Classic Fiction

Four women, with very different backgrounds and characters – the artless Lottie Wilkins, the pious Rose Arbuthnot, the cantankerous Mrs Fisher, and the haughty Lady Caroline Dester – respond to an advertisement in The Times offering a medieval castle to rent in Italy that April. As their joint holiday begins, tensions flare up between them, but they soon bond over...

LARGE PRINT EDITION. The Edgar Allan Poe Collection (2020) compiles several iconic works of short fiction and poetry by an icon of American literature. Recognised as a foundational figure of nineteenth-century fiction, Poe has inspired generations of readers and writers with his craftsmanship and taste for tragedy and terror. His brief but meteoric career shaped the trajectory of American literature...

A married woman restlessly seeks a deeper love. An insomniac ponders the meagreness of his life. A man loses the respect of his family because of a counterfeit coin. A duel of wits escalates into a clash of cultures - and more. The Duel and Other Stories is the second in an exclusive three-volume edition of Chekhov's stories. Encompassing the...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially successful version of himself, who abuses and victimises the original. As he is increasingly persecuted, Golyadkin finds his social, romantic and professional life unravelling, in a spiral that leads to a...

The Dear Green Place Winner of the Guardian Fiction of the Year Award One of The List's Best Scottish Books of All Time Set in nineteen-sixties Glasgow, this novel portrays the struggles and conflicts of young working-class hero and would-be novelist Mat Craig, whose desire to define himself as an artist creates social and family tensions. This classic of Scottish...

The classic adventure tale in an accessible abridged edition, now presented in a handsome new package. In his rousing adventure story, Alexandre Dumas skilfully employs all the elements of compelling drama—suspense, intrigue, love, vengeance, and the triumph of good over evil—that contribute to this classic novel's irresistible and timeless appeal. In the post-Napoleonic era, a young sailor from Marseilles is...

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the earliest pioneers of the short story and perfected the tale of psychological horror. The entirety of Poe's body of imaginative work encompasses detective tales, satires, fables, fantasies, science fiction, verse dramas, and some of the most evocative poetry in the English language. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe collects Poe's...

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Group 'A jagged diamond of a book' Observer 'A woman of intellect and style' Celia McGee, New York Times 'Timeless, brilliant and frighteningly insightful' Daily Mail Told through six interlinked stories, this is a dazzling, fractured portrait of 1930s New York, and of the witty, bohemian heroine at the novel's heart....

Set amongst the rolling vineyards and gentle courtyards of a small seaside village in Catalonia, Patrick O'Brian's second novel is a poignant story of tumultuous love, complex faith, and one man's desperate bid to reclaim his humanity. Summoned from his medical practice in China by a bevy of anxious aunts, Alain Roig returns to his Catalan hometown to discover he...

'The chamomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows.' Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1 The opening quote of The Camomile provides an insight into the book's title. The narrative highlights the tensions for a woman in the early twentieth century between the desire to explore her creativity and the duties expected of her as a prospective wife....

Everything is always topsy-turvy here," he said. A small town in the Ural mountains is the backdrop to the heartbreak and joys of a Russian-Jewish family, witnessing romance and illness, funerals and friendships, and the catastrophe of wartime invasion. Amidst the snowy peaks of the Ararat valley, a married couple from Moscow admire the view from their hotel balcony, unprepared...

When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind: the seedy underworld of Berlin, involving kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy's protector as friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all. The Boy...

Samuel Abba is a young angel who has just been expelled from Paradise. As a result of a crafty trick, Samuel has retained his memory of his previous life. The humans around him plead for details of that other realm, but the Paradise of his mischievous stories is far from their expectations: a world of drunken angels, lewd patriarchs, and...

Set in seventeenth-century Iran, The Blood of Flowers is the powerful and haunting story of a young girl's journey from innocence to adulthood. The novel begins in the 1620s in a remote village where the narrator (whose name, in the Iranian storytelling tradition, we are never to know) lives with her mother and rug-maker father. On the sudden death of...

The Bishop and Other Stories (1919) is a collection of short stories by Russian writer Anton Chekhov. The title story of the collection, originally published in 1902, finds the author at his most introspective. Written while Chekhov was dealing with the long-term effects of tuberculosis, a period in which he began to accept the inevitability of his own death, "The...

