Classics

I know nothing. I am a tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no: both more and less than a real woman. Now I am a being as mythic and monstrous as Mother...

Joseph - a 22-year-old self-styled nihilist in search of meaning, found releasing a badger from a zoo, seducing his best friend's mother, dancing at a Dionysic revel and spending his days in a mortuary - is the anti-hero at the heart of this novel.

This edition of Jane Austen's classic novel features a suede-like custom cover with beautiful metallic foiling and a ribbon marker.  A brilliant novel describing two parallel love stories, Sense and Sensibility remains a time-honored classic in...

Virginia Woolf’s fantastical novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who lives for three centuries and transitions into a woman, with a new introduction by Carmen Maria Machado.The long-lived protagonist of Orlando begins as a passionate teenage...

Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve...

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick. A special 75th anniversary edition of the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolanneeded to be made of...

'it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well developed human beings'Mill's four essays, 'On Liberty', 'Utilitarianism', 'Considerations on Representative Government', and 'The Subjection of Women' examine the most...

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead...

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...

"The greatest historian that ever lived." Such was Macaulay's assessment of Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) and his history of the Peloponnesian War, the momentous struggle between Athens and Sparta that lasted for twenty-seven years from 431 to 404 BC,...

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Rome's greatest orator, had a career of intense activity in politics, the law courts and the administration, mostly in Rome. His fortunes, however, followed those of Rome, and he found himself driven into exile in 58...

Elegies of Chu (in Chinese, Chuci), one of the two surviving collections of ancient Chinese poetry, is a key source for the whole tradition of Chinese poetry. Because the elegies contain passionate expressions of political protest as well as shamanistic...

Selected by Gwyn Jones—the eminent Celtic scholar—for their excellence and variety, these nine Icelandic sagas include "Hen-Thorir," "The Vapnfjord Men," "Thorstein Staff-Struck," "Hrafnkel the Priest of Frey," "Thidrandi whom the Goddesses...

For much of his life, Pascal (1623-62) worked on a magnum opus which was never published in its intended form. Instead, he left a mass of fragments which became known as the Pensées, and they occupy a crucial place in Western philosophy and...

After the apocalypse, society is divided into three endlessly warring factions. The Professors and Soldiers maintain what is left of civilization while the superstitious Barbarians constantly attack them. The Barbarians are in turn attacked by the...

In these letters to his friends and relations, Pliny the Younger, lawyer, author, and natural philosopher, provides a fascinating insight into Roman life in the period 97 to 112 AD. Part autobiography, part social history, they document the career and...

Drawing on recent advances in Egyptology, R. B. Parkinson's new translations bring to life for the modern reader the golden age of Egyptian fictional literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1940-1640 BC). The book features The Tale of Sinuhe, acclaimed as the...

Agatha Christie’s first Tommy & Tuppence book is a thrill-packed novel of international intrigue, murder and suspense. Tommy and Tuppence, two young people short of money and restless for excitement, embark on a daring business scheme –...

It may only be Hercule Poirot’s second outing but the great detective is already fully formed in this marvellously labyrinthine whodunnit set in a French golfing resort. Personal avarice, illicit love affairs and a neighbour who must be too good to...

For six decades, John le Carré wrote novels that came to define our age. Although they are all bookshelf worthy, perhaps the most notable is Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy. If it’s your first journey into the world of le Carré’s...