A young boy, Victor, is collected from school by a stranger in a bowler hat - the stranger says he has won Victor in a game of backgammon with Victor's father. The stranger, known as the Captain, take
Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively
Equipped with love, Mr Harold Pye lands on the island of Sark, his mission to convert the islanders into a crusading force for the undiluted goodness that he feels within. The extraordinary inhabitant
From?a father?of science fiction?a perilous and astonishing adventure into the earth's core that details encounters with natural hazards, 40 foot mushrooms, and prehistoric beasts?After decoding a scr
Oliver Tressilian, a Cornish gentleman, is blessed with 'youth, wealth, and good digestion'. He is betrayed by his half-brother and becomes a renegade and Barbary corsair winning the title of Sakr-el-
Spolit, feckless Temple Drake, the daughter of a judge, runs away from school with an unsuitable man. Abandoned by him with a gang of moonshiners, Temple falls into the clutches of the psychotic Popey
Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business, where he is granted an audience with a young Thai princess - an encounter that radically alters the course of his l
Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at t
Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling... until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or 'Lucia' to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia's formidable armoury: her
Dickens’s first historical novel is a thrilling tale of murder, treachery, and forbidden love with rioting mob scenes to make any reader's hair stand on end Barnaby Rudge is a young innocent simplet
Features essays ranging from an appreciation of Goethe's novels, to an encounter with an Indian holy man, with a considered analysis of the form at which Maugham himself excelled - the short story. Th
Mary Lennox is an orphan who is sent to live with her uncle at gloomy Misselthwaite Manor. Neglected and lonely, she begins to explore her new home and learns of a secret garden that her uncle has for
During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting few
Isherwood's immortal novel about political high-tension, passion and literary talent in 1930s BerlinAfter a chance encounter on a train the English teacher William Bradshaw starts a close friendship with the mildly sinister Arthur Norris. Norris is a man of contradictions; lavish but heavily in debt, excessively polite but sexually deviant. First published in 1933 Mr Norris Changes Trains piquantly evokes the atmosphere of Berlin during the rise of the Nazis.
Discusses the writings of St. Teresa and the paintings of El Greco, and comments with sagacity and wit on such illustrious figures as Cervantes, Velazquez and the creator of Don Juan. This title is fu
Bertha Ley comes of age, inherits her father's money and promptly marries a handsome, calm and unimaginative man. Bertha is wildly in love with Edward and believes she can be happy playing the role of
Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with an urbane, wry style all his own.
A collection of twenty stories that are both melancholy and funny, farce and fantasy. It charts the struggles of an Italian peasant to reconcile country habits with urban life, combining comical disas
The ultimate back-stage novel and a brilliant satire by the author of The Master and Margarita on his ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky, Method Acting and the Moscow Arts Theatre.
With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five-year-old Dr Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia in 1916-17. This book show how his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with
"A dozen stories that overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life...Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty...his eye set only on describing and revealing th
“O soft embalmer of the still midnight,Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,Enshaded in forgetfulness divine” John Keats, ‘Ode to Sleep’John Keats
Miles Green wakes up in a mysterious hospital with no idea of how he got there or who he is. He definitely doesn't remember his wife, or his children's names. An impossibly shapely specialist doctor t
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, Les Misérables is one of the greatest adventure stor
During John Howard’s holiday in France, the Nazis invade and he is forced to try to escape back to England with the two small children of some friends. The roads become impassable and Howard also come
In this early English detective novel, Rachel Verinder receives a gift of a yellow diamond from her bitter old uncle. She has no idea that the stone brings great danger with it. When the diamond goes
A one-volume set of the two collections.This volume collects together Sherlock Holmes’s most memorable and intriguing cases, including adventures with mysterious masked strangers, ingenious heists, mu
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive and exciting Charles Townse
" The Magus" is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching assignment on a remote Greek island. There his friendship with a local millionaire evolves into a deadly game, one
Robert Merivel is a dissolute young medical student when an accident of fate leads him to the attention of King Charles II. Finding favour with the King, Merivel embarks on the time of his life, enthu
A that study analyses and evaluates the different strands of Sartre's rich and complex work. Combining the objectivity of the scholar with an interest in contemporary problems, this title discusses th
When the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin returned from South America on board the HMS Beagle in 1836, he brought with him the notes and evidence which would form the basis of his landmark theory of
Depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. This book follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their
“These stories have the ageless resonance of myth, for beneath his addictive adventures and hypnotic prose, Kipling was grappling with big questions: who are we? Where do we come from? How should we l
Machiavelli made his name notorious for centuries with the Prince, his clever and cynical work about power relationships. The key themes of this influential, and ever timely, writer are that adaptabil
Francisco Manoel da Silva, a poor Brazilian sailed to the African kingdom of Dahomey in the early 1800s, determined to make his fortune in the slave trade. Armed with nothing but an iron will, he beca
With this, his first collection, Carver breathed new life into the short story. In the pared-down style that has since become his hallmark, Carver showed how humour and tragedy dwell in the hearts of
Presents an account of the author and Simon's (author's climbing partner) terrifying adventure in the Peruvian Andes. This book shows how the pair dealt with the psychological traumas. It not only tel
“Jane Austen is a genius, and Northanger Abbey is hugely underrated.”–Martin AmisCatherine Morland is a young girl with a very active imagination. Her naivety and her love of sensational novels lead h
For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with ea