Part of the Legend Classics series, an American feminist classic "The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth." The Awakening follows Edna Pontellier, a resident of coastal Grand Isle in Louisiana in her late twenties, who...

"I know that things of that kind always are known, and the people I've been thrown with, sooner or later, always turned out to have heard the story. Or if they hadn't," said Miss Marchrose in a voice of calm despair, "someone took the trouble to tell them." Miss Marchrose is about to discover that she cannot escape her past...

When millions suffer under oppression, when resentment boils into bloody insurrection, when triumph leads to savage vengeance—can one individual life matter? In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens sets the intensely personal dramas of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton against the backdrop of the French Revolution and its terror and chaos. The result is a powerful story...

When Charles Swann first lays eyes on Odette de Crécy, he is indifferent to her beauty. Their paths continue to cross in the drawing rooms and theatres of Parisian high society, and the seeds of desire in Swann begin to flourish. What follows is a journey through self-delusion, jealousy, and delirious fantasy, which will take Swann far from the sedate...

In this body swap comedy from the 1930s, the minds of two strangers, aristocrat Lady Elizabeth and middle-class Polly Wilkinson, switch places with baffling and hilarious results. With wry observations on class, behaviour, and relationships, both attempt to navigate the different social settings and awkward situations they suddenly find themselves thrust into. The switches take place randomly with very little...

Join a host of female writers in celebrating the sunshine months of the year. As a sister volume to Stories for Winter, this collection of 15 short stories takes its inspiration from the holiday season. Grab a copy as you head off to the beach or to lie by the pool and spend time with female protagonists as they navigate...

Skill, subtlety and stylistic assurance ... her moral comedy illumines life. Daily Telegraph Harriet Cooper bumps up a rutted lane in a Hillman crammed with everything she owns. She has come to claim her inheritance—a large green bus—left to her by her aunt, and moves in with two cats to live a frugal life, much to the chagrin of her...

The much-loved tales from The Thousand and One Nights first appeared in English translation in the early nineteenth century. The popularity of these ancient and beguiling tales, set against the backdrop of Baghdad, a city of wealth and peace, stoked the widespread enthusiasm for and scholarly interest in eastern arts and culture, which had been a dominant fashion in Europe...

Mysterious socialite Dorian Gray is at the centre of Sherlock Holmes' latest investigation in this astonishing, uncanny mash-up of Victorian mystery and horror. In 1903, Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson have tickets to the newly arrived Circus of Amun-Ra. Holmes is puzzled by his brother Mycroft's cryptic gift but is intrigued enough to attend the next production. The performers,...

LARGE PRINT EDITION. Set in London at the turn of the 18th century, the Dashwood family is on the brink of financial ruin after the untimely death of the patriarch. Forced to pack up their belongings and relinquish their comfortable lifestyle, Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters move in with their distant relatives, the Middletons, at Barton Park. There, they...

Jane Austen's beloved classic Sense and Sensibility is beautifully presented in this collector's edition. Elinor Dashwood is thoughtful, considerate, and calm. Her younger sister Marianne is emotional and wildly romantic. Both are looking for a husband, but neither Elinor's reason nor Marianne's passion can lead them to perfect happiness, as Marianne falls for an unscrupulous rascal and Elinor becomes attached...

This new Satyricon features not only a lively, new, annotated translation of the text, but also fresh, and accessible commentaries that discuss Petronius' masterpiece in terms of such topics as the identity of Petronius, the transmission of his manuscript, literary influences on the Satyricon, and the distinctive literary form of this work. Additionally, it explores hallmarks of Roman life such...

From the author of Nightwood, Djuna Barnes has written a book that is all that she was, and must still be vulgar, beautiful, defiant, witty, poetic, and a little mad. Told as through a kaleidoscope, the chronicle of the Ryder family is a bawdy tale of eccentricity and anarchy; through sparkling detours and pastiche, cult author Djuna Barnes spins an...

The reputation of early-twentieth century British writer Algernon Blackwood currently resides with his two novellas, The Willows (1907) and The Wendigo (1910), and with good reason. They are perfectly crafted horror tales that convey feelings of mystical otherness; they hint at the possibility that there are forces which lie beyond the confines of our everyday understanding of the world and...

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...' Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the brooding house Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter...

