Heart of darkness, Joseph Conrad

Publisher: Penguin Classics

Letter to my mother, Georges Simenon

Simenon explores the complexity of parent child relationships and the bitterness of things left unsaid in this stark, confessional piece.

Publisher: Arrow Books

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Featuring a personal Foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an Introduction by grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, editor of this edition, the book also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included...

Publisher: Collins Classics

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Though they grow up and marry other people, theirs is a fierce love that cannot be tamed by the laws of society or cooled by the passage of time. Bronte's gothic tale explores the irresistible and dangerous nature of a love that knows no limits as it consumes the two people at its core.

Publisher: Penguin Classics

A nervous breakdown, Anton Chekhov

"I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!'

Publisher: Collins Classics

The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald

But as the money begins to fail, so does their marriage. Patch’s gradual descent into alcoholism, depression and alienation from his marriage ultimately lead to his ruin. Fitzgerald’s novel is a remorseless exploration of the horrors of an age of excess and lost innocence.

Publisher: Wordsworth Classics

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

But it is his symbolic art that projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin. In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers.

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. This first edition credited the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.

Publisher: Collins Classics

Silas Marner, George Eliot

‘Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.’

Publisher: Penguin Books

Animal farm, George Orwell

Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges. . .

On Writing, Charles Bukowski

On Writing reveals an artist brutally frank about the drudgery of work and canny and uncompromising about the absurdities of life—and of art. It illuminates the hard-edged, complex humanity of a true American legend and counterculture icon—the “laureate of American lowlife” (Time)—who stoically recorded society’s downtrodden and depraved. It exposes an...

Publisher: Penguin Books

The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges

'Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized that the book was monstrous.'

Publisher: Collins Classics

The Mercant of Venice, William Shakespeare

In the most renowned onstage law scene of all time, Portia proves herself one of Shakespeare’s most cunning heroines, disguising herself as a lawyer and vanquishing Shylock’s claims; meanwhile, Shylock triumphs on a humanitarian level with his plea for tolerance: ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’

Publisher: Penguin Books

The Atheist's Mass, Honore de Balzac

'This is as much a mystery as the Immaculate Conception, which of itself must make a doctor an unbeliever

Publisher: Collins Classics

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jay Gatsby’s opulent Long Island mansion throngs with the bright young things of the Roaring Twenties. But Gatsby himself, young, handsome and mysteriously rich, never appears to his guests. He stands apart from the crowd, yearning for something just out of reach – Daisy Buchanan, lost years before to another man. 

Publisher: Penguin Classics

A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert

'She decided she would teach him to speak and he was very soon able to say, 'Pretty boy!', 'Your servant, sir!' and 'Hail Mary!''

Publisher: Collins Classics

The Valley of Fear: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, Arthur Conad Doyle

First published as a serialization in The Strand Magazine between 1914 and 1915, this fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel will delight fans of Conan Doyle’s legendary detective and his faithful sidekick Watson.