Classics Books

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Book Synopsis A lyrical and moving Polish family saga set against the turbulent backdrop of twentieth-century Europe Lala has lived a dazzling life. Born in Poland just after the First World War and brought up to be a perfect example of her class and generation – tolerant, selfless and brave – Lala is an independent woman who has survived some of the most turbulent events of her times. As she senses the first signs of dementia, she battles to keep her memories alive through her stories, telling her grandson tales of a life filled with love, faithlessness and extraordinary acts of courage. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Kiev to modern-day Poland, Lala is the enthralling celebration of a beautiful life.Trade Review‘Jacek Dehnel paints prewar Poland – “laced with gilt and stucco in the cities, and heavy with the smell of cow pats and fruit lying in the grass in the countryside” – in the vibrant hues of a fairy tale. A multigenerational epic that spans a century and most of Eastern Europe, Lala is an astounding achievement, particularly considering Dehnel wrote it between the ages of 20 and 22...magical.’ * Chicago Tribune *‘Lala is a wonderful mosaic of stories…outrageous and humorous...spellbinding and captivating.’ * Foreword Reviews *‘Dehnel uses his grandmother's life and reminiscences as a springboard for a sweep through Poland's turbulent 20th century, mingled with musings on the nature of storytelling...[there are] some exceptionally beautiful passages...poignantly alive with loss and love.’ * Kirkus *‘Lush… Tender and droll, rueful and rousing, [Lala’s] stories trace one Polish family’s journey from the 1860s to the present day… [Jacek Dehnel] chronicles her decline with delicate but unabashed realism, as well as great humour, and Lloyd-Jones captures these qualities perfectly.’ * The Quarterly Conversation *‘Lyrical passages, some endearingly eccentric characters, a flyby through twentieth-century history, and a convincing voice for Lala.’ * Booklist *‘A declaration of love for literature and a tribute to an extraordinary woman.’ * Berliner Zeitung *‘Eloquently translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Dehnel’s Lala offers an extraordinary insight into historical events... A striking evocation of Poland’s turbulent past.’ * RivetingReviews *‘A masterfully constructed novel…mature and highly entertaining.’ * Polityka *‘Lala is unique – no author displays such maturity of style, knowledge of form and literary erudition at the age of twenty, because nobody is ever as well-read or intellectual at that age. Dehnel – who wrote this book aged twenty to twenty-two – is the exception that proves the rule.’ * Gazeta Wyborcza *‘Dehnel is gifted with superb literary instinct.’ * Czytelnia Onet *

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Book SynopsisHe''s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.Catherine Earnshaw had no idea that the boy her father took in from the streets of Liverpool would one day become her lover, her soul mate. Nor did she know that her decision to marry someone else would send him down the path of destruction. Once a novel criticised for its display of mental and physical cruelty, Wuthering Heights is now a considered a 19th century classic. It's themes of gender inequality and violence driven by passion still resonate with readers today.The Legend Classics series:Around the World in Eighty DaysThe Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Importance of Being EarnestAlice''s Adventures in WonderlandThe MetamorphosisThe Railway ChildrenThe Hound of the BaskervillesFrankensteinWuthering HeightsThree Men in a BoatThe Time MachineLittle WomenAnne of Green GablesThe Jungle BookThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other StoriesDraculaA Study in ScarletLeaves of GrassThe Secret GardenThe War of the WorldsA Christmas CarolStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeHeart of DarknessThe Scarlet LetterThis Side of ParadiseOliver TwistThe Picture of Dorian GrayTreasure IslandThe Turn of the ScrewThe Adventures of Tom SawyerEmmaThe TrialA Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan PoeGrimm Fairy TalesThe AwakeningMrs DallowayGulliver's TravelsThe Castle of OtrantoSilas MarnerHard Times

