Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

In Paris, a woman and her lover plot to kill her husband, Camille, and live comfortably off his haberdashery. However, after the lovers kill the husband and hide his body inside the haberdashery, they are continuously haunted by Camille's ghost and are slowly driven mad.

While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveller, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armour-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing...

The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the...

A psychopathic murderer of young girls terrorizes a German city causing public hysteria and intense police investigations, which in turn disrupts organized crime. The contrasting worlds of the police and the underworld are juxtaposed as they both resolve to hunt, capture, and try the murderer.

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction has been hailed by critics and audiences worldwide as a film that redefined cinema. Tarantino delivers an unforgettable cast of characters, including a pair of low-rent hitmen, their boss's sexy wife, and a desperate prizefighter, in a wildly entertaining and exhilarating blend of crime-thriller-drama-comedy that is completely original and entirely unforgettable.

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, black-market opportunist Harry Lime-- and thus begins this legendary tale of love, deception, and murder.

Jean Cocteau turns the Orpheus legend into a story of a poet and his encounter with death and the middle world.

In his last film Cocteau portrays an 18th century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection. The film finished the circle of the journey begun in Blood of a Poet, exploring the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations.

In 1942, Tono and his wife are struggling because of his antipathy towards the fascist regime. His brother-in-law, the local fuehrer, chooses Tono to oversee a button shop owned by a sweet, harmless Jewish widow, Mrs. Lautman. Unable to explain his position to Mrs. Lautman, Tono gradually accepts her belief that he is her assistant. When the Jews are ordered deported, the well-meaning Tono decides to shield her from the Nazis.