Classic fiction Books 733 results

Agatha Christie

Harper

The daughter of an American millionaire dies on a train en route for Nice... When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again - for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing. The prime suspect is R...

Mary Shelley

Penguin

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American ReadA stunning new clothbound edition of Mary Shelley's infamous work of horror fiction, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectible Penguin editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design Obsessed by creating life ...

Jane Austen

Vintage

**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** Discover Jane Austen's most beloved classic. When Elizabeth Bennet meets Mr Darcy, she is repelled by his overbearing pride and prejudice towards her family. But the Bennet girls are in need of financial security in the shape of husbands, so when Darcy's friend, the affable Mr Bingley, forms an attachment to Jane, Darcy beco...

Franz Kafka

Wordsworth Classics

Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing tale that maintains, to the very end, a relentles...

Leo Tolstoy

Alma Classics

Leo Tolstoy's most personal novel, Anna Karenina scrutinizes fundamental ethical and theological questions through the tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, "moral" life, standing for honesty and sincerity. Passion drives her to adultery, and this flies in the face of the corrupt Russian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the aristocrat Konstantin Lev...

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Penguin

'A truly great translation . . . This English version really is better' - A. N. Wilson, The SpectatorTIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's 'psychological record of a crime' gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before. ...

Emily Brontë

Alma Classics

The tale of Heathcliff and Cathy's ungovernable love and suffering, and the havoc that their passion wreaks on the families of the Earnshaws and the Lintons, shocked the book's first readers, with even Emily's sister Charlotte wondering whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff . Replete with unforgettable characters and situations that have seared thems...

George Orwell

Penguin

Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way...

Agatha Christie

Harper

The old children's game now seemed rather tasteless. The real Mrs McGinty was killed by a crushing blow to the back of the head and her pitifully small savings were stolen.Suspicion falls immediately on her lodger, hard up and out of a job. Hercule Poirot has other ideas - unaware that his own life is now in great danger... ...

Agatha Christie

Harper

A charity murder game at a Devon house turns into the real thing. Sir George and Lady Stubbs, the hosts of a village fete, hit upon the novel idea of staging a mock murder mystery. In good faith, Ariadne Oliver, the well known crime writer, agrees to organise their murder hunt. Despite weeks of meticulous planning, at the last minute Ariadne calls her friend Hercule Poirot for ...

Arthur Conan Doyle

Penguin

The Penguin English Library Edition The deadly hand of Professor Moriarty once more reaches out to commit a vile and ingenious crime, but a mole in Moriarty's criminal organization alerts Sherlock Holmes of the evil deed by means of a cipher . . . When Holmes and Watson arrive at a Sussex manor house they appear to be too late. The discovery of a body suggests that Moriarty's h...

Leo Tolstoy

Alma Classics

The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and often neglecting his family in the process. When, after a small accident, he fails to make the expected recovery, it gradually becomes clear that he is soon to die. Ivan Ilyich then starts to question the futility and barrenness of his previous existenc...

Albert Camus

Penguin

'My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.'In The Outsider (1942), his classic existentialist novel, Camus explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms. Meursault, his anti-hero, will not lie. When his mother dies, he refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. And when he commits a random act of vi...

George Orwell

Penguin

'An unrivalled picture of the rumours, suspicions and treachery of civil war' Antony BeevorEvery line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catal...

Emilia Pardo Bazan

Penguin

A rich and unforgettable tragic-comic novel of sexual intrigue and political scheming, The House of Ulloa is one of the greatest works of nineteenth-century Spanish literature. The House of Ulloa follows pure and pious Father Julián Alvarez, who is sent to a remote country estate to put the affairs of the marquis, an irresponsible libertine, in order. When he discovers moral de...

Niccolò Machiavelli

Alma Classics

At the end of an industrious political career in conflictriven Italy, the Florentine diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli composed his masterpiece The Prince, a classic study of power and politics, and a manual of ruthlessness for any ambitious ruler. Controversial in his own time, The Prince made Machiavelli's name a byword for manipulative scheming, and had an impact on such major fi...

Ernest Hemingway

Vintage

Ernest Hemingway's literary apprenticeship was served in journalism, a career that he pursued for over four decades. From his early work as a correspondent for the Toronto Star in Europe during the 1920s, through his inimitable articles for Esquire and his first-hand reports of the Spanish Civil War, to the mellow, ironic chronicle of his last African adventures, few correspond...

Arthur Conan Doyle

Penguin

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle"Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body: this classic horror story pits detective against dog, rationalism against the supernatural, good against evil. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found ...

George Eliot

Penguin

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Penguin English Library Edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot'She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings - that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible day'G...

Jane Austen

Penguin

The Penguin English Library Edition of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen"The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"Jane Austen's novel tells the story of Marianne Dashwood, who wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignore...

Charles Dickens

Penguin

The Penguin English Library Edition of Hard Times by Charles Dickens'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else'Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family with facts...

Anne Bronte

Penguin

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it'In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local g...

Charles Dickens

Penguin

The Penguin English Library Edition of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!'Described by Dickens as 'the best story I have written', A Tale of Two Cities interweaves thrilling historical drama with heartbreaking personal tragedy. It vividly depicts a revolutionary Paris running red...

Elizabeth Gaskell

Penguin

The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?'Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move fr...

Wilkie Collins

Penguin

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins'Here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond - bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man'When Rachel Verinder's birthday present - the Moonstone, a large Indian diamond - is stolen at her party, suspicion and the diamond'...

Mary Shelley

Penguin

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley'Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness'A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of V...

Agatha Christie

Harper

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully adapted versions are shorter with the language targeted at upper-intermediate learners (CEF level B2). Each reader...

William Golding

Faber & Faber

Lord of the Flies is a novel that has captivated schoolchildren ever since it was first published in 1954. A teacher himself, Golding clearly understood what excites and interests children. It is not only a gripping story, with strong, sympathetic characters, but it also raises timeless and profound questions. Part of its lasting appeal, particularly in schools, surely arises ...

Henry James

Penguin

The Penguin English Library edition of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 'She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her' When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her freedom,...

Sir Richard Burton

Canterbury Classics

No library's complete without the classics! This new, enhanced leather-bound edition collects the beloved tales of Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton.They are ancient stories, but they still enchant our imaginations today: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "Sinbad the Sailor," "Aladdin," and more. These and the other Middle Eastern stories collected in Arabian Nig...