Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Her luminous beauty blazing against the bleak background of rural Victorian England, Tess Durbeyfield is one of literature's best-loved and most memorable heroines. Her struggle to endure despite the abandonment of her true love--and her desperate attempt to attain happiness--propel Tess toward a tragic end.

The mayor of Casterbridge: Destitute and drunken, Michael Henchard is an itinerant farmhand who sells his wife and daughter to a sailor in a moment of alcohol-fueled desperation. Decades after his fateful decision, now reformed and respectable, he is offered a chance at redemption when his wife reappears with her daughter.