Classics Books

Book SynopsisWith precise plotting underpinned by a wise understanding of human nature, George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel gives a wonderful evocation of rural life and the complicated relationship between siblings.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of The Mill on the Floss features an introduction by Professor Kathryn Hughes.Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom enjoy a rural childhood on the banks of the river Floss. But the approach of adulthood creates tension: intelligent and fiery Maggie tests the boundaries of nineteenth-century society in her search for love, while Tom embraces convention and accepts his father’s desire for him to become a businessman. Increasingly self-righteous, Tom disapproves of his sister’s suitors and when he discovers that she took a fateful boat trip with Stephen Guest, her cousin’s fiancé, he turns his back on her. Maggie is ostracized by her beloved brother and her own community, and only through tragic events are the siblings reunited . . .Trade Review[Maggie’s] one of those great literary heroines whom bookish girls grow up wanting to be. Just like Anne of Green Gables or even Jane Eyre, Maggie captures exactly the dilemma of being the clever girl of the family * Guardian *As one comes back to [Eliot’s] books after years of absence they pour out, even against our expectations, the same store of energy and heat, so that we want more than anything to idle in the warmth -- Virginia Woolf

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Book SynopsisWhile traveling on a ship, a Swiss pastor, his wife and four sons encounter a violent storm that abruptly transports them to a tropical island. They attempt to navigate the desolate shore but face looming danger and an unforeseen presence. A family venture turns into a survival effort when a ship is damaged during a tropical storm. A father, mother and four sons stumble across a small island that appears to be uninhabited. They set up camp, complete with makeshift housing, to protect against the elements. While exploring the territory, they gather food and other creature comforts. During their stay, the family is met with various challenges that will test their faith in God and each other. The Swiss Family Robinson is Johann David Wyss’ literary masterpiece that’s been passed down from generation to generation. The story found its biggest audience in the twentieth century with the 1960 feature film produced by Walt Disney Pictures. Since then, Wyss’ message of family values and self-reliance have reached countless children and adults across the world. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Swiss Family Robinson is both modern and readable.

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Book SynopsisCurl up with a collection of romantic short stories taking you from nineteenth-century Vienna, over the wild moors of Northumberland to the snowy streets of pre-revolutionary St Petersburg. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction by author and journalist Amanda Craig. A collection of eighteen romantic short stories from the award-winning and much-loved Eva Ibbotson, A Glove Shop in Vienna will show you the great passions and astute observations of everyday life. Join Great Uncle Max, torn between his grand and secret love for Susie, the enchanting glove shop assistant, and the devotion of his opera-singing wife. Meet Miss Bennett, drama mistress at the fading Markham Street Primary School, whose search for a baby Jesus for the nativity play yields unexpected and miraculous results. And agonise with Kira, a dancer in Russia’s Imperial Ballet school, thrown out onto the streets of St Petersburg and found by Edwin, a lonely dreamer. By turns comical, satirical, romantic and always unpredictable these wise stories are a delight from start to finish.

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Book SynopsisReader, she married him. But not before a LOT of discussion of his behaviour in the group chat.With courage, determination and logged into her social media accounts - plain Jane Eyre is ready to take on the world. But then she meets and begins to fall for Edward Rochester, AKA the definition of a red flag, with screenshots to prove it.When authors Claire McGowan and Sarah Day imagined how 'Pride and Prejudice on Social Media' might look, retelling the story through mocked-up social media posts, their post instantly went viral. Now, they return with a Bronte classic told through highs and lows of social media . . .Perfect for fans of Charlotte Brontë . . .***READERS LOVE JANE EYRE ON SOCIAL MEDIA***'This is a fun text with a witty comedic spin and definitely one to put on your TBR pile' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'If you read nothing else this year, read this! It's honestly the best read of the year. Not only is it a clever idea for a retelling, it's charming, witty and downright hilarious!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'It all did make me laugh. Lots!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Really well done and difficult to put down. I see the authors have done the same thing with Pride and Prejudice and I am definitely adding that to my TBR' ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'What a funny and quirky book!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This clever retelling combines charm, wit, and humour to create an engaging and hilarious narrative' ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'A lot of fun and a good way to make modern a classic' ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Olivia Laing Monday 20 April 1925. One thing in considering my state of mind now, seems to me beyond dispute, that I have at last, bored down into my oil well, & can't scribble fast enough to bring it all to the surface... I have never felt this rush & urgency before. Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), A Room of One's Own (1929) - the years covered by this volume of Virginia Woolf's diary saw the publication of four of her most celebrated works, and the writing of The Waves. Her diary captures the accelerating pace of her life, and the creative friendships with other well-known writers and artists. At times exhilarated, at others fearful or depressed, the entries of these years are animated by Woolf's sheer vitality as a writer.

