Bathsheba Everdene is young, proud, and beautiful. She is an independent woman and can marry any man she chooses - if she chooses. In fact, she likes her independence, and she likes fighting her own battles in a man's world. But it is never wise to ignore the power of love. There are three men who would very much like to marry Bathsheba. When she falls in love with one of them, she soon wishes she had kept her independence. She learns that love brings misery, pain, and violent passions that can destroy lives ... Classics

Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he's not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks for a ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it. These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century, but Hardy's tales of mistakes and muddles and marriages belong in any place, at any time. Classics

A woman and a man ...words of love whispered on a summer night. Later, there is a child, but no wedding-ring. And then the man leaves the first woman, finds a younger woman, marries her ...It's an old story. Yes, it's an old, old story. It happens all the time - today, tomorrow, a hundred years ago. People don't change. But this story, set among the green hills of southern England, has something different about it. Perhaps it is only a dream, or perhaps it is magic - a kind of strange dark magic that begins in the world of dreams and phantoms ...


Classic

Michael Henchard is a wealthy and respected man, but he has a terrible secret. Twenty years ago, when he was unemployed and penniless, he sold his wife to a sailor. Now she is looking for him again. Why? And what will happen when she finds him?

Giles Winterbourne is engaged to Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich timber merchant. When Grace returns from being educated abroad she is a different person. And when Giles loses all his money, Grace's father insists she marry a handsome doctor.

From the pen of Thomas Hardy comes a story of entangled love. The gentle John Loveday, the trumpet-major of the title, is in love with Anne Garland but she has two other suitors. Who will she choose?

On a stormy winter night, a stranger knocks at the door of a shepherd's cottage. He is cold and hungry, and wants to get out of the rain. He is welcomed inside, but he does not give his name or his business. Who is he, and where has he come from? And he is only the first visitor to call at the cottage that night ...In these three short stories, Thomas Hardy gives us pictures of the lives of shepherds and hangmen, dukes and teachers. But rich or poor, young or old, they all have the same feelings of fear, hope, love, jealousy ... Classics

A cruel joke at a country fair goes too far when a drunken laborer auctions off his wife and child to the highest bidder. So begins The Mayor of Casterbridge. Rich in descriptive powers and steeped in irony, this timeless tale offers a spellbinding portrayal of ambition, rivalry, revenge, and repentance.