David Copperfield

Dickens called this novel his "favorite child," and reading it, you feel why. It pulses with the raw energy of a writer pouring his own childhood suffering and hard-won triumph into every page. David Copperfield begins as a motherless boy bullied at a brutal boarding school, sent to work in a wine bottle factory by his mercenary stepfather, and gradually transforms into a successful writer and devoted husband. Along the way, he encounters some of fiction's most unforgettable figures: the calculating Uriah Heep, the formidable Miss Betsey Trotwood, the romantic cad Steerforth, and the faithful servant Peggotty. This is a novel about survival against cruelty, the healing power of love, and the making of a self. Its warmth is immense, its characters vivid, its storytelling irresistible. If you've ever felt like an outsider, or yearned for belonging, David's journey will break your heart and mend it in the same breath.