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Book SynopsisTo go around the world...in such a short time and with the means of transport currently available, was not only impossible, it was madness.The latest edition of the classic novel from Jules Verne, featuring Phileas Fogg and his quest to circumnavigate the world in 80 days to win a bet. Following an argument at the Reform Club over the opening of a new railway section in India, Fogg agrees to the outlandish bet. Setting off at 8:45pm on Wednesday, 2nd October, Fogg must return no later than Saturday, 21 December. What follows is one of the most famous journeys in fictional history. Around the World in Eighty Daysgripped audiences on its publication and remains hugely popular, combining exploration, adventure and a thrilling race against time.The Legend Classics series:Around the World in Eighty DaysThe Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Importance of Being EarnestAlice''s Adventures in WonderlandThe MetamorphosisThe Railway ChildrenThe Hound of the BaskervillesFrankensteinWuthering HeightsThree Men in a BoatThe Time MachineLittle WomenAnne of Green GablesThe Jungle BookThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other StoriesDraculaA Study in ScarletLeaves of GrassThe Secret GardenThe War of the WorldsA Christmas CarolStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeHeart of DarknessThe Scarlet LetterThis Side of ParadiseOliver TwistThe Picture of Dorian GrayTreasure IslandThe Turn of the ScrewThe Adventures of Tom SawyerEmmaThe TrialA Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan PoeGrimm Fairy TalesThe AwakeningMrs DallowayGulliver's TravelsThe Castle of OtrantoSilas MarnerHard Times

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Book SynopsisA priest receives an unexpected visitor from his past.A triumphant celebration ends in murder.A doctor tells of an unrequited love that only ended with death.Maupassant's direct treatment of sex and sexuality, and his insistence that the artist's primary duty was faithfulness to his own perceptions, made his work a challenge to many of his nineteenth-century English readers, but in Henry James's view, his vision was, 'altogether of this life'. His stories may have mystified contemporary moralists, but he was championed by writers who admired his resistance to self-censorship and applauded the economy of his style. In this new selection of his best stories, the sensitive and faithful translations of Ada Galsworthy and Elsie Martindale Hueffer show why writers like Conrad (whose preface is included) and Ford Madox Ford revered Maupassant's work.

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Book Synopsis'The beautiful illusion, when reading Tolstoy, is that one is looking directly at the world, as opposed to a depiction' Andrew O'Hagan from his preface to Childhood, Boyhood and YouthPublished in 1852, when he was just twenty-four, Childhood was Tolstoy's first published work, and the first of a trilogy of stories that evoke the upbringing and traditional education of a Russian aristocrat in a world that vanished with the revolution. In this self-portrait, narrated by its protagonist Nikólya, the young Tolstoy captured the textures of adolescence with a psychological insight and subtlety of analysis that look forward to his mature achievements; while his matchless objectivity - summoning the smells, sights and sounds of early childhood - is already fully present in these pages. The riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.

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Book SynopsisWritten in the late Victorian era, The Awakening features a young woman who flings aside the norms of society and rejects her role as wife and mother. She abandons her family for a hedonistic and contrarian lifestyle before eventually committing suicide. The novel deals with the issues of interracial marriage and contains passages of overt sexuality, both of which contributed to the widespread outcry upon its original publication in 1899. Today it is seen as a portent of the future and admired for its direct and naturalistic style. Flame Tree 451 presents a new series, The Foundations of Feminist Fiction. The early 1900s saw a quiet revolution in literature previously dominated by male adventure heroes. Both men and women moved beyond the norms of the male gaze to write from a different gender perspective, sometimes with female protagonists, but also expressing the universal freedom to write on any subject whatsoever. Each book features a brand new biography and a glossary of literary terms.

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Book SynopsisSinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and a writer lauded both for his craft and his principles, wrote The Job as a statement of female empowerment, and self-determination over societal expectation. Written in the early years of the 1900s Lewis' central character, highly unusual for the era, is a woman, Una Golden, who gains work in an exclusively male world of commercial real estate. Golden struggles for the recognition of her male peers while balancing romantic and work life; she marries, divorces, continues to work hard and finally emerges triumphant on her own terms. Flame Tree 451 presents a new series, The Foundations of Feminist Fiction. The early 1900s saw a quiet revolution in literature dominated by male adventure heroes. Both men and women moved beyond the norms of the male gaze to write from a different gender perspective, sometimes with female protagonists, but also expressing the universal freedom to write on any subject whatsoever. Each book features a brand new biography and a new glossary of Literary, Gothic and Victorian terms.

