When Richard Hannay finds the corpse of freelance spy Franklin P. Scudder in his London flat, he goes on the run, fearing that...

Coming back into town after a hunting expedition, Alexandre Dumas witnesses an incredible scene: a man has come to hand himself...

A Victorian scientist and inventor creates a machine for propelling himself through time, and voyages to the year AD 802701,...

Stephen Glennard is in desperate need of money. So when he becomes aware of the potential value of a series of passionate love...

As a group of Western tourists travel down the Nile on the steamer Korosko towards the historical sites near Egypt's southern...

On his thirtieth birthday, the bank clerk Josef K. is suddenly arrested by mysterious agents for an unspecified crime. He is told...

Gilbert's libretti of the comic operas composed by Arthur Sullivan are hugely well known, and lines such as "let the punishment...

An unnamed young governess is sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Yet she is soon oppressed...

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

Ivan Bunin's first published work, The Village is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at...

Helen and Ridley Ambrose are preparing to set off for an exotic resort off the coast of South America on the Euphrosyne, a ship...

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in...

When the peaceful atmosphere of Barchester is destroyed by a scandal concerning the financial affairs of an almshouse, Septimus...

Through a series of connected monologues, The Waves tells the story of six very different friends – Bernard, Louis, Neville,...

When strange things are reported to be floating in rivers in rural Vermont after a flood, old myths about hill-dwelling monsters...

Set in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during the chaotic winter of 1918–19, The White Guard, Bulgakov’s first full-length novel,...

Depicting the adventures of Rat, Mole, Badger and the pretentious Mr Toad, The Wind in the Willows sees these four animals...

This collection of lesser-known early short fiction - ranging from absurd humorous sketches to psychological dramas and tragic...

In love with the beautiful heiress Laura Fairlie, the impoverished art teacher Walter Hartright finds his romantic desires...

When young Dorothy and her dog Toto are caught in a cyclone, their Kansas farmhouse is carried off to the magical Land of Oz....

A glorious exercise in cheeky punmanship, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders sees Jonathan Swift in fine scatological form. Flying...

It is 1880: after visiting his mistress in the London suburbs, Colonel Pargiter returns home to his children and his dying wife....

Based on Dovlatov's actual experience of being a prison guard in Soviet Russia in the 1960s, and full of comic and humane detail,...

This Side of Paradise charts the life of Amory Blaine, an ambitious young man loosely based on Fitzgerald himself, as he moves...

Admired for the poetical heights of his Canti, the gentle wit of his prose dialogues and the soul-searching questionings of his...

What could be better during the golden age of boating on the Thames than a relaxing row up the river? So think J., George and...

One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for...

On a visit to a provincial town to see his sister Nina who is suffering from cancer, Alexei Laptev, who works for his father's...

When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse...

‘Tobermory’ – the title story of this collection – is widely considered one of Saki’s finest pieces, in which a short-sighted...