When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bump
Adrian Leverkuhn is a young man destined for success. He is a composer – creative and brilliant, but he will stop at nothing to achieve greatness. Intentionally contracting syphilis in order to deepen
Mann’s short stories explore his abiding interest in the split nature of humanity and the discordance of the world it inhabits. In ‘A Man and his Dog’, domestic tempests are symbols of the muddle of h
A new, definitive text of Marcel Proust's novel was published by the Biblioth-que de la Pl-iade in 1989. for the present six-volume edition, D. J. Enright has further revised Terence Kilmartin's accla
A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be emp
Why do we set so much store by marriage? These excerpts from her novels show that Jane Austen was fascinated by this question, subjecting it to her forensic eye and wonderfully ironic wit again and a
Loved by children and adults alike, The Jungle Books is the story of the irrepressible Mowgli, who is rescued as a baby from the jaws of the evil tiger, Shere Khan. Raised by wolves and guided by Balo
'One of the greatest love stories in world literature' Vladimir Nabokov 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'Anna Karenina is a novel of unparalleled ric
"No summary can do this marvelous, rich and unforgettable novel anything like justice."? —Philip Pullman?Kim is an orphan who earns his living begging on the streets of Lahore. One day he befriends an
The Good Soldier is a brilliant and heart-rending evocation of destructive passion.With an Intoduction by Zoe HellerWhen John Dowell and his wife befriend Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, they appear to
“Thirty years ago there stood . . . in the borough of Southwark . . . the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now, and
Huck is a young, naive white boy fleeing from his drunken, dangerous Pa; and Jim is a runaway slave longing to be reunited with his family. Flung together by circumstance, they journey down the Missi
As an orphan, Jane’s childhood is not an easy one, but her independence and strength of character sustain her through the miseries inflicted by cruel relatives and a brutal education system. However,
William Blake is one of Britain’s most fascinating and groundbreaking poets, as well as a renowned painter, engraver, radical, and mystic. Although Blake was dismissed as an eccentric by his contempor
Dr. Jekyll has been experimenting with identity. He has developed a drug which separates the two sides of his nature, allowing him to abandon himself to his most corrupt inclinations as the monstrous
Pip’s life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events lead him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a Londo
Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich "relatives," the D’Urbervilles, in hope that they might help her alleviate her own family’s poverty. Her encounter with her m
Wuthering Heights is the tale of two families both joined and riven by love and hate. Cathy is a beautiful and wilful young woman torn between her soft-hearted husband and Heathcliff, the passionate a
Elizabeth Bennett is young, clever, and attractive, but she and her four sisters are in dire need of financial security in the shape of husbands. The arrival of the pleasant nice Mr. Bingley and the o
