A young man, broken down in the fog, witnesses a murder he is asked to conceal... A full-length novel adapted by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie's acclaimed play. When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog in South Wales and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, gun in her hand. She admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story. But is it possible that Laura Warwick did not commit the murder after all? If so, who is she shielding? The victim's young half-brother or his dying matriarchal mother? Laura's lover? Perhaps the father of the little boy killed in an accident for which Warwick was responsible? The house seems full of possible suspects...THE UNEXPECTED GUEST is considered to be one of the finest of Christie's plays. Hailed as `another Mousetrap' when it opened on 12 August 1958 in the West End, it ran for 604 performances over the succeeding 18 months and has been staged many times around the world over the last 40 years.
"The Brothers Karamazov" is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving Karamazov and his three sons - the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the social and spiritual strivings in what was both a golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.
This is one of the best novels ever written, in a chic new deluxe edition. Orphaned Jane Eyre endures an unhappy childhood, hated by her aunt and cousins and then sent to comfortless Lowood School. But life there improves and Jane stays on as a teacher, though she still longs for love and friendship. At Mr Rochester's house, where she goes to work as a governess, she hopes she might have found them - until she learns the terrible secret of the attic.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgeralds third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession, it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
Part of Alma Classics Evergreen series, this edition is thoroughly edited and extensively annotated and includes pictures and a comprehensive section on Austen's life and works.
Reissued in a gorgeous new trade paperback package, the World War I masterpiece will be published right on time to celebrate the centennial of WWI in 2014.
Undoubtedly the most famous verse written by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven is also one of the most famous poems in the world. Though it did not bring him much in the way of money, this piece was, as per the author's statements, composed quite methodically, wi
The central figure of this novel is the returning "native", Clym Yeobright, and his love for the beautiful but capricious Eustacia Vye. As character after character is driven to self-destruction, the presence of Egdon Heath becomes all-embracing, while Clym becomes a preacher.
This beautifully-illustrated edition of A. J. Glinksi's classic tales provides a marvelous glimpse into the world of Polish legend and folklore-and reveals its closeness and affinity to the greater European family of nations. Glinksi, Poland's ma
A collector's edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass, with letters, poems and a biography of their creator, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Featuring over 100 black and white illustrations by Arthur Rackham and Sir John Tenniel.
Based on Mailer's own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, The Naked and the Dead' is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking
A classic, haunting tale of reality and illusion, The Phantom of the Opera has been fascinating readers and viewers for nearly a century. The official tie-in edition to a smash musical hit from the creator of Cats--opening on Broadway in January.
When an ageing, impoverished nobleman decides to style himself "Don Quixote" and embarks upon a series of daring endeavours, it is clear that his ability to distinguish between reality and the fantasy world of literary romance has broken down. His exploits turn into comic misadventures, in which everyday objects are transformed into the accoutrements of chivalry, peasant girls become princesses and windmills are mistaken for formidable giants, leading the hero and his squire Sancho Panza into the realms of absurdity and humiliation. Renowned for its comical set pieces, Don Quixote is a profound meditation on the relationship between truth and fiction and the morality of deception, as well as the foundation stone of the modern novel.
Available for the first time in trade paperback, the fourth of five volumes collecting the complete fiction of William Hope Hodgson, an influential early twentieth-century author of science fiction, horror, and the fantastic.
A poisoning many years ago may not have been accidental after all...Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently random underlinings. However, when she writes down the letters, they spell out a very disturbing message: M a r y - J o r d a n - d i d - n o t - d i e - n a t u r a l l y...And sixty years after their first murder, Mary Jordan's enemies are still ready to kill...
Educated beyond her station, Grace Melbury returns to the woodland village of little Hintock and cannot marry her intended, Giles Winterborne. Her alternative choice proves disastrous, and in a moving tale that has vibrant characters, many humorous moments and genuine pathos coupled with tragic irony, Hardy eschews a happy ending. With characteristic derision, he exposes the cruel indifference of the archaic legal system off his day, and shows the tragic consequences of untimely adherence to futile social and religious proprieties
Part of Alma Classics Evergreen series of popular classics, Middlemarch is a literary landmark in its groundbreaking approach, as well as a priceless document of its age. This edition is thoroughly edited and extensively annotated and includes pictures and a comprehensive section on Eliot's life and works.
