Classic Fiction

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...

"It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of somebody else's thorns in addition to his own." Published originally in weekly instalments, Hard Times focuses on Mr Gradgrind's flawed model...

The seventy-fifth anniversary edition, with a new introduction by Anthony Quinn. London, 1939, and in the grimy publands of Earls Court, George Harvey Bone is pursuing a helpless infatuation. Netta is cool, contemptuous and hopelessly desirable to George. George is adrift in a drunken hell, except in his 'dead' moments, when something goes click in his head and he realises,...

Pitch-perfect. - Ali Smith So original. - Hilary Mantel Stunning. - Isabel Waidner Her beastly, risky best. - Eley Williams When my species has destroyed itself, we may need yours to start it all again. In London Zoo, Professor Darrylhyde is singing to the apes again. Outside their cage, he watches the two animals, longing to observe the mating ritual...

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old. As a survivor of a shipwreck, Lemuel Gulliver encounters some entirely absurd things. At first, he is in the land of the Lilliputians, the tiny men; but later, he ventures to the land of the giants. The tale continues to oscillate between extremes as he meets immensely...

The Essential Grimm's Fairy Tales contains 59 of the best-loved bedtime stories for children worldwide, enjoyed for the better part of two centuries. Originally collected by the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, these German linguists and cultural researchers gathered legendary folklore and aimed to share the stories exactly as they heard them. This volume features all of your favourite tales,...

One of Charles Dickens' most acclaimed works, Great Expectations displays the author at the peak of his skills, working a collection of vivid characters through a sprawling plot studded with richly drawn scenes. First appearing in 1861, Great Expectations offers a bounty of the pleasures only this author can provide. This is the sweeping story of Pip, an orphan growing...

Great Expectations chronicles the fortunes of its young protagonist Pip as he is unexpectedly endowed by a mysterious benefactor with the life of a gentleman, enabling him to escape to London from the prospect of a humble blacksmith’s career in rural Kent. In the bustling, unforgiving capital, he must learn for himself the pitfalls of love and wealth, and how...

We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of Good Behaviour. Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic St Charles family is sinking into a state of decaying grace. Aroon, the unlovely daughter of the house, silently longs for affection - which she receives neither from her icy mother nor her hunting-obsessed father....

LARGE PRINT EDITION. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady (1925) is a novel by Anita Loos. Adapted from a series of stories written for Harper's Bazaar, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was an astounding success for Loos, who had been mired for over a decade as a screenwriter in Hollywood and New York. An immediate bestseller, the novel...

The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat' SARAH WATERS In the final novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly imagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader whose drive and ambition created a legend. Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind...

LARGE PRINT EDITION. Brilliant young scientist Victor Frankenstein's drive to create life leads him to animate a creature assembled from the bodies of the dead. Horrified at the result, Frankenstein flees. Alone, the creature learns of its ghastly nature and dreams of how it might find some kind of happiness. Seeking out Frankenstein, the creature offers a terrible ultimatum: create...

Far below, through the moonlit wood, the lake was visible again and the island in it. Dim, like a phantom ship, it lay in the silver waters and from the nearer end of it shone a narrow rectangle of light... so dull and red and smoky looking that it seemed sinister in the bodiless and blanched moonshine. A novel rich...

The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat - SARAH WATERS The Alexandriad is one of the twentieth century's most unexpectedly original works of art - GORE VIDAL In the first novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly imagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader...

'There came a moment, she imagined, in the lives of most unmarried daughters, and perhaps in other people's too, when they must either bolt or go permanently under.' Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home and acting as his secretary. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a...

Far From the Madding Crowd follows Bathsheba Everdene, a headstrong young woman who attracts the attentions of a succession of ill-matched suitors: a quiet sheep farmer, a handsome soldier, and an older, wealthy landowner. As the men vie for her affections, Bathsheba struggles to retain her independence of spirit in the face of their declarations. This compelling narrative introduces readers...

New illustrations by Tim Foley accompany this timeless classic by Ernest Hemingway. First published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms has endured as one of Hemingway's most popular works. The novel was his first bestseller, which solidified him as a serious writer and a fixture in the American literary canon. Set against the brutal backdrop of the First World War,...

Cover design by Orla Kiely Mildred Lathbury is one of those excellent women who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather. As such, though, she often gets herself embroiled in other people’s...

