CLASSICS

"Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, spends his childhood on the bustling streets of Lahore, begging and running errands in order to survive. One day he meets...

After doubts are raised concerning the trustworthiness of Magua, Cora and Alice Munro's Native American guide, the warrior slips away into the wilderness, and the vulnerable sisters turn to the...

"Written after Woolf had finished her emotionally draining work on The Waves, Flush purports to be an autobiography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's eponymous cocker spaniel, charting the dog's early days...

After the death of his father, the seventeen-year-old orphan David Balfour discovers the existence of an uncle, and sets off in search of him. His uncle Ebenzer is far from...

Rising from humble beginnings as a foundling, Castruccio Castracani came to prominence as one of the most powerful and shrewd warlords in Italy. Indeed, Machiavelli argues, so great was his...

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, following the example of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Alexander Afanasyev embarked on the ambitious task of sifting through the huge repository of...

When the adventurer Allan Quatermain is asked by Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good to help them find Sir Henry's missing brother, who was last seen trekking into the remote...

Inspired by real events and centring on the figure of Pelageya Vlasova - the mother of the title - and her son Pavel, Gorky's masterpiece describes the brutal life of...

A rediscovered gem from Italian children literature, written by the author of Pinocchio, translated and expanded by Alessandro Gallenzi and illustrated by Axel Scheffler (the illustrator of the Gruffalo). Collodi...

Under the feckless husbandry of Mr Jones, the Manor Farm has fallen into disrepair. Pushed into hardship, the animals decide to stage a revolt, and, led by two young pigs,...

When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that...

The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara soon realizes that young men can't resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her...

It is 1880: after visiting his mistress in the London suburbs, Colonel Pargiter returns home to his children and his dying wife. In a series of snapshots we meet all...

A first-person diary of a prisoner's final day before being executed for an unspecified crime, Victor Hugo's poignant tale vividly conveys the mental anguish of a man confronted with the...

On his return to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War as an assistant surgeon, Doctor Watson is looking for a place to live. He is introduced to a...

Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all its accompanying challenges and expectations. Meg is preparing for...

Dante's dramatic journey down the circles of Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory and through the spheres of Heaven in search of redemption - and his encounter with devils, monsters...

Simplicius Simplicissimus - the towering achievement of H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen, one of the earliest novelists in the German language - charts the adventures of its hero, Simplicius, through the horrors...

In the summer of 1844, taking a break from novel-writing, the thirty-two-year-old Charles Dickens embarked on a journey to Italy with his wife, his five children and his young sister-in-law....

Weird and Horrific Stories (2021) collects some of H. P. Lovecraft's finest early work. Although his reputation as one of the world's greatest writers of horror and weird fiction remains...

More than 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first...

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path...

First published in 1921, this volume collects some of the most comical stories Kipling published throughout his writing career. These tales derive their humour from absurd situations - a drunken...

In contrast with the epic scope of the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola's short stories are concerned with the everyday aspects of human existence and the interests of ordinary people.From the cruel...

Most famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story writer, as exemplified by the tales included in...

The heir to his grandfather's considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution...

True Story, Lucian's best-known and most entertaining work, is a parody of the tall stories of fantastic journeys narrated by famous poets and historians. With his trademark wit and humour,...

A carriage transporting ten passengers fleeing from Rouen is stopped at a village inn by Prussian soldiers, who decide to detain them until one of their party, the prostitute Boule...

Jane Tressider has never been afraid of speaking her mind, even if she admits that she may have occasionally given offence by doing so. But as a busy mother of...

In 1890, the thirty-year-old Chekhov, already knowing that he was ill with tuberculosis, undertook an arduous eleven-week journey from Moscow across Siberia to the penal colony on the island of...

"In 'The Wave', a young man falls dangerously in love with the tenant downstairs, who is engaged to be married; in 'The Signorina', a flirtatious young woman is caught between...

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host,...

On the eve of the Crimean War, the young, headstrong Yelena, the daughter of aristocratic Russian parents, falls in love with a revolutionary from Bulgaria named Insarov. Facing the wrath...

The orphan girl Pollyanna moves in with her strict aunt in New England. Despite a difficult start, Pollyanna's exuberance and positivity affect everyone who meets her, and she spreads joy...

After the Lady Vain is shipwrecked, Edward Prendick is plucked from the waves by a passing ship and deposited on a remote island. Here he is the guest of Dr...

Compiled and published after Fitzgerald's death by his friend, the prominent critic and editor Edmund Wilson, The Crack-Up is a collection of writings that chronicle the author's state of mind...

Driven to his deathbed by an incurable disease, the thirty-year-old impoverished gentleman Chulkaturin decides to write a diary looking back on his short life. After describing his youthful disillusionment and...

The notorious adventurer and seducer Giacomo Casanova tells of his travels - on the run from the authorities of his native Venice - around northern Europe, poking fun at the...

London's criminal underworld has risen once again, and a dangerous individual with an air gun is prowling the streets. The capital is in greater need of its protector Sherlock Holmes...

'Do you see your son, standing over there, in the antechamber? Well, I am going to shoot him.'The story of the great and mad Cambyses, King of Persia, told by...

Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend - and reach, at the end of a perilous journey, an unknown land cut off from...

'The most popular novel of the nineteenth century, and still one of the best plots in English literature' Sarah WatersThe original 'sensation novel', The Woman in White opens with Walter...

'Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else'Dickens's novel honouring the value of the human heart...

In the last two days of his own life, Peter Carson completed these new translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession before he succumbed to cancer in January...

Alongside his monumental Zibaldone (Notebooks) and the poems collected in Canti, which make him one of Italy's greatest and best-loved poets, Giacomo Leopardi penned a number of fictional pieces, mostly...

These five stories were collected and published as Tales of Unrest in 1898, shortly before Heart of Darkness, the first of Conrad's major novels. Ranging from the faraway and unfamiliar,...

Described by Herman Melville as being "as deep as Dante", 'Young Goodman Brown' is set during the Salem witch trials and features the sort of narrative ambiguities and troubling uncertainties...