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Book SynopsisWritten in 1899, Grigg's moving, terrifying book describes the Jim Crow era life of a black man inhabiting a living dystopia. Belton Piedmont is from a poor background, he works hard to become educated but is subjected to the full range of discrimination and racism as he grows older. At the point where he has lost all hope he is introduced to the notion of a shadow state, 'Imperium in Imperio', a utopia where black people are treated equally and attempt to bring their values into the heart of government in Texas, altering his life forever. Grigg's unflinching narrative explores nationalism, civil disobedience, voter suppression, poverty and education, all still familiar themes today. FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and myth, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and robots, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales, ancient and modern gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic. The Foundations titles also explore the roots of modern fiction and brings together neglected works which deserve a wider readership as part of a series of classic, essential books.

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Book SynopsisNew edition with a new introduction. Delany's tale of Blake, an escaped slave in the era before the US Civil War, depicts the harrowing detail of life under slavery and offers a call to action for resistance. Casting beyond the misery of slavery, Delany's novel, located in the Southern United States and Cuba, demonstrates that alternatives are possible if only widespread insurrection could be ignited. A new title in the Foundations of Black Science Fiction series. FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and myth, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and robots, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales, ancient and modern gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic. The Foundations titles also explore the roots of modern fiction and brings together neglected works which deserve a wider readership as part of a series of classic, essential books.

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Book SynopsisCannibals! Captives! Coconuts! Cannibals! Captives! Coconuts! One man's love of the sea leaves him stranded on a desert island with nothing but a few goats, a bible and a parrot for company. Will he ever escape? Will his new pal Friday learn to efficiently press a goatskin jerkin? Or will solitude send him totally barmy?

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Book SynopsisIn 1851 Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are despatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows - gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly forty years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses and occasionally ecstasy in their wake. But it takes a death for them to make their mark on the landscape forever ...Trade ReviewA powerful piece of writing, rich with the essence of a poor but beautiful country and a simple yet dignified people * Sunday Times *A tremendous, ranging story, economical and distilled as poetry -- Jane GardamQuite simply a masterpiece . . . I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells . . . This is a book which I go on rereading -- A. N. Wilson * Daily Telegraph *Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously . . . a major, and rare, artistic achievement -- A. S. Byatt

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Book SynopsisWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY HILARY MANTEL 'The perfection of its tone and prose is matched by an anguished wit' AMANDA CRAIG, GUARDIAN 'Wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it' JILLY COOPER'A subtle and beautiful book . . . Very few authors combine her acute psychological insight with her grace and style' HILARY MANTEL, SUNDAY TIMESImogen, the beautiful wife of barrister Evelyn Gresham, is facing the greatest challenge of her married life. Their neighbour Blanche Silcox, competent, tweedy, middle-aged and ungainly - the very opposite of Imogen - seems to be vying for Evelyn's attention. And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding - for in affairs of the heart the race is not necessarily won by the swift or the fair.Trade ReviewAs smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream -- Hilary Mantel * Sunday Times *The perfection of its tone and prose is matched by an anguished wit -- Amanda Craig * Guardian *My best book of almost all time is The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins . . . wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it -- Jilly CooperOne of my favourite classics. Elegant and ironic, its continuing charm lies in its quirky and enigmatic love story which becomes more beguiling with each re-reading -- Carmen CallilDeliciously subtle . . . A lost world of tweeds and twin-sets . . . a classic novel of the fifties * Daily Mail *My best book of almost all time is THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE by Elizabeth Jenkins ... wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it * Jilly Cooper *As smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream * Hilary Mantel *One of my favourite classics. Elegant and ironic, its continuing charm lies in its quirky and enigmatic love story which becomes more beguiling with each re-reading * Carmen Callil *Deliciously subtle...A lost world of tweeds and twin-sets...a classic novel of the fifties * DAILY MAIL *