In this collection, readers will rediscover Gertrude Stein as the bearer of a joyfully radical literary vision. A bold experimenter, her writing sparks with vitality, relishing in rhythm, repetition, sound and colour in its central vision: to prise apart language and association and find thrilling new ways to express the true essence of her subject with charming joie de vivre....

Joining the successful Del Rey library of Robert E. Howard's classic works, this is a lavishly illustrated collection of Robert E. Howard's desert adventures, featuring the wily El Borak. Robert E. Howard is famous for creating such immortal heroes as Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn. Less well-known but equally extraordinary are his non-fantasy adventure stories set...

Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the tale of psychological horror and the author of what is considered the first modern detective story. This anthology gathers more than 20 of Poe's groundbreaking tales of the macabre, among them The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Fall of the House of Usher. It also includes his...

‘Like an artist working an empty sky into a busy cityscape, or an empty chair into a crowded family portrait, Joyce creates spaces where the reader is left to themselves’ Patrick McGuinness, from his Preface to Dubliners. Set in the late 19th and early 20th century, Dubliners is made up of fifteen stories, which all sit within the realm of...

Dubliners, James Joyce’s first published book, was written when he was still in his twenties. It is far removed from the bold experimentalism of his later work, yet it is essential for understanding his development as a writer. This collection endures as a masterly example of the short-story form. Although the stories range considerably in tone, mood, and milieu, the...

A brilliant anthology of the funniest extracts from Dickens' novels featuring his famous comic characters, including the Artful Dodger, Mr Pickwick, Mr Micawber, Dick Swiveller, Mr Wopsle and the Aged P. Organised by novel, the extracts have been chosen as standalone vignettes or set pieces which can be enjoyed without needing further explanation. They are illustrated with the much-loved line...

In Bulgakov’s Diaboliad, the modest and unassuming office clerk Korotkov is summarily sacked for a trifling error from his job at the Main Central Depot of Match Materials and tries to seek out his newly assigned superior, responsible for his dismissal. His quest through the labyrinth of Soviet bureaucracy takes on the increasingly surreal dimensions of a nightmare. This early...

If I really don't like somebody, I kill him . . . You remember Malcolm McRae, don't you? Melinda Van Allen is beautiful, headstrong and sexy. Unfortunately for Vic Van Allen, she is his wife. Their love has soured, and Melinda takes pleasure in flaunting her many affairs to her husband. When one of her lovers is murdered, Vic hints...

Sabine Ponsonby presides over her large household with despotic force, rivalled only by her imperious daughter, Hetta. While her needling cruelties cause one governess after another to flee, the family's younger generation begins to stir in revolt. Written in Ivy Compton-Burnett's iconic style, with dialogue seething with veiled insults and manipulations, Daughters and Sons is an acidic comedy of manners...

May I ask your daughter's age? Nan is thirty-three. A dangerous age. Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay takes a lively and perceptive look at three generations of women within the same family and the 'dangers' faced at each of those stages in life. The book opens with Neville celebrating her 43rd birthday and contemplating middle age now that her children...

No novel about any Black woman could ever be the same after this' TONI MORRISON I dreamed with my eyes open. All the Corregidora women with narrow waists and high cheekbones and wide hips. All the Corregidora women dancing. Blues singer Ursa is consumed by her hatred of Corregidora, the nineteenth-century slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother....

George Bowling, a forty-five-year-old insurance salesman with a wife and two children, is overweight, depressed, and haunted by ever-present portents of imminent global conflict. Dreaming of escaping the staid suburban rut in which he has become embedded, he reminisces about his home town in Oxfordshire, Lower Binfield. As he seeks refuge in the rural idyll of his treasured childhood memories,...

Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great 20th-century innovators in theatre - the literary-theatrical equivalent of a Picasso or Stravinsky - and Germany's greatest poet of the last century, but the playwright was also a dazzling writer of stories. Storytelling permeated his art as a dramatist; fundamentally, in his plays, he was a storyteller. Collected Short Stories...

A book that shifted my life... Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant VIOLA DAVIS on Wild Seed Butler's evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human NEW YORK TIMES A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK THREE Blake Maslin is a doctor. In an alternate America marked by volatile class warfare, he and...