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Book SynopsisWhat would happen if society was run by women? Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagines the result...When three American men discover a community of women, living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without man's knowledge, experience and strength, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have found is a civilisation free from disease, poverty and the weight of tradition. All alone, the women have created a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LINDY WESTTrade ReviewThis is a Utopian novel by a feminist set in the Amazon rainforest - and it is funny... Prepare for a feminist lecture, but one that does not lose sight of the need to entertain * Guardian *Prolific, ambitious, and deeply earnest in her desire to make the world more just for women, Gilman's long career as a speaker and writer inspired countless women to work for change. Her status as one of the most important feminist thinkers of the Progressive Era is undeniable * Feminist Collections *It was so radical that more than 50 years passed before society began to catch up with its feminism. * Radio Times *

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Book SynopsisA cautionary horror story about the dangers of greed, isolation and a science without ethics, from the father of science fiction. The stranger arrives early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow. He is wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his hat hides every inch of his face. Rude and rough, the stranger works with strange apparatus locked in his room all day and walks along lonely lanes at night, his bandaged face inspiring fear in children and dogs. Is he the mutilated victim of an accident? A criminal on the run? An eccentric genius? But no-one in the village comes close to guessing who has come amongst them, or what those bandages hide. ‘Wells was the founding father of science fiction, and in his utopian fantasy novels he was proved eerily correct’ Daily TelegraphTrade ReviewEnduringly captivating * Observer *Pioneering * Daily Mail *Wells was the founding father of science fiction, and in his utopian fantasy novels he was proved eerily correct * Daily Telegraph *The original; and far better than any of the film versions * The Times *An old tale of scientific hubris that walks the line between comedy and horror * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisMiserly and mysterious, the richest man in the Five Towns lives simply, ruling his household with an iron fist and a cruel temper. His daughter, Anna, is used to the life of strict, thrifty order imposed by her father. But when she comes of age, Anna inherits a small fortune and attracts the attentions of the town's most eligible bachelor. A new world seems to be opening to Anna, but her heart, given a taste of freedom, leads her in unexpected directions.Trade ReviewArnold Bennett is very much worth reading. This will be contrary to what any of you who might have studied English Literature at university since the last war will have been told, so please park such prejudices. * Daily Telegraph *Bennett's great novels all deal with the great emotions, though they are revealed through the stories of 'ordinary' people * Independent on Sunday *A writer of genius * Guardian *Bennett has long been one of my favourite writers -- Peter James

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Book SynopsisDiscover Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning search for his family's origins: a powerful memoir, a history of slavery and a landmark in African-American literature.Tracing his ancestry through six generations of architects, lawyers, blacksmiths, farmers, freedmen and slaves, Alex Haley’s research took him back to Africa and a sixteen-year-old youth named Kunta Kinte. Torn from his homeland and brought to the slave markets of the New World, re-imagining Kunta’s journey would allow Haley to explore his family’s deep and distant past.‘A gripping mixture of urban confessional and political manifesto, Roots not only inspired a generation of black activists, but drove home the bitter realities of racism to a mainstream white liberal audience’ Observer WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID OLUSOGA, AUTHOR OF BLACK AND BRITISHTrade ReviewA gripping mixture of urban confessional and political manifesto, it not only inspired a generation of black activists, but drove home the bitter realities of racism to a mainstream white liberal audience * Observer *A Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the family ancestry of author Alex Haley... [and] a symbolic chronicle of the odyssey of African Americans from the continent of Africa to a land not of their choosing * Washington Post *Haley succeeds beautifully where many have failed... The book is an act of love, and it is this which makes it haunting -- James Baldwin * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisFollow a dark and powerful journey up the Congo River in Conrad’s sharp and incisive exploration of the damages of imperialism. Life on the river is brutal, and unknown threats lurk in the darkness; the silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming. Marlow's mission to captain a steamer upriver into the dense interior leads him into conflict with the others who haunt the forest. But his decision to hunt down the mysterious Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader who is the subject of sinister rumours, leads him into more than just physical peril.‘Demands to be read. At its core lies the enigmatic, awesome Kurtz, and civilisation itself’ GuardianVINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mindTrade ReviewThis small novel is written with intense clarity - sentence for sentence it is still more unsettling than many unpleasant books that have been written since -- Anne EnrightConrad's narrative arsenal is awesome... Conrad deals in profundities if he deals in anything, but it is just his ability to clip his own wings in midflight, to puncture his ponderously magnificent dirigibles, that make him such an impressive literary performer * Sunday Times *Still the debate rages: is Conrad's novella an incisive critique of colonialism, or does it reinforce the very racist values it claims to unmask? Either way, his shrouded account of Marlow's journey into the "god-forsaken wilderness" of the Congo demands to be read. At its core lies the enigmatic, awesome Kurtz, and civilisation itself. "And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth" * Guardian *Conrad broadened the descriptive range of the English language (his glowing and luxuriant delight in words, the haunting decor of the tropics, all that maritime terminology) more than any of his contemporaries * Independent *

