From Austen to Zola, from medieval to the modern day - all genres are catered for between the covers of these coveted classics.
Classics Books
Random House USA Inc The Song of the Lark
Book SynopsisIn this powerful portrait of the self-making of an artist, Willa Cather created one of her most extraordinary heroines. Thea Kronborg, a minister''s daughter in a provincial Colorado town, seems destined from childhood for a place in the wider world. But as her path to the world stage leads her ever farther from the humble town she can''t forget and from the man she can''t afford to love, Thea learns that her exceptional musical talent and fierce ambition are not enough. It is in the solitude of a tiny rock chamber high in the side of an Arizona cliff--a cleft in the heart of the world--that Thea comes face to face with her own dreams and desires, stripped clean by the haunting purity of the ruined cliff dwellings and inspired by the whisperings of their ancient dust. Here she finds the courage to seize her future and to use her gifts to catch the shining, elusive element that is life itself--life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop,
£11.39
Random House USA Inc The Transylvanian Trilogy Volume I
Book Synopsis**Washington Post Best Books of 2013**The celebrated TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY by Count Miklós Bánffy is a stunning historical epic set in the lost world of the Hungarian aristocracy just before World War I. Written in the 1930s and first discovered by the English-speaking world after the fall of communism in Hungary, Bánffy’s novels were translated in the late 1990s to critical acclaim and now appear for the first time in hardcover.They Were Counted, the first novel in the trilogy, introduces us to a decadent, frivolous, and corrupt society unwittingly bent on its own destruction during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bánffy’s lush depiction of an opulent lost paradise focuses on two upper-class cousins who couldn’t be more different: Count Balint Abády, a liberal politician who compassionately defends his homeland’s downtrodden Romanian peasants, and his dissipated cousin László, whose life is a whirl of parties, balls, hunting, and gambling. They Were Counted launches a story that brims with intrigues, love affairs, duels, murder, comedy, and tragedy, set against the rugged and ravishing scenery of Transylvania. Along with the other two novels in the trilogy—They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided—it combines a Proustian nostalgia for the past, insight into a collapsing empire reminiscent of the work of Joseph Roth, and the drama and epic sweep of Tolstoy.
£25.60
Random House USA Inc The Betrothed
Book SynopsisItaly’s greatest novel and a masterpiece of world literature, The Betrothed chronicles the unforgettable romance of Renzo and Lucia, who endure tyranny, war, famine, and plague to be together.Published in 1827 but set two centuries earlier, against the tumultuous backdrop of seventeenth-century Lombardy during the Thirty Years’ War, The Betrothed is the story of two peasant lovers who want nothing more than to marry. Their region of northern Italy is under Spanish occupation, and when the vicious Spaniard Don Rodrigo blocks their union in an attempt to take Lucia for himself, the couple must struggle to persevere against his plots—which include false charges against Renzo and the kidnapping of Lucia by a robber baron called the Unnamed—while beset by the hazards of war, bread riots, and a terrifying outbreak of bubonic plague. First and foremost a love story, the novel also weaves issues of faith, justice, power, and truth into a sweeping e
£24.00
Random House USA Inc The Arabian Nights
Book SynopsisThe most famous of all story collections, The Arabian Nights, also known as The Book of the Thousand and One Nights, is beloved around the world. Composed of Persian, Arabic, Greek, Indian, and other sources that accumulated over hundreds of years, these fabulous stories-within-stories have long fired readers’ imaginations with an enchanted world of flying carpets, magic lamps, genies, demons, magicians and sorceresses, carnivorous giants, and bloodthirsty bandits. Translation has played a key role in the formation of The Arabian Nights as we know it, making it far more prominent in the West than it has ever been in the Arab world. Westerners’ first discovery of some of the tales in the early eighteenth century sparked a feverish thirst for more, which led to compilations that freely adapted, reconfigured, and even added to the originals. The resulting love affair with the art, architecture, literature, cuisine, and culture of the
£25.60
Random House USA Inc Hopscotch BlowUp We Love Glenda So Much
Book SynopsisThese three groundbreaking works by Julio Cortázar—a major figure of world literature and one of the founders of the Latin American Boom—are published together in one volume for the first time, in honor of the centenary of his birth. With his influential “counternovel” HOPSCOTCH and his unforgettable short stories, Cortázar earned a place among the most innovative authors of the twentieth century. HOPSCOTCH is a nonlinear novel about an Argentinean writer living in Paris; it consists of 155 short chapters that the author advises the reader to read out of order. BLOW-UP and WE LOVE GLENDA SO MUCH bring together the most famous of Cortázar’s short fiction, including “Axolotl,” “End of the Game,” “The Night Face Up,” “Continuity of Parks,” “Bestiary,” and “Blow-Up”. These are stories in which invisible beasts stalk children in their homes, the reader of a mystery finds out that he is the murderer’s intended victim, an injured motorcyclist is pursued by Aztec warriors, and a man becomes a salamander in a Parisian zoo. In Cortázar’s work, laws of nature, physics, and narrative fall away, leaving us with an astonishing new view of the world.
