Classics

'The Queen and the bat had been talking a good deal that afternoon...'The Victorian fascination with fairyland vivified the literature of the period, and led to some of the most imaginative fairy tales ever written. They offer the shortest path to the...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr. Jacqueline Belanger, University of Cardiff. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce's Dubliners and the symbolism of Ulysses, and is essential to the...

A sweeping historical adventure set during one of the most turbulent periods of British history—featuring a heroine you’ll never forget ...   Dorset, 1642. When bloody civil war breaks out between the king and Parliament, families and communities across...

One of the most significant works of Western philosophy, Hume's Treatise was published in 1739-40, before he was thirty years old. A pinnacle of English empiricism, it is a comprehensive attempt to apply scientific methods of observation to a study of...

''I saw a monster rising from the waves."**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK****Winner of the Man Booker Prize 1978**Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house...

Beginning with a dilemma about whether he spends more money on reading or smoking, George Orwell's entertaining and uncompromising essays go on to explore everything from the perils of second-hand bookshops to the dubious profession of being a...

'A beautiful book' -- Ursula K. Le GuinThis mordantly funny and provocative tale from Soviet Russia's leading science fiction writers is the story of astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov. As he reaches a major breakthrough, he finds himself plagued by...

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history—these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as the Mabinogion. They...

'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...

(Available after 3-20 days)Previously adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola starring Kirsten Dunst, this is the story of the five Lisbon sisters - beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the entire neighbourhood. The boys...

"Salty, frank, and realistic." — San Francisco Chronicle   In her most famous novel, The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir takes an unflinching look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of World War II. In fictionally relating the stories of those...

"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...

Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed Völsung family, the Hel-ride of...

"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book ReviewSam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by...

(Available after 3-20 days)From the acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji, a groundbreaking rendering of Japan’s great martial epicThe fourteenth-century Tale of the Heike is Japan’s Iliad—a moving depiction of the late twelfth-century wars between...

(Available after 3-20 days)The most significant translation in one hundred years of one of the greatest works of world literature From Ali Baba and the forty thieves to the voyages of Sinbad, the stories of The Arabian Nights are timeless and...

Beautiful, flaxen-haired Buttercup has fallen for Westley, the farm boy, and when he departs to make his fortune, she vows never to love another. So when she hears that his ship has been captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts - who never leaves survivors -...

Agnes Grey is a trenchant expose of the frequently isolated, intellectually stagnant and emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a deeply personal novel written from the author's own...

In this sequel to Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the insurpassably beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust falls in love with and marries Helen, embodying for Goethe...

**Named by Men's Health: "50 Books Every Man Should Read Before Turning 50"**Based upon the historical bandit Song Jiang and his companions, The Water Margin is an epic tale of rebellion against tyranny that will remind Western readers of the English...