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Book SynopsisWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PAULA HAWKINS, AUTHOR OF GIRL ON A TRAIN"Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?"From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities. The psychologists would call it folie a deux...Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith's first novel, and adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock.'A true original in crime fiction' The TimesTrade ReviewA gem... A magnificent suspense * Daily Mail *A writer who created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger -- Graham GreeneA true original in crime fiction and a superb writer * The Times *Her writing is clean, exact, polished to a hard glint; she combines an acute emotional perceptiveness with a disturbing readiness to torture her characters and, by extension, her audience * Stylist *

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Book Synopsis'He must know by now, I should think, that I can give as good as I get!'This is the story of Gigi, educated as a future courtesan in Paris, her days are filled with cigars, lobster, lace and superstitions. Bored and unconvinced by what she's taught, Gigi surprises everyone with her earnest approach to love.In this classic turn-of-the-century novella, Colette unveils Gigi's journey into womanhood in rich and supple prose.Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.Trade Review“A perpetual feast to the reader…her prose is rich, flawless, intricate, audacious and utterly beautiful.” -- Raymond Mortimer

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VINTAGE CLASSICS' HARLEM RENAISSANCE SERIES Celebrating the finest works of the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important Black arts movements in modern history.'Why did I want to mix mahself up in a white folk's war? It ain't ever was any of black folks' affair'When Jake Brown joins the army during the First World War, he is treated more like a slave than a soldier. After deserting his post to escape the racial violence he is facing, Jake travels back home to Harlem. But despite the distance, Jake cannot seem to escape the past and the explosive ways in which it can culminate. Written with brutal accuracy, Home to Harlem is an extraordinary work, and was the first American bestseller by a Black writer. 'One of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance' Washington Post

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Book SynopsisA new translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness's masterpieceLate one snowy midwinter night, in a remote Icelandic fishing village, a penniless woman arrives by boat. She comes with her daughter, the young but gutsy Salka Valka. The two must forge a life in this remote place, where everyone is at the mercy of a single wealthy merchant, and where everything revolves around fish. After her mother's tragic death, Salka grows into a fiercely independent-minded adult - cutting off her hair, educating herself and becoming an advocate for the town's working class. A coming-of-age story, a feminist tale, a lament for Iceland's poor - this is the funny, tender, epic story of Salka Valka. 'Laxness is a poet who writes to the edges of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot' Daily TelegraphTRANSLATED BY PHILIP ROUGHTONTrade ReviewLaxness was a genius * New York Review of Books *Sprinkled throughout is Icelandic folk wisdom, dark humor, fatalism and a strong sense of the absurd... A tremendous book * Laxness in Translation *Laxness is a poet who writes to the edges of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisNow a major Netflix film starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Alexander Skarsgård Childhood friends Clare and Irene are both light-skinned enough to pass as white, but only one of them has chosen to cross the colour line and live with the secret hanging over her. Clare believes she had successfully cut herself off from any connection to her past. Married to a racist white man who is oblivious to her African-American heritage, it is vital to her that the truth remains hidden. Irene is living as a middle-class Black woman with her husband and children in Harlem, taking on an important role in her community and embracing her origins. Both women are forced to re-examine their relationships with each other, with their husbands and with the truth, confronting their most closely guarded fears. Nella Larsen's powerful, tragic and acutely observant writing established her as a lodestar of America's Harlem Renaissance. Almost a century later, Passing and its nuanced exploration of the many fraught ways in which we seek to survive remains as timely as everTrade ReviewAbsolutely absorbing, fascinating and indispensable -- Alice WalkerHighly charged... an original and hugely insightful writer * The New York Times *Discovering the fiction of Nella Larsen is like finding lost money with no name on it. One can enjoy it with delight and share it without guilt -- Maya AngelouLarsen's heroines are complex, restless, figures, whose hungers and frustrations will haunt every sensitive reader -- Sarah WatersStrangely, alarmingly moving. It gave shape and language to the racial ambivalence I experienced ... narrative may the best tool we have for binding together the disparate elements that make up the self -- Alexandra KleemanA groundbreaking novel of intersectionality ... tightly woven and plaintive * Vox *