Jane Austen's beloved novel of romance in the Regency era has long been a reader favourite. First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular and beloved British novels of all time, maintaining its allure for contemporary readers everywhere and selling millions of copies worldwide. Jane Austen’s novel tells the story of the five unmarried Bennet...

In the imaginations of young and old alike, the word "pirate" resonates with spine-tingling fear and swashbuckling adventure. Over centuries, our cultural landscape has been populated by a host of famous real and fictional figures immortalised in literature and art: Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, with his fearsome reputation for cruelty; Henry 'Bloody' Morgan, whose treasure is still sought...

Our Lady of the Flowers, often considered Genet's masterpiece, was written in the cell of a French prison where he was being held for theft. Here is the darker side of Montmartre, a world of pimps, thieves, prostitutes, queens, and blackmailers, where 'morality' in the common sense of the word has no meaning. The story of Divine, a drag-queen prostitute,...

Sometimes I think that was the happiest day of my life, those hours of heat and silence and colour, along with David high up on the moor. But then I remember that I have said that of many other days, so I cannot be sure. A female narrator looks back on her childhood in a coming-of-age novel set before the...

She got up, without meeting his eyes, and went into the bedroom to dress. That was life all over; you wanted to make a good exit, and you remembered you were still in your housecoat. Single girl Liza leaps into an exciting new sexual relationship with Walter after the couple meet at a New Year's party. Written by Angela Milne,...

Charles Dickens’s second novel is the tale of a young orphan who faces the gruelling conditions of a Victorian workhouse before finding himself sucked into the criminal underworld of London. Teeming with unforgettable characters such as the villainous Fagin, the virtuous Nancy, and the brutal Bill Sikes, Oliver Twist combines dark humour, elements of melodrama and social polemic.

The initial volume in the Nobel Prize-winning author's tumultuous, epic story of medieval Norway—the first new English translation in nearly a century. As a child, Olav Audunssøn is given by his dying father to an old friend, Steinfinn Toressøn, who rashly promises to raise the boy as his foster son and eventually marry him to his own daughter, Ingunn. The...

The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical, and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact revenge on an officer who has shown him...

As Katherine Hilbery is helping her mother write the biography of her grandfather, a famous man of letters buried in Poets’ Corner, she becomes engaged to William Rodney, a budding writer with an exaggerated opinion of his own poetical talent. Meanwhile, the suffragette Mary Datchet is in love with Ralph Denham, a lawyer and journalist from a lowly background, who...

In late-Victorian London, two writers of radically different temperaments pursue contrasting approaches to the literary life. The first, the talented and cerebral novelist Edwin Reardon, appears to be doomed by his idealistic nature to a life of impecuniousness. In contrast, the second, the driven but cynical journalist Jasper Milvain, continually reaps the material rewards of a career devoted to market-driven...

My Husband Simon tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they are only kept together by a mutual physical attraction, in spite of innumerable quarrels. They live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in...

Murphy, Samuel Beckett's first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphy's lovestruck fiancée Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphy's friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and...

A BOOK CLUB PICK FROM THE QUEEN CONSORT'S READING ROOM Now a major film, starring Leslie Manville, Isabelle Huppert, Jason Isaacs and Lucas Bravo 'Mrs Harris is one of the great creations of fiction - so real that you feel you know her, yet truly magical as well. I can never have enough of her' Justine Picardie 'It is almost...

'He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.' Mrs Dalloway is a novel that features two main characters and two different worldviews. On the one hand, there is Clarissa Dalloway, who, being labelled as Mrs, symbolizes her marital and social confinement. On the other,...

LARGE PRINT EDITION. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf. Adapted from two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and "The Prime Minister," Mrs. Dalloway is a moving portrait of a day in the life of one woman, her thoughts and perceptions, and the influence of war on the human psyche. Recognized as one of Woolf's most...

As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren...

The frogman was still there, sitting on the corner of her bed, looking towards her... Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs. Her infant son, unborn child, and dog have all just died; her husband is unfaithful; her only friend is an alcoholic. One day, the radio announces that a green-skinned sea monster has escaped from the Institute...

Gentle chaos sets in when the absent-minded Mr Pim calls in to see George Marden, bearing some innocent news... George is a fine upstanding citizen and a stickler for doing the right thing. He has a devoted wife, Olivia, and is guardian to his somewhat flighty niece, Dinah. But his careful peace is broken when Mr Pim casually announces that...

