Introduction to JavaScript Object Notation

Originally told by Rudyard Kipling to his children at bedtime, this compendium of witty tales imagines how animals came to be as they are now. Discover how the massive whale got a tiny throat by swall

An accidental fall from the swing seems to threaten Katy's hopes for the future, but she struggles to overcome her difficulties with good humour and vitality. This edition is beautifully illustrated b

When the young Ishmael gets on board Captain Ahab's whaling ship, little does he suspect that the mission on which he is about to embark is the fulfilment of his master's obsessive desire for revenge

Orlando, a young nobleman and one of Queen Elizabeth I’s court favourites, is the object of many ladies’ attentions, but after suffering heartbreak he prefers literary pursuits to entertaining any tho

'The Last of the Belles' centres on the Southern beauty Ailie Calhoun from Tarleton, Georgia, who finds herself the object of attention of all the officers at a nearby army base, including the narrato

A wonderful story for children and an allegory for adults about the absurdity of war, presented here with an introduction and guide to the text by Lemony Snicket. Starving after a harsh winter, the be

Part of Alma Classics Evergreen series at GBP4.99, this edition includes an introduction by translator Tom Lathrop and illustrations by Jack Davis.

Published posthumously, The Red Notebook is an account of the youth of the author of the seminal Romantic novel Adolphe, relating Constant's eccentric and peripatetic education, his introduction to European high society and the kindling of his literary ambitions - as well as his often comic and calamitous early experiences with the opposite sex and the development of his ruinous gambling habit. Part picaresque romp and part Bildungsroman, this is a spirited look at life and Romantic sensibilities on the eve of the nineteenth century and a fine example of early autobiographical writing.

New annotated edition of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, a first-hand account of the brutal conditions of the Spanish Civil War. Here presented in its original version, as published by Secker & Warburg in 1938.After travelling to Spain at the end of 1936 with the intention of working as a correspondent for a British socialist newspaper, thirty-three-year-old George Orwell decided to join the Republican efforts to overturn Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. Having enrolled in the POUM militias, the young writer was soon forced to experience first-hand the hardships and dangers of trench warfare, before becoming involved in the Barcelona May Day street fighting and nearly being killed by a bullet on his return to the front line. Orwell’s initial idealistic dreams of a victorious fight against fascism were gradually tainted by doubt and disillusionment as the divisions and infighting within the Republican coalition became apparent.Part war memoir, part tract, part ex

Deeply bored by the lack of mental stimulus and the dull routine of existence, Sherlock Holmes is about to resort to his daily dose of cocaine in order to get a thrill, when an elegantly dressed young

An unnamed young governess is sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Yet she is soon oppressed by a sense of foreboding and deep disquiet, becoming convinced that some

When Paul d’Aspremont travels to Naples to join Alicia Ward, his beautiful fiancée, he is surprised to see her grow pale under his gaze, and to discover that an Italian suitor, Count Altavilla, is try

On a visit to a provincial town to see his sister Nina who is suffering from cancer, Alexei Laptev, who works for his father’s Moscow haberdashery business, falls in love with Yulia, the daughter of h

Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel and Horace Octavius (“H.O.”) Bastable are desperate to help their widowed father to restore the family’s fortunes after his business fails.Their moneymaking schemes, f

As Paris is shaken by a gang of murderous thieves, the aristocratic Mademoiselle de Scudéri pens a poem to poke fun at the cowardly lovers who now fear to go out at night to see their mistresses. But

From his childhood on the wild, windswept shores of Cornwall and his college days at Cambridge to his life as a lawyer in London and a fateful journey to the Mediterranean, Jacob Flanders’s story is t

Having lived in the city of Orphalese for twelve years, the revered Prophet is about to board a ship taking him back to the isle of his birth. Before he departs, a group of people gather round and ask

Written as a passionate riposte to Talleyrand’s report to the French National Assembly, in which he declared that women needed only a domestic education, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked

Born in Newgate Prison to an incarcerated mother, Moll Flanders is compelled from earliest childhood to make her own way in the world and to live off her wit and beauty. Her desire to climb the rungs

At a train station on her way to meet her friends Marie and Leo to recover her pet rock, Madame Charlotte accidentally picks up the Prime Minister’s elephant-hide bag instead of her own. As it contain

In ‘The Waves’, a young man falls dangerously in love with his tenant downstairs who is about to get married; in ‘The Signorina’, a woman, disillusioned with her suitor’s inability to declare his feel

When Cora and Alice Munro’s Native American guide Magua proves to be secretly allied with the French and slips away, the sisters turn to Natty Bumppo and the Mohicans Chingachgook and Uncas to lead th

In A Voyage to the Moon, the narrator (called, like the author, Cyrano de Bergerac), after a failed first attempt to reach the moon using vials of dewdrops, finally makes it into space and to his desi

Part wolf, part dog, White Fang learns to survive in the freezing wilderness. As well as being forced to confront the harsh realities of nature, the young cub experiences the cruelties of humans – but

“And specially from every shires endeOf Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,The hooly blisful martir for to seke,That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.”Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwar

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost to a series

The House of the Dead recounts the story of Alexander Goryanchikov, a gentleman who is sent to a prison colony in Siberia for killing his wife. Largely ignored at first by his fellow inmates due to hi

Miss Charlotte – the new coach of a children's football team – has some odd methods to prepare them for the big match, including talking to the ball and drinking a special potion, smalalamiam. Also, s

“I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater…”“I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night – nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium p

In response to the dire economic conditions in eighteenth-century Ireland, A Modest Proposal ironically exhorts the poor to provide their offspring as food to the rich. Skilfully applying a wealth of

Driven to his deathbed by an incurable disease, the thirty-year-old impoverished gentleman Chulkaturin decides to write a diary looking back on his short life. After describing his youthful disillusio

Coming back into town after a hunting expedition, Alexandre Dumas witnesses an incredible scene: a man has come to hand himself in to the mayor after decapitating his wife, terrified by the fact that

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood! When sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.” Raised

As their father is sick, Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel must work to support their family. Despite this life of poverty, they long to take part in the annual ice-skating races on the froze

The heir to his grandfather's considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligac

“Though absent long,These forms of beauty have not been to me,As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the dinOf towns in cities, I have owed to them,In hours of wearin

When her wealthy family prepares to host a lavish summer party, the young, hitherto sheltered Laura Sheridan suddenly feels a kinship with the staff and the helpers hired to set up the venue for the f

When the reporter Edward Malone is sent to interview the formidable Professor Challenger about his accounts of strange prehistoric beasts on a remote plateau in South America, he expects to be given s

When the orphaned William refuses his uncles' proposal to become a clergyman and angrily leaves his job in the counting-house of his brother's mill, he decides to accept a position as an English teach

In order to repay a small debt, the young student Mitya is persuaded by a friend to falsify a bank bond and cash it in. Little does he suspect that this small misdemeanour will have a profound impact