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Book SynopsisWith a new introduction placing The Sturdy Oak as a foundational story of feminist literature, this composite novel, written by fourteen popular authors including nine women, was drawn together during first wave of feminism when the status of women in American life was brought into the spotlight. All proceeds of the book were donated to the Suffrage cause and the tale itself sought to reveal the tensions and expectations in Whitewater, a fictional district of New York. Jordan's assembled team of writers sought to undermine the stereotypical idea of the sturdy oak (the traditional male) with its clinging vines (the women) requiring his support. 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.

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Book SynopsisLittle treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. An enduring children’s classic, The Secret Garden (1911) is as enchanting as it is moving. Orphaned after the death of her parents in a cholera epidemic, Mary Lennox is sent from India to her uncle’s home in England, the remote Misselthwaite Manor. Alienated from her surroundings, she initially takes against the cold, gloomy house and the seemingly barren Yorkshire landscape. However, her spirits begin to improve as she sets out in search of the manor’s long-neglected secret garden. As Mary unlock the mysteries of her new home, a powerful tale of redemption and regeneration unfolds.

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Book SynopsisLittle treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. The most famous and enduring collection of fairy tales in the world, the first volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales was published in 1812. Originally known as Kinder- und Hausmärchen, or Children’s and Household Tales in English, these stories form a vivid and fascinating body of work rich in folkloric significance. Often as dark as they are enchanting, these tales are teeming with magic, strikingly sinister villains, and daring quests. Gathered here you’ll find old-time favourites like Little Red-Cap, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, and Hansel and Gretel, as well as lesser-known stories. The FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library.

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Book SynopsisThis early novel, written in collaboration with a friend, is a fascinating curiosity which suggests that Wodehouse might have become a very different, experimental sort of writer, had he continued to write in the same vein.Using multiple narrators, playing with literary stereotypes and identities, it tells the story of an aspiring young writer, James Orlebar Cloyster, prepared to do almost anything, first for success and then for gratification. By making Cloyster a mild, affable young man of the sort so familiar in his later novels, Wodehouse creates a comic disparity between the character’s lofty professions of virtue and his unscrupulous behaviour. As the story progresses, we realise that he is not unusual: all the main characters are unscrupulous in one way or another, ready to cheat and lie in pursuit of their ends, hence the title of the book.Not George Washington contains many fine scenes, and Cloyster’s narrative displays the calm mastery of story-telling Wodehouse had already made his own. If awkwardly executed, it is cleverly plotted, springing several surprises along the way. Clearly autobiographical in origin, it also invites readers to reflect on the nature of talent, fame, failure and success, villainy and honour - themes which continued to recur in the author’s work for another sixty years.Trade ReviewMr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in. -- Evelyn Waugh * BBC Broadcast *

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Book SynopsisThis book presents the story of Scrooge, a miser who becomes a different man when he is presented with visions of past, present and future by Marley's ghost.

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Book SynopsisPlantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister of England, is widowed and wracked by grief. Struggling to adapt to life without his beloved Lady Glencora, he works hard to guide and support his three adult children. Palliser soon discovers, however, that his own plans for them are very different from their desires. Sent down from university in disgrace, his two sons quickly begin to run up gambling debts. His only daughter, meanwhile, longs passionately to marry the poor son of a county squire against her father's will. But while the Duke's dearest wishes for the three are thwarted one by one, he ultimately comes to understand that parents can learn from their own children.