In the months following his wife's death, Mr. Preemby, a retired laundryman, becomes convinced that he is the incarnation of Sargon, the ancient king of Sumeria, returned to save a world upturned by the First World War. Trying to make sense of Mr. Preemby is his stepdaughter, Christina Alberta. A masterclass in comic invention, Christina Alberta's Father depicts characters who...

Charles Dickens (Barnes & Noble Collectible Classics: Omnibus Edition) brings together five of Charles Dickens' best-known novels: Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities. Many readers know Victorian England through the writings of Charles Dickens. Not only did Dickens put a face to the era through his memorable characters, but he also...

Long overlooked in Proust's posthumously published writings, Chardin and Rembrandt, written when he was only twenty-four years old, not only reemphasizes the importance of visual art to his development, but contains the seeds of his later work. Proposed in 1895 by Proust to the newspaper Revue hebdomadaire (it was rejected), this essay is much more than a straightforward piece of...

'The kind of book that keeps you reading past midnight, holding on for dear life. There's a sense of menace on every page. An incredible debut by a brilliant new talent.' Rohan Wilson, author of To Name Those Lost Van Diemen's Land, 1826. When Bridget Crack arrives in the colony, she is just grateful to be on dry land. But...

Beyond Time explores the fascinating concept of time travel, a staple of science fiction that presents both intriguing possibilities and complex challenges, including paradoxes. This collection features stories spanning from the 1880s to the 1960s, transporting us to the remote future and back to the distant past. We find ourselves trapped in eternal loops, encounter visitors and objects from the...

It is a variable early summer’s day, and there is an unusual bustle in the grounds of Pointz Hall, a country house in a remote village in the very heart of England. The local community is all astir, intent on putting the finishing touches to preparations for the annual pageant, which is to be performed there that evening. Among the...

Bertram Cope's Year (1919) is a novel by Henry Blake Fuller. Having established himself as a leading figure in Chicago's burgeoning literary scene, Fuller—a pioneer of American realist fiction—produced this late masterpiece, often considered one of the nation's earliest homosexual novels. Both profound and funny, Bertram Cope's Year is a classic campus story that critiques the social lives of academics...

In a giddy rush, a young woman and her older lover escape the rising fascism of 1930s Berlin for a summer vacation on the Côte d'Azur. As they drive along stunning bays and linger over sumptuous meals, they are enchanted by each other. But their harmony soon falters, and the woman decides she must leave in search of a cottage...

Those men who are history now; did they feel like this? A 1950s Hampstead pub; a freezing night. Lois can't tear her eyes away from the haunted, restless African man in the corner. Over brandy and stew, she discovers he is in awe of her friend, Panafrica's greatest political writer and fighter. Their meeting inducts this stranger, Udomo, into London's...

Arrowsmith follows the journey of Martin Arrowsmith, a young medical student at the University of Winnemac. Driven by a sincere passion and a desire to make a positive contribution to the world, Martin faces numerous challenges. Personal vicissitudes, love interests, and societal pressures threaten to divert him from the path of pure science. During a humanitarian crisis, Martin must make...

LARGE PRINT EDITION. Young Lucy Honeychurch leaves Edwardian England for a tour of Italy, where she becomes immersed in an exotic new environment full of unexpected possibilities. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster is an influential classic that follows Lucy as she encounters characters and events far outside her previous experience and must see through the clash of...

A STUNNING NEW EDITION OF FORSTER'S CLASSIC NOVEL With a new introduction by Sarah Winman, bestselling author of Still Life 'One of the most beautiful, poignant and poetic love stories, as relevant today as it was then' SARAH WINMAN 'My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction' ZADIE SMITH 'Brimming with yearning and desire . . . a novel I...

The Greek myths, refined by the great poets and playwrights of Ancient Greece, distil the essence of human life: its brief span, its pride, courage and insecurity, its anxious relationship with the natural world - earth, sea and sky, represented by powerful gods and monsters. Taking inspiration from the incomparably beautiful and intense poetry of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides,...

'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins with one of the most arresting opening sentences in literature,' Patrick McGuinness, from his Preface. A Portrait first appeared in instalments in the modernist magazine The Egoist in 1914, before it came out as a book in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland. An...

A Pin to See the Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse tells the story of Julia Almond, a woman who believes she is special and dreams of a more exciting and glamorous life, far removed from the drab suburbia of her upbringing. Her work at a fashionable boutique in the West End grants her the personal freedom she craves, but her...

