modern Comedy. In this new chapter, Fleur and Michael Mont begin to question their marriage when their good friend, author Wilfred Desert, can no longer contain his passion for Fleur. Fleur finds herself torn between her love for Michael and passion for Wilfred. Meanwhile, Soames Forsyte, as a director of...

Clare Charwell has just fled her sadistic husband in Ceylon and boarded a ship back to England. On the boat, she meets the charming Tony Croom, who falls madly in love with her. Though Clare's relationship with Tony is platonic, her husband has been secretly gathering “evidence” to accuse her of adultery.

To Let concludes John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, the first trilogy of his epic nine-volume Forsyte Chronicles, which follows the fortunes of the venerable Forsyte family, a moneyed clan whose values are ever at war with its passions. In To Let, Irene's son, Jon, and Soames' daughter, Fleur, now both nineteen years old, fall in love. But when Jon learns of the past feud between their families, he decides that he cannot marry Fleur. To drive her from...