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Book SynopsisDuring his most productive decade, the 1880s, Maupassant wrote more than 300 stories, including 'Boule de Suif', 'The Necklace', 'The House of Madame Tellier', 'The Hand', 'The Horla' and 'Mademoiselle Fifi'. Marked by the psychological realism that he famously pioneered, the tales in this selection lead us on a tour of the human experience-lust and love, revenge and ridicule, terror and madness. Many take place in the author's native Normandy, but the settings range farther abroad as well, from Brittany and Paris to Corsica and the Mediterranean coast, and even to North Africa and India. Maupassant's remarkable range and ability to evoke an entire world in a few pages have ensured that his fiction has retained its power to entertain through generations of readers. Marjorie Laurie's accomplished translations from the 1920s have similarly stood the test of time.

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Book SynopsisThe archetypal Romantic, killed in a duel in 1837 at the age of 37, Alexander Pushkin was effectively the founder of modern Russian literature. Though famous as a poet, he was equally at home in prose, and this volume includes all his short fiction, as well as unfinished sketches and fragments. Here of course are his masterpieces, 'The Queen of Spades', Pushkin's ironic take on both the supernatural and the society tale, the terse, deadpan Tales of Belkin, often humorous yet imbued with deep understanding of human nature, and his unsurpassable novella, The Captain's Daughter, which, informed by his meticulous research into the Pugachev Rebellion against Catherine the Great, is a perfect combination of folk epic, historical narrative and romance. Other works include the richly comic 'A History of the Village of Goriukhino', the imaginative historical fiction 'The Moor of Peter the Great' (based on the life of the author's own great-grandfather. Pushkin was particularly proud of his African ancestry), and 'Journey to Arzrum', the fascinating autobiographical account of his (unauthorized, and greatly displeasing to the Tsar) travels in the Caucasus at the time of the 1828-9 Russo-Turkish war.Trade ReviewAn indispensable edition ... Pushkin the storyteller is witty and compassionate, panoramic and precise * Publishers Weekly *Brilliant ...[Pushkin] took up narrative prose on a whim, but, as this collection makes clear, he mastered it gloriously. * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThis extraordinary poem has been widely popular and influential ever since it was written in the fifteenth century, and its heroic account of the swordfighter Wallace was to symbolise the cause of liberty and independence to many other countries and cultures in the centuries to come.Looking back to the days of the Bruce and the war of independence, Blind Harry's poem is not an aristocratic tale of chivalry and nobility, but a vivid account of the vagaries of war and the brutal realities of battle, wounding and betrayal, all seen from the point of view of the troops in the field.The fruit of many years of scholarship, Anne McKim has produced what is unquestionably the definitive edition of this truly epic work.Trade ReviewThe story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest. * * Robert Burns * *

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Book SynopsisTaking up where AN INVITATION TO THE WALTZ left off, THE WEATHER IN THE STREETS shows us Olivia Curtis ten years older, a failed marriage behind her, thinner, sadder, and apprently not much wiser. A chance encounter on a train with a man who enchanted her as a teenager leads to a forbidden love affair and a new world of secret meetings, brief phone calls and snatched liaisons in anonymous hotel rooms. Years ahead of its time when first published, this subtle and powerful novel shocked even the most stalwart Lehmann fans with its searing honesty and passionate portrayal of clandestine love.Trade ReviewThe Weather in the Streets astounded women and men with its searing depiction of what it's like to fall in love . . . With brilliant dialogue and intense passages of elation and despair, The Weather in the Streets takes you on the rollercoaster of their relationship * Sunday Telegraph *Lehmann is unbeatable on social nuance, both among the London bohemian set and Rollo's more conventional upper-class milieu. No one could be more attractive or caddish than Lehmann's Rollo, the married man who entrances our heroine. The ultimate tragic love storyA truly great book. It is beautifully written, shrewdly observed and deftly crafted, but the novel's real concern is what it means for a woman to live an authentic lifeShe is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and originalThe first writer to filter her stories through a woman's feelings & perceptionsThe best book she has written -- and with as good a chance for popular success as her first book, Dusty Answer * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisWith a cover design by Lucienne DayWhen Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he is a 'pisseur de copie', that he 'urinates frightful prose', little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that 'no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest' Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide.Trade ReviewThe divine Spark is shining at her brightest . . . Pure delight * Claire Tomalin, INDEPENDENT *An outstanding novel . . . A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON has an effortless, transluscent grasp of the spirit of the period * OBSERVER *'Wonderfully entertaining - full of absurd, comical, engaging characters and written with typical wit, elegance and aplomb * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *One of Muriel Spark's most liberating, liberated and meditative novels. Spark is a writer who can take the meditative and make it mercurially funny, playful and mischievous * Ali Smith *