£25.50
Random House USA Inc Cakes and Ale
Book SynopsisCakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield''s wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist''s voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrissing shadow over his career and respectable image. Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best.
£14.41
Random House USA Inc Winesburg Ohio
Book SynopsisSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timeBefore Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and Richard Ford, there was Sherwood Anderson, who, with Winesburg, Ohio, charted a new direction in American fiction--evoking with lyrical simplicity quiet moments of epiphany in the lives of ordinary men and women. In a bed, elevated so that he can peer out the window, an old writer contemplates the fluttering of his heart and considers, as if viewing a pageant, the inhabitants of a small midwestern town. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon. Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America, wrote H. L. Mencken. It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own.With Commentary by Sherwood Anderson, Rebecca West, and Hart Crane
£9.00
Random House USA Inc The Three Musketeers
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£13.29
Random House Publishing Group Klondike Tales Modern Library
Book SynopsisAs a young man in the summer of 1897, Jack London joined the Klondike gold rush. From that seminal experience emerged these gripping, inimitable wilderness tales, which have endured as some of London’s best and most defining work. With remarkable insight and unflinching realism, London describes the punishing adversity that awaited men in the brutal, frozen expanses of the Yukon, and the extreme tactics these adventurers and travelers adopted to survive. As Van Wyck Brooks observed, “One felt that the stories had been somehow lived-that they were not merely observed-that the author was not telling tales but telling his life.”This edition is unique to the Modern Library, featuring twenty-three carefully chosen stories from London’s three collected Northland volumes and his later Klondike tales. It also includes two maps of the region, and notes on the text.
£12.99
Random House Publishing Group The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky
Book SynopsisThis collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky''s key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes as in his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romantic White Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of pathos and loss, to the famous Notes from the Underground, a story of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromising cynicism, and the first major work of existential literature. Among Dostoevsky''s prototypical characters is Yemelyan in The Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime. Presented in chronological order, in David Magarshack''s celebrated translation, this is the definitive edition of Dostoevsky''s best stories.
£13.49
Random House USA Inc Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Book SynopsisIntroduction by George Saunders Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “It’s the best book we’ve had.” A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the Concord library shelves in 1885), it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat and betrayal by rogues. As Norman Mailer has said, “The mark of how good Huckleberry Finn has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page.”
£6.99
Penguin Random House LLC Silas Marner Modern Library The Weaver of Raveloe
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£7.59
Random House USA Inc The Last of the Mohicans
Book SynopsisCooper''s famous adventure brings the wilds of the American frontier and the drama of the French-Indian war to vivid life. Featuring the classic character Natty Bumppo, it is a moving, memorable depiction of courage, passion, and forbearance, and a precursor to the Western genre.