A STUNNING NEW EDITION CELEBRATING 100 YEARS SINCE FIRST PUBLICATION With a new introduction by Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction "There's no writer better at portraying the genuine feelings that are born from the interaction between one human being and another" KAMILA SHAMSIE "Forster's last and greatest novel" DAMON GALGUT "His great...

Leo Tolstoy’s most personal novel, Anna Karenina, scrutinises fundamental ethical and theological questions through the tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, “moral” life, standing for honesty and sincerity. Passion drives her to adultery, and this flies in the face of the corrupt Russian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the aristocrat Konstantin Levin is struggling to reconcile reason...

This is the full Shakespeare play adapted into simplified plain English (aimed at a 10-year-old reading age) and brought to life as a vivid and engaging full-color graphic novel. With its mix of real people who stumble into a fairy kingdom (with its own problems!), it is little wonder that this play is one of the best loved and most...

All Names Have Been Changed is set in Dublin in the mid-1980s—a city in the grip of recession and a heroin epidemic. Narrated by Declan, the only boy of a tight-knit writing group at Trinity College, it tells of their fascination with the formidably talented but troubled writer Glynn, and the darkly exhilarating journey this leads them on. Brilliantly exploring...

Winner of a Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award 2015 A stunning anniversary edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Salvador Dalí Commemorating the 150th anniversary of one of the most beloved classics of children's literature, this illustrated edition presents Alice like you've never seen her before. In 1865, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician and Anglican deacon, published a...

Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers sees Agatha falling in love once again. This time, the object of her affection is the local gardener, George Marston. However, she isn’t the only one vying for his attention. With her shameless determination, Agatha is willing to do anything to win him over—even footing the bill for a charity ball in town just to...

The cult novel of fin de siècle decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde. 'It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't give a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before.' The title page of the first complete English translation of Against Nature (published in French as A Rebours) included the caption 'the book...

Revel in Huck Finn's adventure on the Mississippi River with this handsome gift edition of the American masterpiece by Mark Twain. A favourite among young readers and adults alike, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, is considered to be the author's masterpiece, as well as one of the best American novels ever written. In order to...

The bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 'The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense' Mark Billingham 'No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying' Vogue 'Dear Sir, I suppose you are pretty pleased with yourself? Superior to everyone, you think....

These remarkable short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked, and new freedoms are embraced. Selected and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes,...

Twenty-eight-year-old Dorothy Hare leads a life of drudgery and self-abnegation in the house of her father, the rector of Knype Hill. She helps him stave off his creditors and makes costumes for fund-raising events. After being invited to dinner by Mr Warburton, a local atheist and libertine, Dorothy is glimpsed in his arms by the village gossip, Mrs Semprill. As...

Cozy up with your favourite Christmas stories and discover new wintry tales with this keepsake holiday anthology. Just in time for the holidays, A Classic Christmas Treasury gathers together many of the season's classics and introduces new, diverse stories from around the globe in one decorative holiday volume. This cheerful, collectible treasury of stories, poems, and carols makes a wonderful...

An exquisitely illustrated, luxury collector's edition of Dickens's Christmas tale. Marley's ghost, Bob Cratchit's slide down icy Cornhill, Mr and Mrs Fezziwig's dance, and of course Ebenezer Scrooge himself, are all exquisitely illustrated in this luxury collector's edition of Charles Dickens's perennial seasonal favourite. Arthur Rackham's colour wash drawings and silhouettes, first published during the First World War, bring a...

Ravaged by years of war and civil conflict, Britain has changed its name to Airstrip One and become part of Oceania – one of the three totalitarian blocks dominating the world – ruled by a mysterious leader called Big Brother who keeps the population in thrall through strict surveillance and brutal police repression. In a society where the individual is...

Ubik by Philip K Dick delves into a perplexing narrative where Glen Runciter might be dead—or perhaps not. An explosion, orchestrated by his business rivals, claims a life. Yet, as Glen's funeral is planned, his grieving employees start receiving baffling messages from him. The situation becomes even more unsettling as the world surrounding them begins to warp and regress, implying...

