Agnes of Sorrento (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

The heroine of this 1862 historical novel is Agnes, a country girl living amidst the spiritual tranquility of an Italian convent. With her hand sought by a cast-out Italian prince, she is torn between the prospect of love and her sense of duty to the charismatic monk Savonarola, the instigator of the original and actual fifteenth-century “Bonfire of the Vanities.”