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Book Synopsis'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN 'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARDThe Dud Avocado gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It's the 1950s, she's young and she's in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises he's single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted "citizens of the world"; an entanglement with a charming psychopath and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador. But an education like this doesn't come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence?Trade ReviewReaders turn to it again and again for its jokes, which are very funny and remain so after a dozen readings -- Rachel Cooke * Guardian *A champagne cocktail . . . Rich, invigorating, and deceptively simple to the taste . . . One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence * Observer *As delightful and delicate an examination of how it is to be twenty and in love and in Paris as I've ever read * Sunday Times *I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm)For a highly likeable and amusing narrator, who throws herself into Parisian life. A cult classic to reconnect me with France and feed my love of sharp observational humour . . . a hedonistic whirlwind in Paris and the South of France, pulled along by its whip-smart American heroine, Sally Jay Gore (out of the way, Emily In Paris). This is someone I am desperate to drink Pernod with. Where life has felt so constrained, this was such a liberating read -- Emma Reed * Daily Telegraph *Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true * Evening Standard ***'A champagne cocktail ... Rich, invigorating, and deceptively simple to the taste ... One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height... * OBSERVER *** 'As delightful and delicate an examination of how it is to be twenty and in love and in Paris as I've ever read’ *SUNDAY TIMES ** 'Both funny and true * EVENING STANDARD *

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Book SynopsisAlexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to India. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling. But Alexander's legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams.Trade ReviewRenault's skill is in immersing us in their world, drawing us into its strangeness, its violence and beauty ... a literary conjuring trick ... so convincing and passionately conjured The Times The Alexander Trilogy stands as one of the most important works of fiction in the 20th century ... it represents the pinnacle of [Renault's] career ... Renault's skill is in immersing us in their world, drawing us into its strangeness, its violence and beauty. It's a literary conjuring trick like all historical fiction - it can only ever be an approximation of the truth. But in Renault's hands, the trick is so convincing and passionately conjured. -- Antonia Senior The Times

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Book SynopsisAlthough he died at the age of just 37, Robert Burns had an extraordinary life. Born into deprivation and hardship, young Robert's intelligence and passion were obvious from an early age. This is the second book in James Barke's quintet of novels about Robert Burns, following "The Wind that Shakes the Barley". "The Song in the Green Thorn Tree" tells of Burns as a young poet, struggling with poverty in rural Ayrshire, and finally being parted from his lover and children as he leaves the village on his way to meet men of letters in fashionable Edinburgh. James Barke's novels sympathetically and vividly portray the life of Scotland's National Bard.

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Book SynopsisRamgolall, an old Indian cow-minder, has punished himself to save money and has built a sizeable herd. His first daughter is the long-established mistress of a well-to-do white planter. Their son, his grandson, Geoffry, light-skinned and ambitious, seems destined for success. But when Geoffry becomes involved with Kattree, his daughter by a second marriage, Ramgolall's world begins to fall apart.This classic work of West Indian fiction, first published in 1941, is much more than a pioneering and acute portrayal of the rural Indo-Guyanese world; it is a work of literary ambition that creates a symphonic relationship beween its characters and the vast openness of the Corentyne coast.This beautiful new edition features an introduction by Mittelholzer scholar Juanita Cox.

