To-morrow, Joseph Conrad

It explores the dilemmas of conscience, of moral isolation, of loyalty and betrayal confronting a sensitive individual whose romantic quest for an honourable ideal are tested to the limit.

'It's a dreadful thing to yield...but resist now?Lay my pride bare to the blows of ruin?That's dreadful too.'

Regarded as the first real heroine of American fiction, it is Hester Prynne's strength of character that resonates with the reader when her harsh sentence is cast. It is in her refusal to reveal the identity of the father in the face of her accusers that Hawthorne champions his heroine and berates the weakness of Society for attacking the innocent.

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.

'The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.'

King Henry IV’s son, Prince Harry is quick-witted yet idle and irresponsible and lives a roguish existence keeping dubious company.

Good and bad times come and go as they struggle with the trials of growing up, getting along, and exploring life outside the comforting walls of home, each discovering her own distinct personality along the way.

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

Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, was host to riverboat travelers from around the world, providing a vigorous and variable atmosphere for the young Samuel Clemens to absorb. Clemens became a riverboat pilot and even chose his pen name—Mark Twain—from a term boatmen would call out signifying water depth at two fathoms, meaning safe...

'We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.'   

As he tries to free himself from their clutches he becomes immersed in the seedy underbelly of the Capital, amongst criminals, prostitutes and the homeless. Dickens scathing attack on the cruelness of Victorian Society features some of his most memorable and enduring characters, including innocent Oliver himself, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes and...

Do you see your son, standing over there, in the antechamber? Well, I am going to shoot him.'

'They didn't seem to take much interest in my private parts which to tell the truth were nothing to write home about, I didn't take much interest in them myself.'

Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love.

On what grounds could we place ourselves above and beyond the animal world? What are the definitive forms of our relationships – love, marriage, family, friendship – really worth? And how might they be otherwise?

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.