Against the backdrop of growing discontent in Paris, Doctor Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years of unjust imprisonment and b...

Candide is an innocent young nobleman who leads an idyllic, sheltered life and has adopted the optimistic mindset promoted by his tutor Dr Pangloss...

Poverty-stricken and cut off from society, former law student Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov leads a desolate life in a dreary little room in St Pet...

Conflict between father and son is one of the oldest themes in literature, and in this open letter to his father - a letter which was never sent - ...

Europe after the Rain takes its title from Max Ernst's surrealist work, which depicts a vision of rampant destruction - a theme which Burns here ta...

A mysterious murder near Esher, a gruesome delivery of two human ears packed in coarse salt, the disappearance of secret submarine plans, the s...

An impoverished member of the privileged Old New York society, Lily Bart is beautiful and socially agreeable, yet she has almost reached the age of...

When the immoral libertine Monsieur de Franval marries and fathers a daughter, he decides to inculcate in her a sense of absolute freedom, an uncon...

Proust's only other work of fiction published in his lifetime apart from the monumental novel cycle 'In Search of Lost Time, Pleasures and Days' ta...

Universally acclaimed as the master of the short-story form, Anton Chekhov begun his literary career as the author of brief tales and vignettes of ...

As the sensitive and delicate Gertrude begins to shrink from her drunken and violent husband, their marriage becomes a battleground. Gertrude turns...

One of the main forces in early nineteenth-century literature, Sir Walter Scott was not only among the greatest novelists of his time, but influenc...

Once again the eminent detective is presented with a series of seemingly impenetrable cases: an illustrious client begs him to unmask the nefar...

When Conrad, son of Prince Manfred of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances on his wedding day, his father, fearing his line is at an end,...

This collection contains all of Lear's most celebrated verse and prose productions, from the 1846 volume of limericks, A Book of Nonsense, to his N...

Despite being decorated with a German Service Cross, Willi Wegler is inwardly sickened by both Hitler's genocidal war and the complicity of his fel...

Sara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina a...

It is New Year's Eve, and Nellie, the pretty daughter of a landowning general, is sitting in her room looking in the mirror. Although she is tired ...

During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received - as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge schol...

When Lord Petre had the effrontery of cutting off a lock of Lady Arabella Fermor's hair, a veritable war erupted between the two noble families. A ...

On a cold morning, at daybreak, the 304th New York Regiment is waiting to engage with the Confederate army. Among the soldiers is young Henry Flemi...

A secret terrorist group infiltrates the household of a government official's son, with a view to spying on the father and, ultimately, assassi...

When Sherlock Holmes receives a bungled tip-off from one of the agents of his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, the great detective hopes to avoid a...