Eliot, George

Young Maggie Tulliver's loyalty to her beloved older brother, Tom, and to the rest of her family is fatally torn when she falls in love with the son of her father's bitterest enemy.

Silas Marner is a grumpy weaver who is obsessed with making a lot of money. After he is accused of theft his fiancee leaves him, and he has little use for other human beings especially those who are religious. Later someone steals a large bag of cash he has kept in his home making his life more miserable. As the years pass, Silas adopts a young girl Eppie whose mother has died in a drunken stupor, and he becomes a compassionate human being again.

Set in early nineteenth-century English countryside, an English squire yields to the temptations of an innocent country girl and crime, remorse, and suffering are the consequences.