£10.44
Random House USA Inc Mod Lib The Master Of Ballantrae A Winters Tale
Book SynopsisStevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his most abiding theme—the elemental struggle between good and evil—as it unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid the fierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottish history. When two brothers attempt to split their loyalties between the warring factions of the 1745 Jacobite rising, one family finds itself tragically divided. Stevenson’s remarkably vivid characterizations create an acutely moving, psychologically complex work; as Andrea Barrett points out in her Introduction, “The brothers’ characters, not the historical facts, shape the drama.”This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes illustrations reproduced from the original edition.
£9.49
Random House USA Inc Toilers of the Sea Modern Library
Book SynopsisA new translation by Scot James Hogarth for the first unabridged English edition of the novel, which tells the story of an illiterate fisherman from the Channel Islands who must free a ship that has run aground in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, a shipowner's daughter.
£13.99
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc The Death of the Heart
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£14.45
WW Norton & Co In the Shade of Spring Leaves The Life and Writings of Higuchi Ichiyo a Woman of Letters in Meiji Japan The Life of Higuchi Ichiyo with Nine of Her Best Stories
Book SynopsisHiguchi Ichiyo, Japan's first woman writer of stature in modern times, wrote poems, essays, short stories and a great, multi-volumed diary. This book is made up of a critical biography, interlaced with extracts from the diary, and Robert Danly's translations of nine representative stories.
£20.42
WW Norton & Co The Arabian Nights
Book SynopsisNow as sumptuously packaged as they are critically acclaimed—a new deluxe trade paperback edition of the beloved stories.Trade Review"The resourceful Shahrazad... has never been more entertaining than in this fresh and vigorous version of this immortal book." -- Doris Lessing - The Independent"Easily the clearest, most fluent and readable translation." -- A.S. Byatt - Sunday Times [London]"A distinguished new translation." -- Edward Said - The Nation
£13.29
WW Norton & Co Sindbad And Other Stories From the Arabian Nights
Book SynopsisNow as sumptuously packaged as they are critically acclaimed—new deluxe trade paperback editions of the beloved stories.Trade Review"Haddawy's translation is easily the clearest, most fluent and readable I have met." A.S. Byatt, The Sunday Times "The resourceful Shahrazad... has never been more entertaining than in this fresh and vigorous version of this immortal book." Doris Lessing, Favourite Books of the Year, The Independent"
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Heart of Darkness
Book Synopsis“[A] triumph of graphic art [and] a compelling work of literary interpretation.”—Maya Jasanoff, Coolidge Professor of History, Harvard University, from the ForewordTrade Review"Peter Kuper’s art style is a force to be reckoned with. His sense of expression sears itself into your eyes, with his characters appearing as if caught in a psychedelic nightmare. His style remains intact with his latest work—Heart of Darkness." -- Starburst
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Emma
Book SynopsisFamously described by the author as a heroine whom no one but myself will much like, Emma Woodhouse is wealthy and charming, and she delights in interfering with the romantic relationships within her communitythough she herself has no desire to marry. As her meddling begins to bear consequences, however, Emma must come to terms with her responsibility and decide on her place in the world. With inimitable wit and incisive social commentary, Austen evokes a complex prism of relational connection and a richness of ordinary life that unfolds from the small world of her most extraordinary heroine.
£7.99
WW Norton & Co The Awakening
Book SynopsisThis perennial favourite Norton Critical Edition of Kate Chopin’s modernist novel of marital infidelity is now available in a new edition.
£12.99
WW Norton & Co The House of Mirth
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£12.34
WW Norton & Co Heart of Darkness
Book SynopsisAcclaimed illustrator Peter Kuper delivers a shocking graphic interpretation of this controversial classic.Trade Review"Peter Kuper’s art style is a force to be reckoned with. His sense of expression sears itself into your eyes, with his characters appearing as if caught in a psychedelic nightmare. His style remains intact with his latest work - Heart of Darkness." -- Starburst
£16.14
WW Norton & Co The House of the Seven Gables
Book Synopsis“The notes and the annotations in this and other Norton volumes most influence my decision in choosing this text. I thought the volume excellent. My students commented that it was very helpful.” —Margaret Murray, Western Connecticut State University
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Wuthering Heights
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£7.99
WW Norton & Co The Tale of Genji
Book Synopsis“A fluid, elegant rendition.” —The Washington Post
£25.65
WW Norton & Co Far from the Madding Crowd A Norton Critical
Book SynopsisThis Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 Wessex edition, emended to correct errors which have crept into the text from the manuscript onward.