Orwell draws on his experience in the Indian Imperial Police for his first novel, "Burmese Days", a devastating indictment of British colonial rule (he resigned 'to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man's dominion over man', as he later wrote). John Flory, cowardly and self-pitying, makes an unlikely but all-too-human tragic hero as he defies convention and prejudice to befriend an Indian doctor, then shoots himself when the girl who had seemed to promise escape from the stultifying 'lie' of colonial life refuses to marry him. While reporting on the dark side of the Raj, Orwell nonetheless came under the spell of the landscape of the East, and the exotic background of "Burmese Days" inspired his most lush descriptive writing...Back in England, Orwell tackles capitalism, nonconformity and compromise in "Keep The Aspidistra Flying". Youthful idealist and would-be author Gordon Comstock rebels against a life of middle-class respectability (symbolized by the aspidistra), abandoning his job with an advertising company to work part-time in a bookshop.But everything goes wrong: alternately proud and self-loathing, he lets himself sink into poverty; he is unable to write; and, he gets his long-suffering girlfriend pregnant. At the end, respectably married - and with an aspidistra of his own -he is back at his old firm writing copy for deodorant ads. Grimly comic - and again, written from Orwell's own experience, this time of living in the London slums - "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is a still-relevant commentary on society's subservience to 'the Money God' and an affirmation of the power of human relationships to survive in spite of it. In "Coming Up for Air", George Bowling, married, mortgaged and middle aged, deals with his mid-life crisis by forsaking dull suburbia for a rural idyll. But the fondly remembered village of his childhood has been transformed by the very 'Progress' he seeks to escape: the estate where he used to fish has been built over; the pond turned into a rubbish dump. An old girlfriend fails to recognize him, and she herself is shockingly ravaged by time.Written in 1938-9, "Coming Up For Air" is permeated with nostalgia for the England of a more tranquil age - before industrialization and capitalism had done their worst - and overshadowed by premonitions of what is to come - 'the war and the after-war, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, machine-guns, food-queues, rubber truncheons'. Above all, it unsparingly confronts the failure of youthful dreams and the impossibility of ever reclaiming the past.
A classic Jeeves and Wooster novel from P.G. - Stephen Fry'The best English comic novelist of the century.' - Sebastian Faulks'The greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness' - Julian Fellowes
A beautiful leather-bound collectible volume of Jack London's stories. From hard-edged adventures in the Klondike territory to harrowing experiences on the South Seas, Jack London's three most popular novels form the basis of this collection
Legendary barfly Charles Bukowski's fourth novel, first published in 1982, is probably the most autobiographical and moving of all his books, dealing in particular with his difficult relationship with his father and his early childhood in LA. Ham on Rye follows the path of Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski through the high school years of acne and rejection and into the beginning of a long and successful career in alcoholism. The novel begins against the backdrop of an America devastated by the Depression and takes the Chinaski legend up to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Arguably Bukowski's finest novel.
La historia de amor más fascinante jamás contada. Scarlett O'Hara vive en Tara, una gran plantación del estado sureño de Georgia, y estáenamorada de Ashley Wilkes, que en breve contraerá matrimonio conMelanie Hamilton. Estamos en 1861, en los prolegómenos de la guerra de Secesión, y todos los jóvenes sureños muestran entusiasmo por entraren combate, excepto el atractivo aventurero Rhett Butler. A Butler legusta Scarlett, pero esta sigue enamorada de Ashley, que acaba dehacer público su compromiso con Melanie. Despechada, Scarlett aceptala propuesta de matrimonio de Charles, el hermano de Melanie, al quedesprecia. Años más tardes, y como consecuencia del final de laguerra, ya viuda, Scarlett debe afrontar situaciones nuevas como elhambre, el dolor y la pérdida e instalarse en Atlanta, donde Melanieespera noticias y de Ashley y Butler aparece de nuevo...
Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in six weeks at the end of 1843, during a particularly intense time of creativity. He was having financial difficulties and was determined to have the manuscript ready for publication for the Christmas market. This book contains an original size clear copy Dickens' one and only manuscript, written by his hand, with his revisions and corrections evident on every page. The revisions show how Dickens made the verbs become more active, the number of words became fewer, achieving greater immediacy and vividness. This manuscript was handed to the printer in this form and was published on 19th December 1843. This edition has each of the 66 pages of the original manuscript copied onto the left hand page and the corresponding words typed on the right hand page. The book also contains the eight original illustrations by John Leech, the four color illustrations are on the cover of the book.
Having already written seminal works of detective fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle became a pioneer of early science fiction with The Lost World. This classic novel helped establish the genre and has inspired, since its first publication in 1912, countless stories, novels and films.
Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love. It tells of the dashing Sergeant Troy whose rakish philosophy of life was '...the past was yesterday; never, the day after', and lastly, of the introverted and reclusive gentleman farmer, Mr Boldwood, whose love fills him with '...a fearful sense of exposure', when he first sets eyes on Bathsheba. The background of this tale is the Wessex countryside in all its moods, contriving to make it one of the most English of great English novels.
A Pair of Blue Eyes, though early in the sequence of Hardy's novels, is lively and gripping. Its dramatic cliff-hanging episode, for example, is at once tense, ironic, feministic and erotic. With settings in Wessex and London, the novel also has some strongly autobiographical features, as the blue-eyed heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is based largely on Emma Gifford, who became Thomas Hardy's first wife. Elfride's vivacious nature attracts several lovers, but she is beset by sexual prejudice, and the ensuing ironies reveal the constraints of her times. A Pair of Blue Eyes provides an engaging and moving experience for today's readers.
