A gloomy New England mansion provides the setting for this classic exploration of ancestral guilt and its expiation through the love and goodwill of succeeding generations. Nathaniel Hawthorne drew inspiration for this story of an immorally obtained property from the role his forebears played in the 17th-century Salem witch trials. Built over an unquiet grave, the House of the Seven Gables carries a dying man's curse that blights the lives of its...

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Narrated by the crew member Ishmael, this epic whaling adventure follows the crew of the Pequod as its captain, Ahab, descends deeper and deeper into madness on his quest to find and kill the white whale that maimed him. Beyond the surface of ship life, whaling, and the hunt for the elusive Moby Dick are allegorical references to life - and even the universe - in this masterpiece by Herman Melville. Regarded as the Great American Novel, Moby Dick...