COMING TO BBC ONE IN AUTUMN 2019! No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's... So begins H. G. Wells' classic novel in which Martian lifeforms take over planet Earth. As the Martians emerge, they construct giant killing machines - armed...

A Victorian scientist develops a time machine and travels to the year 802,171 AD. There he finds the meek, child-like Eloi who live in fear of the underground-dwelling Morlocks. When his time machine goes missing, the Traveller faces a fight to enter the Morlocks' domain and return to his own time. The Time Machine remains one of the cornerstones of...

It is the twenty-first century. On Mars, a dedicated group of pioneers—among them some of Earth's finest brains—struggle to change the face of the planet. The Sands of Mars follows science fiction writer Martin Gibson as he finally gets a chance to visit the research colony on the Red Planet. It is a dream come true—until he discovers the difficulties...

The outward urge was a factor in the Troon inheritance. Successive generations of Troons, looking up at the stars, heard the siren voices that called them out into Space. And, as the frontiers of Space receded, there was usually one Troon, if not more, out there, helping to push them back. In an age in which what goes up need...

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction When Edward Prendick is shipwrecked on a tropical island, he is surprised to find he has company in the form of Dr Moreau. Driven out of Britain in disgrace, Dr Moreau has decided to explore his science in peace and isolation. It isn't long before...

When Maxim Kammerer, a young space explorer from twenty-second-century Earth, crash-lands on an uncharted world, he thinks of himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe. Eager to establish first contact with the planet's humanlike inhabitants, he finds himself increasingly entangled in their primitive way of life. After his experiences in their nightmarish military, criminal justice, and mental health systems, Maxim begins...

First in a series of hardback boxed sets celebrating the literary achievement of Christopher Tolkien, featuring double-sided dustjackets. Set 1 contains special editions of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales reproducing the first edition text, together with the two volumes of The Book of Lost Tales. The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s...

Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero in an interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy. But his greatest test will be when he returns home. Relativity means that for every few months' tour of duty centuries have passed on Earth, isolating the combatants ever more from the world for whose future they are fighting. The Earth he...

The New York Times-bestselling author begins a gripping new saga about a refugee from the future come to save the Earth and the one naval space officer who believes her. When the destruction of Earth causes a time rift, one ship is thrust back in time to decades prior. The semi-disgraced naval officer, Kayl Owen, is sent from the Earth...

The definitive editions of Philip K. Dick's short stories, containing some of the most defining works in the Science Fiction genre. This stunning new edition of Philip K. Dick's work includes the influential Adjustment Team and The Father Thing, as well as a litany of mind-expanding other works. Work your way through some of the most influential stories from the...

The definitive editions of Philip K. Dick's short stories, containing some of the most defining works in the Science Fiction genre, including The Variable Man. This stunning new edition of Philip K. Dick's work includes the influential "Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Second Variety", as well as a litany of mind-expanding other works. Work your way through some of the...

Long before humans ventured into outer space, writers spun stories of what might lie in the unknown worlds beyond our planet and speculated about the future. This striking collection features retellings of seven classic science fiction stories. From tales of space exploration to time travellers and alien invaders, this anthology is the perfect introduction to the world of science fiction....

Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) is a novel by Lewis Carroll. Originally conceived as a pair of short stories published in Aunt Judy's Magazine in 1867, Sylvie and Bruno eventually became a full-length, two-volume novel. Although less popular than his Alice books, the novel remains a powerful example of Carroll's imaginative range and ability to capture the surreal nature of...

John Carter, veteran of the American Civil War, finds himself transported from Arizona to Mars when hiding from attackers in a secret cave. The inhabitants greet him, referring to the planet as Barsoom, and Carter finds that he has superhuman strength and agility due to the different gravity of this new world. After joining the nomadic tribe of green, six-limbed...

Scientific and Horrific Stories is a collection of short fiction by H. G. Wells. Despite his humble beginnings as the son of English servants, H. G. Wells would become one of the most revered writers of his day. His stories of adventure, utopia, and terror inspired such vastly different figures as Vladimir Nabokov, Winston Churchill, Jorge Luis Borges, and Sinclair...

The Road can go Anywhere. The Road can go Anywhen. Almost. Red Dorakeen has been on the Road for a very long time. For all of time, in fact. It stretches infinitely into the future and past, with exits that take him wherever, or whenever, he wants to go. But he can't find the place he wants to be. He's...