When the young Ishmael joins Captain Ahab’s whaling ship, he unsuspectingly embarks on a mission driven by Ahab's obsessive desire for revenge against Moby Dick, a white whale that has already claimed countless human victims and destroyed many fleets. With some sinister crew members among them and the hazardous conditions of the sea to contend with, the expedition becomes increasingly...

One of the most enchanting books about cats ever written, Minka and Curdy describes the adventures – and misadventures – of two very different kittens. Victoria, a real tyrant of a cat, spent so many years training her owner to be the ideal hostess that Mrs Bell feels it would be disrespectful to replace that formidable creature. But her resolve...

A book that shifted my life... Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant VIOLA DAVIS on Wild Seed A literary pioneer VANITY FAIR on Octavia E. Butler A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK TWO The baby's name is Mary, and her father is immortal. For thousands of years, Doro has pursued perfection, experimenting with humanity and seeking out rare – and powerful – talents....

Turgenev’s first major publication, Memoirs of a Hunter is a series of tales based largely on the author’s own experiences while hunting on his mother’s estate of Spasskoye, where he became aware of the iniquities of the system of serfdom and the privations and indignities suffered by the Russian peasantry. Told from the perspective of a dispassionate, observing narrator, the...

An autobiographical novel set in the musical culture of 1890s Leipzig, where Richardson was a student from 1889 to 1892. An international cast of music students perform, debate, love, and drink in an intense and self-possessed world in Leipzig. This forms the context to Maurice's consuming obsession for the elusive Louise Dufrayer, an Australian femme fatale. Maurice Guest immerses readers...

Horace Lamb runs an austere household with tyrannical force and cruel economy. His five children shiver through the winter and learn that a fire is not a thing to be taken for granted. Hierarchies are more lightly enforced in the servants' quarters, where Bullivant and Mrs Selden attempt to rein in their young charges. When Horace suddenly turns attentive and...

'Joanna sat with her cheek against her [Libby's] shining hair. She had hardly thought of Steven since he slammed his way out of the house, but now, welling up within her and pouring out over her love for Libby, came an intolerable flood of envy.' Widowed at 21 with a young baby, Joanna Malling finds her solitary existence upended twenty...

Beautiful Emma Rouault yearns for the life of wealth, passion, and romance she has encountered in popular sentimental fiction. When her doctor, the well-meaning but awkward and unremarkable Charles Bovary, begins to pay her attention, she imagines that she may be granted her wish. However, after their marriage, Emma soon becomes frustrated with the boredom of provincial life and finds...

A new annotated translation of the keystone of Balzac's Comedie Humaine—a sweeping narrative of corrupted idealism in a cynical urban milieu. Lost Illusions is an essential text within Balzac's Comedie Humaine, his sprawling, interconnected fictional portrait of French society in the 1820s and 1830s comprising nearly one hundred novels and short stories. This novel, published in three parts between 1837...

This beautiful collectible edition presents three novels from one of the most beloved American authors: Louisa May Alcott. It includes her most famous and cherished classic, Little Women, about the lives of four sisters in Civil War-era America, as well as its sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys.

Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women tells the story of the four March sisters as they come of age in 1860s New England. When Little Women was first published in 1868, it became an instant bestseller. The book’s gentle lessons and charming story of four adventurous sisters coming of age in Civil War-era New England was originally written as a...

Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin. The explosion that detonates the narrative of Paul Auster's remarkable novel also ends the life of its hero, Benjamin Sachs, and brings two FBI agents to the home of one of Sachs's oldest friends, the writer Peter Aaron. What follows is Aaron's story,...

In Letters from a Seducer, Hilst describes the everyday life of Karl, a wealthy, erudite, and amoral man who seeks an answer to his incomprehension of life through sex. Karl writes and sends twenty provocative letters to Cordelia, his chaste sister. The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash,...

Originally published in Italy in 1928, and unavailable in Britain until 1960, when it was the subject of an infamous obscenity trial, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is now regarded as one of the pivotal novels of the twentieth century. Lawrence’s determination to explore every aspect – sexual, social, psychological – of Lady Chatterley’s adulterous liaison with the gamekeeper Oliver Mellors makes...

Despite hailing from a comfortable family background, budding poet Gordon Comstock decides to declare war on money and all the middle-class trappings that wealth can buy. Working in a small bookshop and living in a bedsit in London, he dreams of completing an ambitious poem in rhyme royal and devoting his entire life to literature. But when poverty begins to...

