Mansfield Park

Sent to live among her wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park, quiet, overlooked Fanny Price watches her cousins chase fortune, fashion, and each other's affections — and refuses, again and again, to compromise what she knows is right, however unpopular it makes her. When a charming, morally slippery pair of newcomers arrives, the whole household's illusions start to crack.

Austen's most searching and least comfortable novel — less about romance than about integrity, and what it costs to hold onto it when no one else will.