The Prisoner of Zenda, Anthony Hope

'Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.'

When four young lovers flee from Athens and become lost in an enchanted wood, they stumble into a fairy world where King Oberon, and Queen Titania, are feuding over ownership of a young Indian prince. 

Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. 

The local doctor and squire decide to set off to find the island, taking Jim with them as the cabin-boy, but they soon discover that the surviving pirates are also keen to locate the treasure. Among the colourful characters is Long John Silver who, with his missing leg and his talking parrot, has entered into popular folklore.

Laying humanity bare, these two devastating stories ask: is it possible to have a good death? And what does it mean to truly live?

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. His wife is growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving.

'My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?' A poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer.

But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing, and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something - fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a 'suitable' match.

The Aeneid is Virgil’s Masterpiece. His epic poem recounts the story of Rome’s legendary origins from the ashes of Troy and proclaims her destiny of world dominion.

Drama continues to build as his wife, Mary, pursues the great black-maned lion that has become her obsession. Spicing his depictions of human longings with sharp humor, Hemingway captures the excitement of big-game hunting and the unparalleled beauty of the scenery -- the green plains covered with gray mist, zebra and gazelle traversing the horizon, cool...

In Verne’s science-fiction classic, Professor Lidenbrock chances upon an ancient manuscript and pledges to solve the mysterious coded message that lies within it. Eventually he deciphers the story – that of an Icelandic explorer who travels to the centre of the earth, finding his way there via a volcano.

Spurred by his longing to escape, Winston rebels. He breaks the law by falling in love with Julia, and, as part of the clandestine organization the Brotherhood, they attempt the unimaginable – to bring down the Party.

Humble and lowly, a young Fanny Price goes to live with her wealthy Aunt and Uncle at their grand house, Mansfield Park. Growing up with her privileged and spoilt cousins, the Bertrams, she lives in the shadows of their glamorous lives, but manages to find an ally in her cousin, Edmund.

From a child coming to terms with the death of a priest to a young woman torn between leading an uneventful life in Dublin and fleeing Ireland with her lover, these fifteen stories bring to life the day-to-day existence of ordinary Dubliners in the early years of the twentieth century. 

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau hiked into the Walden Woods and built a small hut, where he lived alone for the next two years. Thoreau wanted to prove that man could live entirely free from the society, and his experiment tested the limits of self-reliance while also immersing him in the lush of natural beauty of New England. The writings that resulted from...

his is a deeply personal novel written from the author's own experience and as such Agnes Grey has a power and poignancy which mark it out as a landmark work of literature dealing with the social and moral evolution of English society during the last century.