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Book SynopsisSet in the late 1950s, this is the story of Evelyn Hall, an English Professor, who goes to Reno to obtain a divorce and put an end to her disastrous 16-year marriage. While staying at a boarding house to establish her six-week residency requirement she meets Ann Childs, a casino worker and fifteen years her junior. Physically, they are remarkably alike and eventually have an affair and begin the struggle to figure out just how a relationship between two women can last.Desert of the Heart examines the conflict between convention and freedom and the ways in which the characters try to resolve the conflict

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS MEMORIAL PRIZE 'Her art is ignited by voice, as you hear it, is unquestionable' ALI SMITH, GUARDIAN 'Distinctive, pared-down style' DAVID EVANS, INDEPENDENT 'Unflinching look at the lives of working-class women' DAILY MAIL Nell Dunn's scenes of London life, as it was lived in the early Sixties in the industrial slums of Battersea, have few parallels in contemporary writing. The exuberant, uninhibited, disparate world she found in the tired old streets and under the railway arches is recaptured in these closely linked sketches; and the result is pure alchemy. In this novel, we witness clip-joint hustles, petty thieving, candid sexual encounters, casual birth and casual death. She has a superb gift for capturing colloquial speech and the characters observed in these pages convey that caustic, ironic, and compassionate feeling for life, in which a turn of phrase frequently contains startling flashes of poetry. Battersea, that teeming wasteland of brick south of the Thames, has found its poet in Nell Dunn and Up the Junction is her touchingly truthful and timeless testimonial to it.Trade ReviewHer art is ignited by voice, especially by voice more usually given no societal, literary or aesthetic power or space but whose authority, as you hear it, is unquestionable -- Ali Smith * Guardian *What's striking at this distance is not so much Dunn's frank depiction of female promiscuity - which caused quite a stir at the time - but her distinctive, pared-down style -- David Evans * Independent *Unflinching look at the lives of working-class women, presented without any moralising or judgment, and caused a sensation -- Constance Craig Smith * Daily Mail *The random violence, the short-lived pleasures, the restlessness, the hopelessness, it's all caught here in a series of casual impressions which could not be more insistent * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisThe heir to his grandfather's considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations and distractions of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligacy is accelerated by his marriage to the attractive but turbulent Gloria, and the couple soon discover the dangerous flip side of a life of glamour and debauchery.Trade ReviewHe was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation. * The New York Times *Table of ContentsContains notes and an extensive apparatus on Fitzgerald's life and works

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Book SynopsisJames Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a Kunstlerroman which chronicles the emotional and intellectual development of Stephen Dedalus - a character partly based on the author himself - from his early childhood and his school and university days all the way to his first forays as a young artist. Dedalus's thoughts and epiphanies reveal the tensions, insecurities and feelings of guilt that are the product of living in a country and period so deeply divided along religious and political lines. Pioneering an innovative stream-of-consciousness technique characteristic of early Modernism, and often resorting to mythical, historical and literary allusion which would find fuller expression in Ulysses, Joyce's groundbreaking work shocked the readers of its day and continues to challenge analysis and interpretation.Trade ReviewHis writing is not about something; it is that something itself. -- Samuel BeckettThis volume likely presents the most ambitious annotations of tlle novel to date and might even surpass Don Gifford's colossal stand-alone reference guide. -- Greg Winston * James Joyce Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisHaving moved into an abandoned haunted house, the narrator, undaunted by the warnings of the locals, invites a party of friends over; on Twelfth Night he and his guests gather together, and relate the supernatural experiences they have had. The resulting ghost stories thrill, shock and amuse by turns. For this work, commissioned for his periodical All the Year Round, Dickens enlisted some of the era’s most famous writers, including Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins, to collaborate with him on this Victorian supernatural classic.Trade ReviewThe Haunted House is of the utmost significance for anyone interested in exploring the genius of Charles Dickens. -- Peter AckroydTable of ContentsContains: The Mortals in the House by Charles Dickens, The Ghost in the Clock Room by Heshb Stretton, The Ghost in the Double Room by George Augustus Sala, The Ghost in the Picture Room by Adelaide Anne Procter, The Ghost in the Cupboard Room by Wilkie Collins, The Ghost in Master B's Room by Charles Dickens, The Ghost in the Garden Room by Elizabeth Gaskell, The Ghost in the Corner Room by Charles Dickens

