Nicholas Nickleby (Penguin Popular Classics)

Nicholas is a young man of impetuous temper and little or no experience, who saves his family from dire misfortune at the hands of his villainous uncle. Mixing comedy and horror, melodrama and acid satire, Dickens depicts a world in which the exploitation and abuse of youth and innocence cannot ever fully vanquish kindness, affection and the joyful energies of life.