She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone. Ten years on, Laurel has never given up hope of finding Ellie. And then she meets a charming and charismatic stranger w
Der Roman, durch den James Joyce unsterblich wurde, schildert einen Tag im Leben des Annoncenakquisiteurs Leopold Bloom, den 16. Juni 1904. Bald nach Erscheinen des Romans begannen Enthusiasten, diesen Tag zu feiern. 2004 wurde Blooms Tag - der "Bloomsday" - hundert Jahre alt.§"Im Ulysses liegt das Dublin des 16. Juni 1904 vor uns ausgebreitet, durch die Phantasie unverändert und in fast allen Einzelheiten anhand von Karten und Adreßbüchern nachprüfbar", schreibt Anthony Burgess. "Aber", so fährt er fort, "der Roman Ulysses, der Dublin verherrlicht, indem er es zu einer ewigen Stadt des Geistes erhebt, hat es auf nüchterne oder trunkene Weise auch verwandelt. Wer Dublin betritt, betritt Ulysses -: man begibt sich in die Phantasie von James Joyce."Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary style, and the epic journey of Odysseus is only one of many correspondencies that add layers of meaning to the text. Ulysses has been the subject of controversy since copies of the first English edition were burned by the New York Post Office Authorities.
Novela de aventuras por excelencia, El conde de Montecristo narra la peripecia del joven Edmond Dantès, cuyo prometedor destino se trunca al verse acusado inesperadamente de agente bonapartista y ser encerrado en el adusto castillo de If. Allí, una extraordinaria serie de acontecimientos lo conduce a poder llevar a cabo una fuga insólita y desesperada en posesión del secreto de un fabuloso tesoro. Años después, de regreso en Marsella, viene a conocer que su arbitrario encierro fue debido a una conspiración. Será entonces cuando, con ayuda de sus inmensos recursos y de su ingenio, Dantès, adoptando la personalidad de conde de Montecristo, pondrá en marcha una implacable venganza para acabar con aquellos que propiciaron su ruina.
With the formation of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S E E S), Minato, Mitsuru, Akihiko, and the rest have taken it upon themselves to combat the threat that Tartarus and the Shadows therein represent. When they learn that the soft-spoken Fuuka may have become trapped in Tartarus during the Dark Hour, they mount a rescue attempt.
There are sixteen families fighting to control the world. That's fifteen too many. The time has come for the Cull. So begins the next phase of the Conclave War that has plunged the entire world into chaos and instability, in
In 1888 Oswell Danford is living a hard but satisfying life as a rancher in Virginia when he receives an unexpected telegram. A wedding invitation should be cause to celebrate but not when it means he'll have to face past deeds that he's deeply ashamed of. Now he and his brother, along with their ex-compatriot, an inveterate gambler from New York, will have to travel to Montana Territory to settle an old score they'd nearly forgotten. They will join the expectant congregation at the small town church for the marriage of their former brother-in-arms. But while everyone else will be wishing a blissful future for the happy couple, these men will be praying the darkness from their past doesn't devour the entire town. A Congregation of Jackals is an unrelenting tale of betrayal and revenge told with a precise brutality that will leave you breathless and haunted. While Zahler is not a stranger to the Western genre he brings his own unique twist to the Wild West. He wrote and directed Bone Tomahawk, the breakout Horror/Western crossover film of 2015 and his novel Wraiths of the Broken Land is being adapted for the screen by Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard. Although these three works don't share characters or plotlines he considers them to be something of a thematic trilogy. All three share his fascination with revenge, betrayal and extreme violence in the defense of innocence.
The twisted story of a young man forced to kill bad people, and how he struggles to keep his secret from destroying his life. With illustrations by Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser.
Another runaway adventure with glamorous heroine Phryne Fisher! Whether foiling kidnappers' plans, walking the wings of a Tiger Moth or simply deciding what to wear for dinner, Phryne handles everything with her usual panache and flair! Here, the 1920's most glamorous detective flies even higher, handling an abduction and a murder with style and ease ...all before it's time to adjourn to the Queenscliff Hotel for breakfast. Whether she's flying planes, clearing a friend of homicide charges or saving a child from kidnapping, she handles everything with the same dash and elan with which she drives her red Hispano-Suiza.
Myron Bolitar once had a promising career as a sportsman, until an accident forced him to quit. After a spell in the FBI he now runs his own business. Then Myron is approached to find Greg Downing. He knows Greg from old - they were once rivals, not just in sport, but for a woman they both loved. Now Greg has vanished, and the team boss wants Myron to find him, before news of his disappearance is leaked to the press. In Greg's house Myron finds blood in the basement - lots of it. And when he discovers the body of a woman, he begins to unravel the strange, violent world of a national hero gone wrong, as he comes face-to-face with a past he can't re-live, and a present he may not survive.
The no-holds-barred first novel from Sonny Barger, author of the New York Times bestseller Hell's Angel. The mass market edition will be an ideal format for Sonny's legions of fans. ⏡tch⟋inkade th
A time capsule is unearthed from a school playground - containing a threat of deaths to come. As Freyja and Huldar look for the writer, the murders start...
