Classics

'There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life.'In Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet a popular cultural phenomenon is born. We meet two of the most famous characters in modern literary history: the consulting...

Arthur Conan Doyle famously killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893, in the short story 'The Final Problem', but was tempted to bring him back to life ten years later, in the thirteen tales that comprise The Return of Sherlock Holmes. While the outcry that...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close - the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. Their struggle, seemingly to the death, was to leave many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes,...

'The old woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the presence of Uncle Silas.' In Victorian Derbyshire, 17 year old orphan and heiress Maud Ruthyn is sent to live at the claustrophobic Bartram-Haugh house with her mysterious Uncle Silas...

'Can we doubt ... that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind?'In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply held beliefs of the...

Rumi's Masnavi is widely recognized as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called "the Koran in Persian." The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed his work for the benefit of his disciples in the Sufi order named after him, better...

An orphaned girl, a grim moorland manor with hundreds of empty rooms, strange cries in the night, and a walled garden, with its door locked and the key buried. These are the ingredients of one of the most famous and well-loved of children's classics, an...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last House Guest—a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection—comes a riveting, “suspenseful” (BookPage, starred review) novel about a mysterious murder in an idyllic and close-knit neighborhood.Welcome to...

First published in 1894, Arthur Machen’s harrowing tale woven around a terrible mistake made by a doctor encompasses sinister rites, death and devastation and remains one of the most revered and influential classic horror stories. I will not read it;...

Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth a slimy, wavering tentacle...Perhaps no figure better embodies the transition from the Gothic tradition to modern horror than Arthur Machen. In the final decade of the nineteenth...

"Of creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few can hope to equal Arthur Machen." -- H. P. LovecraftArthur Machen (1863-1947), Welsh novelist and essayist, is considered one of the most important and influential writers of his time...

In these impressions of the Italian countryside, Lawrence transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty.Twilight in Italy is a vibrant account of Lawrence's stay among the people of Lake Garda, whose decaying lemon gardens bear witness to...

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading. In 1915, Lawrence's frank representation of sexuality in The Rainbow caused a furore and the novel was seized by the police and banned almost as soon as it was published. Today it is...

With its frank portrayal of human passion and sexual desire, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow was banned as 'obscene' in Britain shortly after first publication.Set in the rural Midlands, The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen...

'A fruity, foxy masterpiece, defender of our wilting faith in mankind' -- Sunday TimesHorace Rumpole is in a strange state that could only be described as a kind of air-conditioned purgatory: he has retired to Florida with his wife, Hilda (She Who Must...

'A superb novel ... you will be hooked from the first chapter and enjoy every line' -- Sunday ExpressDeep in the South American jungle the MAMista Marxist revolutionaries are fighting a hopeless, protracted war against a dictator - while the CIA see an...

(Available after 3-20 days)My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — It gives a lovely light!   “First Fig” from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) The 1956 Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay...

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the second part in Douglas Adams' smash hit sci-fi comedy and cult classic series. This stunning edition is illustrated by Costa Award winning Chris Riddell.'One of the greatest achievements in comedy. A work...

A masquerade ball in a secluded abbey; a vendetta settled in the wine cellars of an Italian palazzo; a gloomy castle in a desolated landscape; the beating of a heart beneath the floorboards: the plots and settings of Poe's dark, mysterious tales continue...

"Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror ... the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul."Stories about murder, mystery and madness, portraying the author's feverish imagination at its creative...