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Book SynopsisSet in a colonial Caribbean country in the post-war years, Stranger at the Gate has the narrative drive of a Hemingway novel, the ominous sense of fate of classical Greek tragedy, a sensuous appreciation of a landscape, domestic interiors and food that draws on Hearne’s own Jamaica, and an acute, if indulgent, portrayal of the white and light-brown landed and commercial elite. Stranger at the Gate was originally published in 1956 by Faber and Faber, and is part of the Peepal Tree Caribbean Modern Classics series.The stranger is a revolutionary leader escaping from certain death in a Francophone Caribbean state that has suffered a counter-coup aided by the big state to the north. As a leading member of a small communist party in the imagined state of Cuyuna, Roy McKenzie, has the dangerous task of hiding the escaped Etienne and then getting him off the island to be picked up by a passing Polish ship. McKenzie, a lawyer, a light brown man of elite background, radicalised by his wartime experiences, has to acknowledge that his party’s roots among the black working class are very shallow, and that his only hope of helping Etienne is to turn to his friends among the very elite he is supposedly committed to destroy. When he involves his oldest friend, Carl Brandt, and the woman who becomes his lover, in his mission, he sets in train a sequence of events that test the boundaries of the personal and the political in the deepest and most tragic ways.Set in a colonial Caribbean country in the post-war years, Stranger at the Gate has the narrative drive of a Hemingway novel, the ominous sense of fate of classical Greek tragedy, a sensuous appreciation of a landscape, domestic interiors and food that draws on Hearne’s own Jamaica, and an acute, if indulgent, portrayal of the white and light-brown landed and commercial elite.When Hearne’s novel was first published it was heavily criticised by Caribbean radicals for its evasive politics. Reading Stranger at the Gate over 60 years later, those reservations must still apply, but the passing of time allows us to see what a fine handler of character, structurer of narrative and fine writer of prose John Hearne was; and his portrayal of the Caribbean upper-class – at least in its own self-perceptions – is unrivalled, and still pertinent, since this is a class that has scarcely gone away.The cover of Stranger at the Gate features Ralph Campbell's, Gully (oil on canvas, 1951). Courtesy of the University of the West Indies Library, Mona, Jamaica.

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Book Synopsis'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 from Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce (The Devils Dictionary), Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling, this compilation is a volume that will terrify and delight, and ultimately to treasure.Table of ContentsWashington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart Conan Doyle - The Silver Mirror Ambrose Bierce - The Secret of Macarger's Gulch Daniel Defoe - The apparition of Mrs Veal Nathaniel Hawthorne - An Old Woman's Tale M.R. James - Number 13 J.S. Le Fanu - Green tea Sabine Baring-Gould - The Red-Haired Girl Rudyard Kipling - The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

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Book SynopsisSidney Trefusis is a proselytizing socialist. Armed with irony and paradox, he is determined to overthrow a society riddled with class and sexual exploitation.Henrietta, his adoring wife, 'loves' him: he must abandon her. Son of a millionaire, he gives up everything to pose as an 'umble peasant'. But when this unsocial socialist goes to work as a gardener in the vicinity of a girls' school he meets his match - for Agatha Wylie is a new kind of woman, perfectly armed: and she doesn't love him.With the character of his clown-prophet Trefusis, George Bernard Shaw presented for the first time his view of what the relationship between the sexes should be. Galloping, exuberant, and irresistibly entertaining, AN UNSOCIAL SOCIALIST is a brilliant satire on social prejudice from a great author of the past.

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Book SynopsisAfter poleaxing his mathematics master with a perfect right, Cashel Byron, the unloved son of a successful actress, runs away to Australia. He returns to England and becomes the most famous prizefighter of his age, only to be floored himself by the lovely and impossible Lydia Carew. Can Lydia, with her reputation for vast learning and exquisite culture, be wooed by the ruffian Cashel? Can Cashel successfully hide his illegal professional? And so follows, with Shaw's inimitable wit and sparkle, a tale of miscommunication, drawing-room comedy and love.Trade ReviewGenuine and remarkable narrative talent...a talent of strength, spirit, capacity...It is all mad, mad and deliriously delightful...All I ask is more of it * Robert Louis Stevenson *

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Book SynopsisJenny Pearl, a dancer, falls in love with Maurice Avery, a young dilettante who leaves her when she refuses to become his mistress. Despairingly, she falls into a loveless marriage with Trewhella, a Cornish farmer who becomes insanely jealous when Avery reappears on the scene...Vivid, moving and ultimately tragic, CARNIVAL was first published in 1912 to wide critical acclaim, helping to establish Mackenzie as one of the foremost British novelists of his generation. It has since been filmed three times and adapted for the stage and as an opera.