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Book SynopsisThe Good Soldier tells the stories of two outwardly happy couples who meet at a health spa in Germany just before the start of the First World War, and whose loveless, adultery-ridden relationships are strained and gradually disintegrate, with tragic consequences. Drawing inspiration from his personal life, Ford Madox Ford innovatively used non-chronological flashbacks as well as an unreliable narrator to reveal the scandalous affairs, lies and betrayals behind the facade of respectability, and craft a masterly work of fiction and a subtle investigation of the notions of truth and deception.Trade ReviewFord was the only Englishman who stood alongside the great 'moderns'. -- Peter Ackroyd

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Book SynopsisWhen the reporter Edward Malone is sent to interview the formidable Professor Challenger about his accounts of strange prehistoric beasts on a remote plateau in South America, he expects to be given short shrift by the researcher, notorious for man handling nosy enquirers. But Challenger, impressed by the young journalist's thirst for adventure, invites Malone along on his next expedition, plunging him into a mysterious and dangerous world populated by dinosaurs and murderous ape men. Having already written seminal works of detective fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle became a pioneer of early science fiction with The Lost World. This classic novel helped establish the genre and has inspired, since its first publication in 1912, countless stories, novels and films.

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Book SynopsisWhile holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their relationship unravels, glimpses of their troubled past emerge, and a series of disturbing events unfolds. Peopled by an unforgettable cast of aristocrats and high-fliers, Tender Is the Night is at once a scathing critique of the materialism and hypocrisy of the Roaring Twenties and a poignant and sensitive account of personal tragedy and disillusionment.Trade ReviewHe was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation. * The New York Times *Gatsby was a tour de force, but this is a confession of faith. -- Fitzgerald comment on Tender is the Night

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Book SynopsisThe intelligent and charming Newland Archer – a member of one of New York’s most prominent families – is living the life that has always been expected of him: he is engaged to the beautiful and well-connected May Welland and understands the rarefied world of Fifth Avenue society inside out. However, with the arrival of May’s cousin, the free-spirited and unconventional Countess Ellen Olenska, Newland begins to doubt all that once seemed so natural to him.An extraordinarily well-observed dissection of New York high society in the 1870s – the world in which Edith Wharton grew up – The Age of Innocence shines a critical light on the social mores and values of the old order.Trade ReviewThere is no woman in American literature as fascinating as… Madame Olenska. -- Gore Vidal

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Book SynopsisThe shop owner Adolf Verloc, member of an anarchist group and secret agent for a foreign government, is summoned to meet Mr Vladimir, the country’s ambassador, who asks him to carry out a terrorist attack at a famous London landmark. Verloc has misgivings, but Mr Vladimir knows how to make people do what he wants, and when the plan goes wrong, it is Verloc – as well as his young wife, Winnie – who must deal with the consequences. A story of espionage, intrigue and corruption based on a real-life attempted terrorist attack in Victorian London, The Secret Agent was one of literature’s first political thrillers, and is widely considered to be among Conrad’s most compelling works.Trade ReviewIt is one of the best – and certainly the most significant – detective stories ever written. -- Ford Madox Ford

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Book SynopsisWhen the young American Frederick Winterbourne meets his compatriot Daisy Miller in the garden of a grand hotel in Switzerland, he is struck by her beauty, but slightly unsettled by her open ways and her flirtatiousness. Undeterred by this and by his aunt’s disapproval, he invites her to join him in a jaunt to a nearby castle, little suspecting that this will set in train a sequence of events that promises to be a source of heartache and disappointment for him, and threatens to compromise his own social acceptability. One of Henry James’s most enduringly popular works, Daisy Miller, here published in its 1909 version, incorporating the author’s final revisions, is a masterly, psychologically nuanced dissection of social mores and a merciless critique of convention and staid respectability.

