"Nothing so coarsely indecent as the whole history of Jude in his relations with his wife Arabella has ever been put in English print," asserted M. O. W. Oliphant, the Scottish humorist. Hardy's "Jude the Obscure--the ill-received novel that was to be his last--is a strikingly modern portrait of provincial, workaday life, frank sexuality, and the desire to transcend the mire of prosaic living. Amy M. King is Assistant Professor of Literature at the...

Adrienne Portale has never settled in one place for long but takes a job as innkeeper in tiny Knights Bridge, Massachusetts, to spend some time getting to know the father she only recently found. When three small boys get lost in the wilderness bordering the inn, Adam Sloan leads the search. His family ties to the town go back generations. Adrienne sees the bond people in a small town have as they band together to find the missing children. Adam is...