Set in London and Paris during the tumultuous years surrounding the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is among Charles Dickens’s most dramatic and tightly plotted novels. The story weaves together the fates of the Manette and Darnay families against the backdrop of the Terror, building toward the famous self-sacrificial act of the dissolute Sydney Carton — whose final words are among the most recognized in all of English literature.
Opening with one of fiction’s most famous sentences, the novel balances sweeping historical drama with intensely personal stories of love, loyalty, and redemption. Download this free EPUB from Better Gutenberg and read a Dickens masterpiece at its most cinematic.