CLASSICS

During the German advance through Belgium into France in 1940, Captain de Reixach is shot dead by a sniper. Three witnesses, involved with him during his lifetime in different capacities...

Dmitry Rudin, a high-minded gentleman of reduced means, arrives at the estate of Darya Mikhailovna, where his intelligence, eloquence and conviction immediately make a powerful impression. As he stys on...

This collection of lesser-known of short stories - ranging from absurd humorous sketches to psychological pieces and tragic stories - demonstrates Anton Chekhov's mastery of the genre. Although varying in...

On arriving at a rural monastery, the monk Ambrosius meets a young girl, Benedicta. She is shunned by the local community for being the daughter of the local hangman, but...

Portraying the characters and events of a small Midwestern town at the end of the nineteenth century, Winesburg, Ohio is a cycle of stories which reads like an episodic novel....

When Mrs Ramsay tells her son at their summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does...

Unsuccessful in his ambitions, the young and naive Peter Schlemihl seals a pact with the Devil in which he exchanges his shadow for the purse of Fortunatus, thereby gaining everlasting...

When the young and sensitive Auguste Saint-Clair notices an Etruscan vase on the mantelpiece of his beloved Mathilde, he becomes gradually consumed by jealousy at the thought that it could...

After one of their own people repeatedly fails to live up to a pact with the Devil, a petty and morally bankrupt village community is terrorized by a succession of...

Written in 1796, "The Italian", with its archetypal villain Schedoni, intense romance between Vincentio di Vivaldi and Elena di Rosalba, and immaculate poetics of the sublime is the masterpiece of...

The unique Dublin Illustrated Edition, endorsed by The James Joyce Centre, meticulously recreates the 1922 text, and has been published to celebrate the Global Bloomsday Gathering, a live online reading...

Dubliners is a wonderfully engaging and accessible collection of stories by James Joyce, an author famed for being difficult to read. It contains fifteen stories, among them The Dead, made...

Hildegard Wolf is a German psychiatrist who lives a comfortable life in Paris. When she encounters a client who claims to be Lord Lucan, shecan't help but be intrigued. After...

Described by Gore Vidal as 'a novel written at the top of her form and so unique', Reality and Dreams concerns the delirious, egocentric film director Tom Richards, who is...

First imagined in the 1960s but never published, this collection of Robert Louis Stevenson's essays, fables and short stories was imagined by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares -...

Probably the most famous novel about drug addiction and the hazards and excitements of an addict's life after Burrough's Naked Lunch, this modern classic - which was prosecuted in Britain...

Animal Farm is one of the most famous warnings ever written. Orwell's immortal satire - 'against Stalin' as he wrote to his French translator - can be read on many...

Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become...

A new star-studded adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic Little Dorrit for BBC1 starts this November. The 15-part serial was adapted by highly acclaimed writer Andrew Davies, also responsible for the...

'The Fires and the Shadows' is a collection of some of the world's finest tales of the supernatural, from some of the literary world's most darkly glittering imaginations. Including works...

A satire on both popular ideas of the devil and the very nature of mankind, The Political History of the Devil has long been lauded as a classic of its...

'An enchanting novel, witty, touching and very perceptively written, which will sweep you into wisteria and sunshine' Santa MontefioreA discreet advertisement in 'The Times', addressed to 'Those who Apppreciate Wisteria...

After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan crosses the windswept Cornish moors to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. There she finds Patience a changed woman, downtrodden...

Mary Farren went into the gun room one morning about half-past eleven, took her husband's revolver and loaded it, then shot herself. The butler heard the sound of the gun...

Nella, daughter of millionaire Theodore Racksole, orders a dinner of steak and beer at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel in London. Her order is refused, so Theodore promptly buys the...

* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes...

I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn . . .Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose....

I tell you your mine will be in ruins and your home destroyed and your children forgotten ...but this hill will be standing still to confound you.' So curses Morty...

With a cover design by founder of Biba, Barbara HulanickiValley of the Dolls took the world by storm when it was first published in 1966. Never had a book been...

With a cover design by Cath KidstonBehind this rather prim and proper title lies the hilarious fictional diary of a long-suffering, disaster-prone Devon lady of the 1930s, and her attempts...

The setting for this piercing New England novel is the aptly named Starkfield, where, despite violently blue skies, the chill of cold and snow seems also to settle inside the...

First published in 1905, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social and economic restraints on a woman who dared to...

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social...

Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months and are devoted friends - or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness; Jane is...

"Cranford" is the best known and most charming of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. It is a comic portrait of an early Victorian country village and its genteel inhabitants, mostly women, whose...