It is a curious thing that at my age-fifty-five last birthday-I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I...

Allan Quatermain, the hero of Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, tells a moving tale of his first wife, the Dutch-born Marie Marais, and the adventures that were linked to her beautiful, tragic history.

An outstanding example of psychologically driven modernist fiction, Knut Hamsun's Hunger portrays a struggling artist's descent into madness as his body and mind succumb to starvation.

Subtitled A Story of To-day', A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern worl...

Hardy's third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes , follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a sparse sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: St...

The innocent and naïve Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by the seductive Arabella Donn. But their union is an unhappy one, and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin,...

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in Thomas Hardy's compelling masterpiece of tragic fiction.

Selected Short Stories: Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 near Dorchester in that part of England he called Wessex. With stories sometimes from his own imagination and sometimes from local tradition, Hardy's work, like Dickens and Trollop...

One of the most popular of Hardy's novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a rom...

Jaroslav Haeks world-famous satirical farce The Good Soldier vejk has been translated into over sixty languages, and is one of the best-known Czech works ever published. A soldier in the First World War who never actually sees any com...

"Georgette Heyer is unbeatable!" —Sunday TelegraphFor her, he would do anything.…Plainspoken country gentleman Philip Jettan won't bother with a powdered wig, high heels, and fashionable lace cuffs, until he discovers th...

Resourceful, adventurous and utterly indefatigable, Sophy is hardly the mild-mannered girl that the Rivenhalls expect when they agree to take her in. Kind-hearted Aunt Lizzy is shocked; stern Cousin Charles and his humorless fiancee E...

One of the first great novels of the Romantic era, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame has thrilled generations of readers with its powerfully melodramatic story of Quasimodo, the deformed hunchback who lives in the bell tower o...

This is a brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization of Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian novel, set in the future and widely considered one of the greatest novels of all time. Abridged.

One of Henry James's three late masterpieces, The Ambassadors is a bittersweet paean to the life not lived and one of the most achingly beautiful and moving novels ever written.

Dealing heavily with the then very timely political issue of feminism and the changing role of women in society, Henry James's The Bostonians is the story of Civil War veteran Basil Ransom's conflict with his cousin Olive Chancellor f...

Dealing heavily with the then very timely political issue of feminism and the changing role of women in society, Henry James's The Bostonians is the story of Civil War veteran Basil Ransom's conflict with his cousin Olive Chancellor f...

In three beautifully crafted, dramatic acts, James's little-known novel unravels the painfully complicated emotional bonds which exist within a group of friends and lovers connected by two neighboring homes as they fight publicl...

The Turn of the Screw has been described by many critics as the most sophisticated and terrifying ghost story in the English language. It is considered one of the great intellectual "spook tales" of all time.In The Turn of t...

This collection includes a selection of H.P. Lovecrafts finest chilling tales. Lovecrafts most famous monster is Cthulhu, a gargantuan beast which has been lying dormant for millions of years but rises up and forces mankind to recogn...

In James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping and poignant look into race relations, a half-white half-black man of very light complexion must choose between his heritage and the art that he loves and the ability to escape the inhere...

Continuing the masterly reading of short stories, this volume contains the last five stories from the Dubliners collection: A Painful Case, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother Grace, and perhaps the most well known of all, The Dea...

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis climaxes in the very first line--the protagonist has indeed been transformed. The critical questions lie in the interpretation of the transformation. Kafka has been said to have offered everything from ...

First published in 1925, The Trial, one of Franz Kafka's best-known works, tells the story of a man arrested for an unknown crime by a remote, inaccessible authority and his struggle for control over the increasing absurdity of his li...

Torn between his passion for two women and his abiding attachment to his mother, young Paul Morel struggles with his desire to please everyone---particularly himself---in D. H. Lawrence's highly autobiographical novel.

Torn between his passion for two women and his abiding attachment to his mother, young Paul Morel struggles with his desire to please everyone---particularly himself---in D. H. Lawrence's highly autobiographical novel.

Another thrilling mystery story in which the famous French investigative journalist Joseph Rouletabille, who was first introduced in Gaston Leroux's masterpiece The Mystery of the Yellow Room, makes his appearance before the public ag...

Another thrilling mystery story in which the famous French investigative journalist Joseph Rouletabille, who was first introduced in Gaston Leroux's masterpiece The Mystery of the Yellow Room, makes his appearance before the public ag...

Sinclair Lewis's epic of the booming 1920s uniquely captures the relentless culture of American business. A classic novel about conformity in small-town America, celebrated for its comic tone, satire, and vivid dialogue.

How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn's bestselling -- and timeless -- classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South W...