Classics

A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

Lucie Manette has been separated from her father for eighteen years while he languished in Paris's most feared prison, the Bastille. Finally reunited, the Manettes' fortunes become inextricably intertwined with...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

by Lewis Carroll

Bored on a hot afternoon, Alice, a bright and inquisitive child, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole, and finds herself in Wonderland, a very odd place indeed. This unique story mixes satire and puzzles,...

Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe runs away from home to join the navy. After a series of adventures at sea, he is shipwrecked in a devastating storm, and finds himself alone on a remote desert island. He remains there many years,...

The Good Soldier

by Ford Madox Ford & Zoe Heller

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZOE HELLER

When John Dowell and his wife befriend Edward and Leonora Ashburnham they appear to be the perfect couple. He is a distinguished soldier and she is beautiful and intelligent....

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories

by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer of uncommon talent; in The Murders in the Rue Morgue he created the genre of detective fiction while his genius for finding the strangeness lurking within us all has been an influence...

The Lost World

by Arthur Conan Conan Doyle

The notorious Professor Challenger claims that dinosaurs still walk the earth. When the press and the scientific community ridicule him, Challenger vows to show them proof. And so he sets off for South America,...

Kim

by Rudyard Kipling

Kim is an orphan who earns his living begging on the streets of Lahore. One day he befriends an aged Tibetan Lama who, although content to live simply in India, is a rich and powerful abbot in his own country....

Just So Stories

by Rudyard Kipling & Philip Pullman

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP PULLMAN

Have you ever wondered how the leopard got his spots? Or how the camel got his hump? Rudyard Kipling's witty and beautifully written stories explain these secrets and many...

Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Gaskell

Set in the watchful society of Hollingford, this is a warm tale of love and longing. Molly Gibson is the spirited, loyal daughter of the local doctor. Their peaceful close-knit home is turned upside down when...

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

Impish, daring young Tom Sawyer is the bane of the old, the hero of the young. There were some in his dusty old Missippi town who believed he would be President, if he escaped a hanging. For wherever there is...

Silas Marner

by George Eliot

Silas Marner lives a friendless and isolated existence near the country village of Raveloe, hoarding his gold. One night his fortune is stolen and Silas loses everything he holds dear. But then the golden-haired...

Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

Proud, passionate Eustacia Vye marries Clym Yeobright in the hope that he will help her escape her cramped rural existence. But when their relationship falters Eustacia turns to her old lover Damon Wildeve,...

The Mill on the Floss

by George Eliot & Marina Lewycka

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARINA LEWYCKA

Maggie and Tom Tulliver are both wilful, passionate children, and their relationship has always been tempestous. As they grow up together on the banks of the River Floss,...

Jude the Obscure

by Thomas Hardy

Jude Fawley is a young man who longs to better himself and go to Christminster University. However, poverty forces him into a job as a stonemason and an unhappy marriage. When his wife leaves him Jude moves...

Far from the Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

Bathsheba Everdene arrives in the small village of Weatherbury and captures the heart of three very different men; Gabriel Oak, a quiet shepherd, the proud, obdurate Farmer Boldwood and dashing, unscrupulous...

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude & Aylmer Maude

Anna Karenina is a novel of unparalleled richness and complexity, set against the backdrop of Russian high society. Tolstoy charts the course of the doomed love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman,...

Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

These are the fortunes and misfortunes of Moll Flanders: born in Newgate Prison, twelve years a prostitute, five times a wife (once to her own brother), twelve years a thief and eight years a transported felon...

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

by Arthur Conan Conan Doyle

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RUTH RENDELL

INCLUDES 'THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND'

The Baskerville family curse tells of how a terrifying, supernatural hound roams the moors around Baskerville Hall and preys...

When the Sleeper Wakes

by H.G. Wells & Orson Scott Card

Graham, an 1890s radical pamphleteer who is eagerly awaiting the twentieth century and all the advances it will bring, is stricken with insomnia. Finally resorting to medication, he instantly falls into a deep...

Treasure Island

by Robert Louis Stevenson & Jake Arnott

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW MOTION

When young Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map in a pirate's chest in his parents' inn, he is drawn into a world of danger and adventure. He joins the crew setting sail...