It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time. Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.
Virginia Woolf's masterly novel, in which she perfected the interior monologue, brings past, present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923.
A young prince meets with his father's ghost, who alleges that his own brother, now married to his widow, murdered him. The prince devises a scheme to test the truth of the ghost's accusation, feigning wild madness while plotting a brutal revenge. But his apparent insanity soon begins to wreak havoc on innocent and guilty alike.
Features Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; and the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career.
The classic coming-of-age story presents David Copperfield, who suffers the wrath of his stepfather, the abusive Mr. Mudstone, and the betrayal of the scheming Uriah Heep, finds a new life with his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood, and falls deeply in love with child-like Dora, as he struggles to escape his impoverished and unhappy childhood. Reprint
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
The bitter, deformed brother of the King is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal - and, in his skilful manipulation of events and people, Richard is a chilling incarnation of the lure of evil and the temptation of power.
Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father's wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On his return, his desire is to be reunited with the lady Rowena, but he soon finds himself playing a dangerous game as he is drawn into a struggle between the noble King Richard and scheming brother John.
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Wellington leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten.
Streetwise George and his childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But do dreams come at a price!
'An irresistible Hitchcockian gem: a fiendishly-plotted crime novel told in crisp, elegant prose' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
'Matsumoto was Japan's Agatha Christie' Laura Hackett, The Sunday Times
'It was a puzzle with no solution. But he did not lose heart.'
In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime...
Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto's masterpiece - and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written.
With a foreword by Ali Hazelwood, author of The Love Hypothesis and Love, Theoretically
Elizabeth Bennet must get married - her family's status depends on it. But she and Mr Darcy, her suitor, don't exactly see eye to eye. He's embarrassed her, she's snubbed him. As a pair, they're headed for disaster.
In one of the world's most enduring love stories, both would-be lovers must overcome their personal pride and social prejudices to allow their turbulent, but true, love to bloom.
Fall head over heels for First Impressions, Penguin's boldly designed new Jane Austen collection for young-adult readers featuring the complete and unabridged texts. Full of meet-cutes, missed connections and drama, this eye-catching six-book series is an open invitation to embrace your inner romantic
Herzog is alone now that Medeleine has left him. Locked for days in the custody of his rambling memories, Herzog scrawls frantic letters which he never mails. His mind buzzes with conundrums and polemics, writing in a spectacular intellectual labyrinth. Is he crazy, or is he a genius?
