The Outsider

William Shakespeare

Ladybird

With a foreword by Lev Rosen, author of the Evander Mills series and You've Goth My Heart. 'All that glisters is not gold.' Rediscover Shakespeare's tale of bitterness and retribution. Bitterness begets blood. Bassiano is in love with the gorgeous heiress Portia! Alas, he's too poor to pass the suitors' test set by her father. Fortunately, Bassiano's best friend, Antonio, s...

Virgil

Penguin

Crafted during the reign of Augustus Caesar at the outset of the Roman Empire, Virgil's Aeneid is a tale of thrilling adventure, extreme adversity, doomed romance, fateful battles, and profound loss. Through its stirring account of human struggle, meddling gods, and conflicting destinies, the poem brings to life the triumphs and trials that led to one of the most powerful socie...

Mary Shelley / Siv Jansson / Keith C / Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Wordsworth Classics

Frankenstein is the classic gothic horror novel which has thrilled and engrossed readers for two centuries. Written by Mary Shelley, it is a story which she intended would 'curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.' The tale is a superb blend of science fiction, mystery and thriller. Victor Frankenstein driven by the mad dream of creating his own creature, experim...

Robert Plunket

Penguin

A Madame Bovary for the heyday of gay New York, Love Junkie is a riotously funny, razor-sharp tale about wanting it all 'He was a charismatic porn star who sold his dirty underwear. I was an upper-middle-class housewife from Bronxville' Mimi Smithers, bored aesthete manquée, lives with her husband Boyce in the New York suburbs, where dreams of dazzling social success elude he...

Caroline Blackwood

Abacus

Caroline Blackwood's masterpiece, shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize - a gothic family drama in miniature In her gloomy mausoleum of a home, the terrifying matriarch Great Granny Webster spends her days sitting bolt upright in a Victorian chair, entirely alone except for her one-eyed maid - and her orphaned great-granddaughter, sent to stay for the sea air. She presides ove...

A. A. Milne

Phoenix

Winnie the Pooh is a classic children's book by A.A. Milne that follows the adventures of a honey-loving bear named Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends, including Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Owl, and Christopher Robin, in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood. The stories often center around Pooh's playful attempts to find honey, his simple nature, and the heart-warming friendships between t...

Albert Camus

Penguin Classics

The Outsider is an enduring classic of existential writing by Albert Camus'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know'Meursault is different. He will not lie. He will not pretend. He is true to himself.So when his mother dies and he is unmoved, he refuses to do the proper thing and grieve. Returning to Algiers after the funeral, he carries on life as usual until he bec...

Albert Camus

Ladybird

'When silence or tricks of language contribute to maintaining an abuse that must be reformed or a suffering that can be relieved, then there is no other solution but to speak out'Written when execution by guillotine was still legal in France, Albert Camus' devastating attack on the 'obscene exhibition' of capital punishment remains one of the most powerful, persuasive arguments...

Albert Camus

Penguin

The summation of the existentialist philosophy threaded throughout all his writing, Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus is translated by Justin O'Brien with an introduction by James Wood in Penguin Classics.In this profound and moving philosophical statement, Camus poses the fundamental question: is life worth living? If human existence holds no significance, what can keep us fr...

Albert Camus

Penguin

The Plague is Albert Camus's world-renowned fable of fear and courageThe townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and...

Albert Camus

Penguin

The Plague by Albert Camus is an extraordinary odyssey into the darkness and absurdity of human existence. 'On the morning of April 16, Dr Rieux emerged from his consulting-room and came across a dead rat in the middle of the landing.' It starts with the rats. Vomiting blood, they die in their hundreds, then in their thousands. When the rats are all gone, the citizens begin to ...

Albert Camus

Penguin

A daring critique of communism and how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, Camus' essay examines the revolutions in France and Russia, and argues that since they were both guilty of producing tyranny and corruption, hope for the future lies only in revolt without revolution. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourse...