Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances' love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new frie...
Elinor is as prudent as her sister Marianne is impetuous. Each must learn from the other after they are they are forced by their father's death to leave their home and enter into the contests of po...
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes ...
Perfectly preserving the tone and mood of the novel whilst condensing it into two acts, David Malouf, with the gift for language already evident from his novels and poetry, presents afresh the time...
Pip's life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events lead him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a Lond...
The exploits of Tom Sawyer, a consummate prankster with a quick wit, captivate children of all ages. Yet through the novel's humorous escapades, from the episodes of the whitewashed fence and the o...
Who would have thought a comedy of manners written more than a hundred years ago would still be so apt and so funny? Oscar Wilde was a genius of play-writing, and his deftness, wit and sharp eye fo...
Wuthering Heights is the tale of two families both joined and riven by love and hate. Cathy is a beautiful and wilful young woman torn between her soft-hearted husband and Heathcliff, the passionat...
One freezing morning, a lone man wandering across the Artic ice caps is rescued from starvation by a ship's captain. Victor Frankenstein's story is one of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young s...
Is there anything quite so exhilarating as swimming in wild water? This is a joyful swimming tour of Britain, a frog’s-eye view of the country’s best bathing holes - the rivers, rock po...
When a tornado crashes through Kansas city, Dorothy and her dog Toto are whisked far away, over the rainbow, to a strange land called Oz. How will they ever get home? And what is at the end of the ...
Your sister might be the kindred soul who knows you best, or the most alien being in your household; she might enrage you or inspire you; she might be your fiercest competitor or closest co-conspir...
In the Time Traveller's miraculous new machine, we will be carried from a Victorian dinner table to 802,701 AD, when the Earth is divided between the gentle, ineffective Eloi, and the ape-like Morl...
You’ve just passed someone on the street who could be the love of your life, the person you’re destined for - what do you do? In Murakami’s world, you tell them a story. The five ...
A soldier falls asleep on duty and is threatened with being court-martialled. An officer lies in mud, fighting for his life and the life of his men. A young man walks across Waterloo Bridge, explos...
‘I want to change, but not if it means changing,' a patient once said to me in complete innocenceWhat do we do when we find ourselves trapped by our own thoughts or behaviour? Dra...
A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be e...
How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? Tim Parks - lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. With brut...
What is the secret to true friendship? Is it really love's quieter relation or something stronger and more profound? And where does the line between the two lie? Rose Tremain looks at two unlikely ...
The Baskerville family curse tells of how a terrifying, supernatural hound roams the moors around Baskerville Hall and preys on members of the family in revenge for a ghastly crime committed by one...