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

A rich and varied array of stories and vignettes, The Pickwick Papers is based around the investigations of the Corresponding...

At the end of an industrious political career in conflic-triven Italy, the Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli composed his...

When the orphaned William refuses his uncles' proposal to become a clergyman and angrily leaves his job in the counting-house of...

Having lived in the city of Orphalese for twelve years, the revered Prophet is about to board a ship taking him back to the isle...

This collection of Pushkin’s stories begins with ‘The Queen of Spades’, perhaps the most celebrated short story in Russian...

Roberta, Phyllis and Peter have their comfortable lives in London thrown into disarray by the unexpected disappearance of their...

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

Published posthumously, The Red Notebook is an account of the youth of the author of the seminal Romantic novel Adolphe, relating...

"Holmes!" I cried. "Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of...

“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”

Described...

Nathanael remains haunted by his childhood fear that the lawyer Coppelius, a strange night-time visitor who used to come to his...

Having been found guilty of adultery, Hester Prynne is forced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter A as a punishment for her...

The shop owner Adolf Verloc, member of an anarchist group and secret agent for a foreign government, is summoned to meet Mr...

After her parents die of cholera in India, Mary Lennox is sent to live with her uncle in his gloomy house in Yorkshire, where she...

When the Selfish Giant decides to build a wall around his garden to prevent the children from playing in it, it becomes barren...

Deeply bored by the lack of mental stimulus and the dull routine of existence, Sherlock Holmes is about to resort to his daily...

As their father is sick, Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel must work to support their family. Despite this life of...

Dual-Language Edition.
After years of fierce battle, the Emperor Charlemagne's army is finally on the brink of victory over the...

Presented as a collection of confessional letters written by the eponymous protagonist, The Sorrows of Young Werther charts the...

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

Combining psychological detail with a strong sense of place and time, this tale bears all the hallmarks of Chekhov's genius, and...

Caught up in an oil spill, a dying seagull scrambles ashore to lay her final egg and lands on a balcony, where she meets Zorba, a...

In Dandelion Land, a young snail can't stop asking his friends awkward questions, such as: why are we so slow - and why can't we...

"After a while, with the parrot's help, the Doctor got to learn the language of the animals so well that he could talk to them...

When Cyril, Anthea, Robert and Jane find the Psammead, a magical sand fairy, in a pet shop in London, they have no idea that they...

Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel and Horace Octavius ("H.O.") Bastable are desperate to help their widowed father to restore the...

Imbued with a comic nostalgia and overlaid with Dovlatov's characteristically dark-edged humour and wry power of observation, The...

When shop-owner Julia Segovia decides that she’s going to marry the handsome if exceedingly young and naive soldier Valentin Bru,...

Gilbert Markham is fascinated by Helen Graham, the beautiful and enigmatic woman who has recently moved into Wildfell Hall. He is...