A brilliant new anthology that shows how fiction was reinvented in the twelfth century after an absence of hundreds of years. Essential for all students of medieval literature, Early Fiction in England includes extracts by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Marie de France, Chaucer and many others, in new translations and with illuminating introductions. Before the twelfth century, fiction had completely...

Royalties from the sale of this book will go to charities working towards the reconstruction of north-eastern Japan. 11th March 2011. An earthquake occurring off the north-eastern coast of Japan - magnitude 9.0, duration six minutes - unleashed a 50-foot tsunami that within fifteen minutes had slammed its way ashore, rushing inland six miles, crushing all in its path -...

An indelible portrait of one of the most famous and beloved authors in the canon of American literature – a collection of letters between Harper Lee and one of her closest friends that reveals the famously private writer as never before, in her own words. The violent racism of the American South drove Wayne Flynt away from his home in...

Volume 2 contains novels four, five and six of the Dance To The Music Of Time sequence. Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, and is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England. It is unrivalled for its scope, its humour and the enormous pleasure it has given to generations. This volume contains...

A selection of George Orwell's prescient, clear-eyed and stimulating writing on the subjects of truth and lies. With an introduction by Alan Johnson. 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.' This selection of George Orwell’s writing, from both his novels and non-fiction, gathers together his thoughts on the...

Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife, invites you to creep through haunted houses and commune with the undead in this anthology of all things ghostly. Haunted houses, spectral chills, and of course, the odd cat. . . In this volume, Audrey Niffenegger has brought together her selection of the very creepiest, weirdest and wittiest ghost stories...

Beginning in the late 1940's, American literature discovered a four-letter word, and the word was beat. Beat as in poverty and beatitude, ecstasy and exile. Beat was Jack Kerouac touring the American road in prose as fast and reckless as a V-8 Chevy. It was the junk-sick surrealism of William Burroughs; the wild, Whitmanesque poetry of Allen Ginsberg; and the...

The hilarious writing of James Thurber, author of 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', collected in this classic anthology. This collection brings together the best of James Thurber's brilliantly funny, eccentric and anarchic writings. It includes his most famous work, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in which an ordinary man's fantasies have a more powerful hold on him than...

Brought to you by Penguin. Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown bring together a dynamic group of Black writers, organisers, artists, academics and cultural figures to discuss the topics the two have dedicated their lives to understanding and teaching: vulnerability and shame resilience. Contributions by Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Laverne Cox, Jason Reynolds, Austin Channing Brown, and more. It started...

'It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered' Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years. Ranging from the Romantics of the early nineteenth century to works of contemporary fiction, it includes Hoffmann's hallucinatory portrait...

‘O tell me the truth about love.’ W.H. Auden Many of the most popular works in the English language celebrate love in all its forms: that heady first flush, the agony of heartbreak, joyful reunions, the love of a parent for a child… And what better way to share these beautiful pieces than to read them aloud, to someone you...

A classic introduction to Latin literature, with translations of the best passages from Virgil, Livy, Ovid, Seneca and many others. This classic anthology traces the development of Latin literature from the early Republican works of Cicero and Catullus, to the writers of the Empire such as Lucan and Petronius, to the later writings of St Augustine. The selections cover comedy...

Like any small community, Linchester has its intrigues: love affairs, money problems, unhappy marriages. But the gossip is elevated to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the very night of his beautiful wife's birthday party. The whole neighbourhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasp stings Patrick suffered at the end of the evening. But did...

When Professor Allan Grant is found stabbed to death, all the evidence points to an obsessed student, 21-year-old Laurie Kenyon. She sent him passionate letters, stalked him, watched him through his study window. And after the murder, she wakes up in her dormitory, covered in blood and clutching the knife that killed him, with no memory of the brutal crime....

Who would have believed that Alice Whittaker's life could change? She was thirty-seven, rich but dowdy, with no career. Her life a lonely failure, she had got by with the one thing she did have: money. Then handsome Andrew Fielding came into her life and just as suddenly her beautiful friend Nesta vanished from it, leaving behind a trail of...