'The hideous, then unfamiliar shriek of the air-raid sirens sang out over London.'Upper-class rogues, bohemians, dowagers, socialites, bureaucrats and delinquent evacuees prepare for En...
Lord Jim, first published in 1900, confirmed Conrad's place in literature as one of the first 'modernists' of English letters. Set in the Malay Archipelago, not only does the novel provide a gripp...
Une Vie (1883) and Bel-Ami (1885) seem almost diametrically opposed in tone and temper. The ‘Life’ of the first is poignantly restricted within a woman’s lot, while Bel-Ami is rob...
Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. But he has dreams - vivid, extraordinary day dreams - in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he - a we...
Following a Parisian philosophy teacher through the cafés and bars of Montparnasse over two days in the sweltering summer of 1938, Sartre's searing novel explores what it truly means to be f...
Holly O'Neil knows that every charm bracelet tells a story.Many years ago she was sent one with just a single charm attached. The charms have been appearing ever since, often at challenging t...
If you don't care about her, who will? Hope Randall leads a quiet life, but that peace is about to be shattered. When a stranger turns up on her doorstep, bringing news of a half-sister she never k...
'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, The Waves. Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in...
For readers who were gripped by the world of espionage in William Boyd's Restless, The Berlin Crossing is a compelling, unforgettable novel that brings to life the very human story behind a momento...
Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge, presiding over cases in the family court. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude and sensitivity. But her professional success belies priv...
In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply i...
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quenti...
Two women. Separated by decades. Entwined by fate.There are secrets at Fiercombe that those who remain there are determined to keep. Tragedy haunts the empty rooms and traces of the previous occupa...
From the bestselling author of "Push," a story of survival and awakening--and one young man's remarkable strength"The Kid" brings us deep into the interior life of Abdul Jones, ...
At the start of his school holidays, Danny Delaney is looking forward to a trouble-free summer. But when his mother returns home one afternoon, flanked by two policemen, he knows that something ter...
Men Without Women was a milestone in Hemingway's career. Fiesta had already established him as a novelist of exceptional power, but with these short stories, his second collection, he showed that i...
After a decade in love with dashing Francis, Allegra North thought that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence and they parted. But a year later she returns to the beautiful Devon coa...
From the bestselling author of "Push," a story of survival and awakening--and one young man's remarkable strength"The Kid" brings us deep into the interior life of Abdul Jones, ...
In Gibbons's classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies in...
Everything Is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer's bestselling novel of a search for truth, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.The inspiration for the Liev Schreiber f...