£11.99
WW Norton & Co Oliver Twist
Book SynopsisThis Norton Critical Edition of a Dickens favorite reprints the 1846 text, the last edition of the novel substantially revised by Dickens and the one that most clearly reflects his authorial intentions.
£11.99
WW Norton & Co Kim
Book SynopsisWritten in 1901, Kim is considered Kipling's finest work, and was a key factor in his being awarded the Nobel Prize.
£17.13
WW Norton & Co McTeague A Story of San Francisco Norton Critical
Book SynopsisThe text of this edition presents, fully annotated, the 1899 First Edition text of McTeague, a significant example of American literary naturalism and a commentary on turn-of-the-century American cultural values.
£16.54
Houghton Mifflin The Lord of the Rings Box Set
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£67.50
HarperCollins The Two Towers Being the Second Part of the Lord
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£22.50
Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale The Nutcracker
Book SynopsisHoffmann's classic Christmas fairy tale, immortalized by Tchaikovsky's ballet, is brought to life by the gorgeous contemporary artwork of Finnish illustrator Sanna Annukka, and is the perfect holiday gift for adults and children alike. The Nutcracker captures, better than any other story, a child's wonder at Christmas.On Christmas Eve, Fritz and Marie excitedly await the arrival of Godfather Drosselmeier and the marvelous gifts he brings for them every year. When Marie discovers a rather curious nutcracker doll amongst the presents, she suddenly finds herself caught up in an age-old battle and ultimately transported to a magical world of sugar-frosted castles, chocolate kings, and true love. This cloth-bound edition combines the charm of Hoffmann's original eighteenth-century tale with the freshness of Sanna Annukka's gorgeous illustrations in this striking keepsake edition that will be treasured and reread by you and your loved ones for years to come.
£13.60
Penguin Putnam Inc The Au Pair
Book SynopsisBorn years earlier amid her mother''s suicide, the flight of an au pair and village whispers about changelings, Seraphine, a twin, uncovers a photograph from the day of her birth that suggests her parents only had one baby. Original.
£12.34
Penguin Publishing Group It Cant Happen Here
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£16.20
Penguin Putnam Inc One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
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£15.20
Penguin Putnam Inc Flatland
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£6.60
Penguin Putnam Inc The Jungle Books
Book SynopsisRudyard Kipling’s beloved collection of short stories about a boy raised by wolves who learns the Laws of the Jungle.Mowgli, lost in the deep jungle as a child, is adopted into a family of wolves. Hunted by Shere Khan, the Bengal tiger, Mowgli is allowed to run with the wolf pack under the protection of Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the brown bear who teaches wolf cubs the Laws of the Jungle. Through his many adventures, Mowgli evolves from a man-cub to a just and compassionate human being who at last returns to join—perhaps to lead—his own kind.W. Somerset Maugham calls Kipling “our greatest short story writer,” and in The Jungle Books, he says, Kipling’s “great and varied gifts find their most brilliant expression.” His most famous work effortlessly captures the imagination and has inspired beloved film adaptations, including Disney''s The Jungle Book, as well as readers the world over. With an Introduction by Alberto Mangueland an Afterword by Alev Lytle Croutier
£5.95
Penguin Putnam Inc Villette
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£7.23
Not Stated It Cant Happen Here
£8.99
Penguin Putnam Inc The Island of Dr Moreau Signet Classics
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£6.00
Penguin Putnam Inc The Jungle
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£7.29
Penguin Putnam Inc Lost Among the Living
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£15.30
Penguin Putnam Inc The Count Of Monte Cristo
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£6.95
Penguin Putnam Inc Oliver Twist
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£7.29
Penguin Putnam Inc Winesburg Ohio
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£6.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Sons And Lovers
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£9.10