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Book SynopsisAs Mabel Waring takes off her cloak and steps into the drawing room of Clarissa Dalloway, she immediately realizes that something is not right: her pale-yellow silk dress, which she has had specially made for the occasion, is clearly old-fashioned, dowdy and out of place. Everyone seems to be looking at her in dismay or mocking her appearance. Crushed at once by her insecurity, Mabel is pervaded by a sense of selfloathing, and feels utter revulsion for the social world she has tried so hard to impress. Written in 1924 and perhaps intended for inclusion in Mrs Dalloway, a book Woolf was working on at the time, The New Dress is here accompanied by most of the short stories she published in her lifetime, as well as six posthumously published pieces that share the milieu and some of the characters of her celebrated novel. Together, they reveal their author as one of the finest practitioners in the field of short fiction.

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Book SynopsisSet in the Caucasus, the scene of Russia's military campaigns in the 19th century, this is both an adventure story and a sardonic look at the heroic ideals of the author's contemporaries - which makes it all the more ironic that the main character, Pushkin, (like the author) was killed in a duel.

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Book SynopsisOne of Hemingway's finest novels, A FAREWELL TO ARMS was published in 1929 when the author was at the height of his power, It draws on his own experiences serving with the Italins in World War One when he was severely wounded in action and awarded the Croce de Guerra. This is a vivid portrait of men at war which also explores their deeper responses to the cruetly and heroism of Battle

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Book SynopsisAs another term begins at her girls' school, Josephine Napier reasserts her iron grip over her teachers and family. Her air of studied self-sacrifice conceals ruthless manipulation, but with the introduction of a male teacher to her staff and the return of an old rival for her husband's affections, the mask begins to slip. Old deceptions and new rivalries come to the surface, and the starched perfection of her life is threatened. A consummate expression of Ivy Compton-Burnett's unique style, full of viciously witty dialogue laced with double meanings and veiled insults, More Women Than Men is a masterful dissection of gender and power by an essential twentieth-century writer.Trade Review'As much a part of our great 20th-century literary heritage as Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth Bowen... She writes wonderfully, giving her often ghastly characters mordantly witty lines worthy of Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde' - Guardian'Her scalpel-sharp pen performed startling surgery on the accepted concept of genteel family life' - Daily Telegraph

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Book Synopsis‘You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life… Her face was worn, her cheeks were thin, her mouth drawn and firm, and her light blue eyes were very bright. Sometimes they were full of lightning and sometimes full of humour, but they were always sharp and clear.’ Under the grey, industrial skies of Bridgepoint (modelled on Baltimore), three women – Anna, Melanctha and Lena – live, work and love. Painting a powerful portrait of women trapped in drudgery, Stein’s Three Lives is a ground-breaking portrayal of abuse and non-heteronormative sexuality, and is a searing indictment of the struggles of the working class in turn-of-the-century America. An astonishing work that toys with style and conventions, Three Lives stands as a monument in Modernism and experimental literature, and comes from the pen of a writer whose intelligence and understanding bleeds from every page.Trade Review'Gertrude Stein changed the way I thought about writing autobiography because she so magnificently investigates the art and artifice of the genre.' (Deborah Levy) 'Some of the best writing ever done by an American.' (Sherwood Anderson)

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Book SynopsisChiltern Publioshing creates the most beautiful editions of the World's finest literature. Your favourite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, golden edges, fine details and beautiful colours of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf.

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Book SynopsisChiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the World's finest literature. Your favourite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile embossed layers, fine details and beautiful colours of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf.

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Book SynopsisTodd, Randy, and Carter are teenagers, grammar school boys who come across a younger boy while roaming the countryside around their commuter town. They decide to hold him hostage in a small cave in an abandoned quarry and then consider what to do next. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding needed a plane crash and a tropical island to bring out the capacity for violence and evil in his English schoolboys. Jane White, a mother and housewife living in Godalming when she wrote Quarry , needed only a chance encounter in fields not unlike those around her own development.Quarry is among the most unsettling novels of its time. White’s teenaged kidnappers ride bikes, worry about exams, and have to get home in time for supper. Yet they also imprison and torture another boy with the cold calculating objectivity that Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” Written in cool, realistic prose, Quarry creates a situation that seems fantastic and too horrifying to be true yet sustains an atmosphere of normality that only increases its power to shock. It is both a gripping and believable account of a crime and a parable filled with complex symbolism. “Nothing since A High Wind in Jamaica probes the depths of innocence with such terror and finesse as Jane White’s novel,” declared Newsday.

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