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Book SynopsisMany years after their divorce, Susan Morrow receives a strange gift from her ex-husband. A manuscript that tells the story of a terrible crime: an ambush on the highway, a secluded cabin in the woods; a thrilling chiller of death and corruption. How could such a harrowing story be told by the man she once loved? And why, after so long, has he sent her such a disturbing and personal message...?Trade ReviewAbsorbing, terrifying, beautiful and appalling. I loved it... Unforgettable -- Ruth RendellA superb and thrilling novel... Extraordinary -- Ian McEwanTony and Susan is unbeatable. I was bowled over by this disturbing, bold novel * Observer *A f***king masterpiece. I wish that Wright was still alive so that I could tell him so... It's going to become a living, breathing, knock-out classic. Astonishing -- MJ HylandAstute, cunning and thrilling in equal measure, this is one lost novel that deserves to be found by a whole new generation of readers * Independent on Sunday *I want to read it all over again... Not since Cormac McCarthy's The Road have I been so gripped and unsettled by a piece of fiction -- Sarah WatersMarvellously written - the last thing you would expect in a story of blood and revenge. Beautiful -- Saul BellowCompelling... Mesmerizing... Absolutely irresistible * New York Times *A nail-biter and a penetrating portrait of guilt and revenge * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisIn 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', John Utterson, a respectable London lawyer, is compelled to uncover the strange connection between his old friend, the brilliant scientist Dr Henry Jekyll, and a brooding and dangerous stranger called Edward Hyde. A horrifying and brilliant story of deception, the story is sometimes interpreted as one of the best late Victorian gothic novels. This edition is suitable for teachers and use in schools. This book has illustrations by Cam Kennedy.

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Book SynopsisCharles Dickens died half way through writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and ever since speculation has been rife as to how the tale might have unfolded. For this intriguing two-part adaptation for BBC2, for prime-time January 2012, acclaimed screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes (Five Days, Miss Austen Regrets) scoured the text for clues indicating how the great author might have finished this masterpiece, and has drawn from those leads a seamless, compelling and surprisingly modern story of obsessive love, betrayal and murder. This tie-in edition of Dickens's unfinished text will also include an Afterword by Gwyneth Hughes, offering her own conclusion, and revealing how she knitted the strands from the original plot and her own work together to bring the book to a satisfying close.Key cast list: Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters) as John Jasper; Rory Kinnear (Hamlet, Women In Love, Lennon Naked) as Reverend Septimus Crisparkle; Freddie Fox (Worried About The Boy, The Shadow Line) as Edwin Drood; Tamzin Merchant (Jane Eyre, Miranda, The Tudors) plays Rosa Bud; Alun Armstrong (New Tricks, Garrow's Law) as Hiram Grewgious, Rosa's guardian; Julia McKenzie (Cranford, Miss Marple) plays the Reverend's mother, Mrs Crisparkle; David Dawson (Luther, The Road To Coronation Street) as Bazzard; Ron Cook (Little Dorrit) as Durdles; Sacha Dhawan (Five Days 2) as Neville Landless; Amber Rose Revah (House Of Saddam) plays Helena Landless, Neville's twin sister; Ian McNeice (Doctor Who) as Mayor Sapsea; Janet Dale (Holby; Casualty) as Miss Twinkleton; Ellie Haddington (Luther) as Princess Puffer; and young Alfie Davis plays Deputy.

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Book SynopsisZainab, a name which aptly reflects the beauty of this tale''s protagonist is also the title of the first modern Egyptian novel written in native vernacular. Crafted in 1910 by a privileged member of society and a student at the time living in Paris, Mohamed Hassein Heikal later rose through the ranks of Egyptian politics and media. Heikal successfully humanises and contextualises Egypt''s societal issues without too reproachful a voice. As Heikal wrote in his room in Paris he was undoubtedly influenced by his nostalgia and depicts Egyptian scenes as only an Egyptian could.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1912, this collection of witty short stories will appeal to everyone interested in fin de siecle women's writing, first wave feminism' and the New Woman.'

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