Oh God, one should not go to parties, Daisy sighed, sinking in wan defeat in the melancholy dawn. One should not mingle with others; one should keep oneself to oneself... Lying awake after a hotel party on holiday in the Mediterranean, Daisy Simpson reflects on her lacklustre social performance and muses on the impression her confident and graceful half-sister Daphne...

First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Told in the first person by Céline’s fictional alter ego Bardamu, the novel is loosely based on the author’s own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA and, later, as...

A traveller embarks on a search for what lies beneath reality and finds villages where the dead walk at solstice, silkworm-like women live in cocoons, and a thousand men in gleaming armour play at being soldiers. Thirty-eight stories of invented flowers follow: absurd, lush, and dreamlike, they capture different truths of humanity. Journeys and Flowers by Mercè Rodoreda, in these...

In 1925, John Buchan published his second most famous novel, John Macnab. Three high-flying men—a barrister, a cabinet minister, and a banker—are suffering from boredom. They concoct a plan to cure it. They inform three Scottish estates that they will poach from each two stags and a salmon within a given time. They sign collectively as 'John Macnab' and await...

A novel of high romance and great intensity, Jane Eyre has enjoyed popular success and critical acclaim ever since its first publication in 1847. Jane’s journey from a troubled childhood to independence – and her turbulent love affair with the enigmatic Mr Rochester – electrified Victorian readers with its narrative power. With characters that are as unforgettable as the story...

Her mother's dying request obliges Mary Yellan to make a grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn. With the coachman's warning echoing in her mind and affected by the inn's brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her intention to help her aunt. She finds herself drawn...

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 told by the women in his life, whether through his mother’s correspondence, the conversations of a friend, or the thoughts and remembrances of those who...

A man climbs into Ferdinand Sponer’s cab, gives the name of a hotel, and before he reaches it has been murdered: shot through the throat. And though Sponer has so far committed no crime, he is drawn into the late Jack Mortimer’s life, and might not be able to escape its tangles and intrigues before it is too late... Twice...

In this highly giftable volume, the best-loved legends of the Emerald Isle come to life. Discover the magic of Ireland's most treasured stories with Irish Folk and Fairy Tales. William Butler Yeats' charming storytelling style captures the spirit of Ireland's timeless myths and legends. Young and old will love these stories of tricksters and spectres, kings, queens, and princesses, in...

A Pygmalion-style story told with von Arnim's characteristic wit and charm, this novel introduces us to Salvatia (known as Sally), a much longed-for child to humble shopkeepers. Sally grows up to be an extremely beautiful girl, attracting the attentions of every man who sees her. When her mother dies, her father decides it is just too difficult to defend her...

When Tudy’s first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go to study in France. After she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancée has become involved with Riccard, a dashing...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA 'Daphne du Maurier has no rival' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'du Maurier is a magician, a virtuoso' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING 'A storyteller of cunning and genius' SALLY BEAUMAN 'I tell you your mine will be in ruins and your home destroyed and your children forgotten . . . but this hill will be standing still to confound...

First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcilable relationships. At the centre of the story are a young struggling author, an orphaned teenager and a depraved aristocrat, who not only foreshadows the great figures of evil in Dostoevsky’s later fiction, but is a powerful and original...

'A social comedy, often delightful . . . with energy, curiosity and wit' DAVID NICHOLLS 'Forster's masterpiece' THE TIMES 'The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment.' Howards End, the country home of the Wilcoxes, overlooks...

'Being asked to write about Kafka is like being asked to describe the Great Wall of China by someone who's standing just next to it. The only honest thing to do is point.' Joshua Cohen, from his preface to He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka. This is a Kafka emergency kit, a congregation of the brief, the minor works that...

Here's Another was published in 1932 and consists of comic articles selected from Lennie Lower's regular newspaper contributions. Leonard Waldemere (Lennie) Lower (1903?-1947) was a humourist and newspaper columnist from Dubbo, at one time being considered 'Australia's funniest writer'.

The authoritative edition of Henry VI, Part 3 from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers. Henry VI, Part 3 is dominated by a struggle between two military forces, neither of which can achieve victory for long. Until the end, the Yorkists and Lancastrians strive for the English crown. The conflict...