Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

'If you're the sort of guy who raids the refrigerators of silent kitchens at three o'clock in the morning, you can only write accordingly.That's who I am.'

Gradually he seduces her and convinces himself he is irresistible to her, but Margot has other plans. She wants to be a film star, and when Albinus introduces her to the American movie producer Axel Rex, she sees her chance - and plotting, duplicity and tragedy ensue.

Sent to board at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies, Sara is devastated when her adored father dies. Suddenly penniless, Sara is banished to an attic room where she is starved, abused, and forced to work as a servant. How this exceptionally intelligent girl uses the only resources available to her, imagination and friendship, to overcome her...

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?’

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned".

All Quiet on the Western Front is probably the most famous anti-war novel ever written. The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War

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...

The Essential Hemmingway is the perfect introduction to his astonishing, wide-ranging body of work. This impressive collection includes the full text of Fiesta, Hemingway's first major novel; long extracts from his three greatest works of fiction, A Farewell to Arms, To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls; twenty-five complete stories; and the...

Gilbert Markham becomes suspicious when he begins to hear these stories, however it is only when he reads Helen’s diary that he learns the full cruelty that her husband subjected her to in her previous life.

On his travels he continues to meet others who force him to reflect on human behaviour - the giants of Brobdingnag, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. In this scathing satire on the politics and morals of the 18th Century, Swift's condemnation of society and its institutions still resonates today.

Edward Prendick, the sole survivor of a shipwreck in the South Pacific, is set ashore on an island where he meets the mysterious Doctor Moreau. Horrified by the discovery that Moreau is performing vivisection on animals to form monstrous human hybrids, Prendick flees into the jungle. 

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

'It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head'

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.

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. 

The Pickwickians meet to begin their first journey and get knocked about by an angry cabman, who thinks they are informers, while an angry crowd gathers. They are rescued by Alfred Jingle, who travels with them to Rochester. Jingle is an adventurer interested in wealthy women, and on this first trip he involves the innocent Winkle in a duel with Dr....