Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott

The narrative traces Jacob’s childhood in Cornwall and his education at Cambridge, culminating in an evocative portrait of his adult life in London and abroad.

Desperate for an heir and embarrassed by his inability to satisfy his wife, Clifford suggests that she have an affair. Constance, troubled by her husband’s words, finds herself involved in a passionate relationship with their gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors.

Dazzling modern lyrical poems from Catullus - by turns smutty, abusive, romantic and deeply moving.

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...

The Piligrim’s Progess tells the story of everyman hero Christian as he abandons his world - the City of Destruction – on a journey towards paradise and the Celestial City. As he travels, Christian must fight off the temptation of the Worldly Wise, the Vain and the Ignorant. His adventure takes him through the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty and...

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall challenges the social conventions of the early nineteenth century in a strong defence of women's rights in the face of psychological abuse from their husbands. Anne Brontë's style is bold, naturalistic and passionate, and this novel, which her sister Charlotte considered 'an entire mistake', has earned her a position in English...

The epic poem The Iliad begins nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War and describes the great warrior Achiles and the battkes and events that take place as he quarrels with the King Agamemnon.

The Mill on the Floss, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.

'Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.'

Nicky Belane, private detective and career alcoholic, is a troubled man. He is plagued not just by broads, booze, lack of cash and a raging ego, but also by the surreal jobs he's been hired to do. Not only has been hired to track down French classical author Celine - who's meant to be dead - but he's also supposed to find the elusive Red Sparrow - which...

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.

A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. 

Many of these stories, like his great novels, reveal his special sympathy for the solitary and dispossessed, explore the same complex psychological issues and subtly combine rich characterization and philosophical meditations on the (often) dark areas of the human psyche, all conveyed in an idiosyncratic blend of deadly seriousness and wild humour. 

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

There you can swim with mermaids and play all day with the Lost Boys. But you must watch out for pirates, especially Captain Hook. And how do you find Neverland? Second to the right and straight on till morning of course.

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.