Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress.
Northern Lights introduces Lyra, an orphan, who lives in a parallel universe in which science, theology and magic are entwined. Lyra's search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children and turns into a quest to understand a mysterious phenomenon called Dust. In The Subtle Knife she is joined on her journey by Will, a boy who possesses a knife that can cut windows between worlds. As Lyra learns the truth about her parents and her prophesied destiny, the two young people are caught up in a war against celestial powers that ranges across many worlds and leads to a thrilling conclusion in The Amber Spyglass.
The epic story Pullman tells is not only a spellbinding adventure featuring armoured polar bears, magical devices, witches and daemons, it is also an audacious and profound re-imagining of Milton's Paradise Lost. An utterly entrancing blend of metaphysical speculation and bravura storytelling, HIS DARK MATERIALS is a monumental and enduring achievement.
Very Good Jeeves! (1930) is a collection of eleven short stories starring Bertie Wooster in eleven alarming predicaments from which he has to be rescued by his peerless gentleman's gentleman. Whether Bertie is tangling with a red-headed ball of fire such as Roberta Wickham, dealing with an irate headmistress, placating a rampaging aunt, puncturing the wrong hot water bottle, singing 'Sonny Boy', or simply trying to concentrate on his golf handicap, Jeeves is always there to help - though rarely in ways which his employer expects. These brilliantly plotted stories give the essence of Wodehousian comedy.
London has the greatest literary tradition of any city in the world. But there has also been an innumerable host of writers who have sought to capture the essence of London and what it meant for the people who lived there or were merely passing through. and they faithfully transcribed what they saw and felt in the stories they told of London town.
Saki's dazzling tales manage the remarkable feat of being anarchic and urbane at the same time. Saki's elegantly mischievous young heroes sow chaos in their wake without breaking a sweat, occasionally assisted by werewolves, tigers, eavesdropping house pets and casually murderous children.
It is the story of the Galactic Empire, crumbling after twelve thousand years of rule. And it is the particular story of psycho-historian Hari Seldon, the only man who can see the horrors the future has in store: a dark age of ignorance, barbarism and violence that will last for thirty thousand years.
This anthology contains a cross-section covering his career, including such legendary songs as 'Suzanne', 'Sisters of Mercy', 'Bird on the Wire', 'Famous Blue Raincoat' and 'I'm Your Man' and searingly memorable poems from many collections including Flowers for Hitler, Beautiful Losers and Death of a Lady's Man. Encompassing the erotic and the melancholy, the mystical and the sardonic, this volume showcases a writer of dazzling intelligence and live-wire emotional immediacy.
Playful kittens and ruthless predators, beloved pets and witches' familiars - cats of all kinds come alive in these stories. The essential unknowableness of cats inspires the most exotic flights of fancy: Calvino's secret city of cats in 'The Garden of Stubborn Cats', the disappearing animal in Ursula K.
Poet, artist and mystic Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 to a poor Christian family in Lebanon and emigrated to the United States as an adolescent. His masterpiece, The Prophet, a book of poetic essays written in his youth, has sold over eight million copies in more than twenty languages since its first publication in 1923. But all Gibran's works - essays, stories, parables, prose poems - are imbued with equally powerful simplicity and wisdom, whether meditating upon love, marriage, friendship, work, pleasure, time or grief. Perhaps no other twentieth-century writer has touched the hearts and minds of so remarkably varied and widespread a readership.Included in this volume are The Madman, The Forerunner, The Prophet, Sand and Foam, Jesus the Son of Man, Earth Gods, The Wanderer, The Garden of the Prophet, Prose Poems, Spirits Rebellious, Nymphs of the Valley and A Tear and a Smile.
