Through a series of mishaps, Henry Warren, a recently divorced City financier, ends up in hospital in a Northern town ruined by the closure of its shipyard. Moved by the fate of the town's inhabitants, Warren risks his fortune and reputation to save the shipyard and restore the town to its former prosperity. In... read more »
Psychologically astute and wonderfully poetic, Sanctuary is a powerful novel examining the nature of true evil, through the prisms of mythology, local lore, and hard-boiled detective fiction. This is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake, who introduces her own form... read more »
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the "Daily Beast", has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner-party tip from Mrs Algernon Smith, he feels... read more »
Amidst Sinclair Lewis s many remarkable novels are more than a hundred short stories which he wrote over forty-four years. Selected Short Stories contains those selected by Lewis himself and illustrates the wide range of his art and interest: tales of romantic fantasy or escape, melodramas of heroic or mock-heroic... read more »
Blixen takes up the absorbing story of her life in Kenya begun in the unforgettable Out of Africa, which she published under the name of Isak Dinesen. With warmth and humanity these four stories illuminate her love both for the African people, their dignity and traditions, and for the beauty and wildness of the... read more »
Theodore Dreiser's first and perhaps most accessible novel, Sister Carrie is an epic of urban life - the story of an innocent heroine adrift in an indifferent city. When small-town girl Carrie Meeber sets out for Chicago, she is equipped with nothing but a few dollars, a certain unspoiled beauty and charm, and a... read more »
A group of soldiers travel by train across the United States in the aftermath of the First World War. One of them is horribly scarred, blind and almost entirely mute. Moved by his condition, a few civilian fellow travellers decided to see him home to Georgia, to a family who believed him dead, and a fiancée who... read more »
On the day that World War II ends in Europe, Mayor George Boswell recalls events of the previous 25 years in his home town of Browdley. George Boswell, a respected lawyer and civic leader, possesses the skill and charisma to shine on the national stage. But ambition is not without a cost. When he must choose between... read more »
The heroine of the story, Lou Witt, abandons her sterile marriage and a brittle, cynical post-First World War England. Her sense of alienation is associated with her encounter with a high-spirited stallion, the St Mawr whose name provides the title for this tale. She eventually settles in a remote ranch set high in... read more »
A novel begun in college and then reworked for seven years, this work mirrors the author’s experience at Harvard and in greater Boston. The novel reflects young Dos Passos’s interests in aestheticism, Greek and Roman culture, and Walt Whitman. read more »
After years living in America with his mother, Jon Forsyte is excited to be home and eager to show off his roots to his new bride. When Fleur Forsyte, now Fleur Mont—Jon’s first love—hears of his arrival, she doesn't know what to feel. She is now married too, and while Jon and Fleur try to interact as friends... read more »
Mr Parnham is in a quandary. Sir Bussy Woodcock has invited him to a siance and Mr Parnham is more than a little keen to keep the acquaintance going - after all, the great financier might just be his ticket to fame and fortune. But to a siance? Damned silly nonsense all this medium business! Just at the point of... read more »
Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aeshete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveaux... read more »
Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity. Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws... read more »
The Blind Man's House is Walpole's last book before his death. A psychological study of a village and the people who come into contact with a blind man and his young bride. read more »
An exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces... read more »
A strange wistful story of sixteen-year-old Mary, the only child of her fiercely protective, widowed mother. Mary and her mother live in a one-room tenement flat that is home to the rituals of their bitter love. By day her mother cleans the houses of the Dublin rich, while Mary makes observations as she walks... read more »
A fascinating collection of tales, including stories related by members of a select club consisting of an actor, a barrister, a doctor, a soldier, a writer and an ordinary man. Each member of this club is obliged to entertain his fellows to dinner from time to time, after which he relates a story connected with his... read more »
'The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out'. Aldous Huxley first took mescalin in 1953 and continued his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs until 1963 when, on his deathbed, he asked for and was given LSD. Huxley explores the effects of the mescalin... read more »
Set against the background of a town in Northern France, this novel tells the story of a love idyll between a poor embroideress and the son of a wealthy aristocratic family. read more »
Jennifer fled the drab monotony of post-war London. When she landed in Australia, it was like coming home. She loved it and when she met Carl, she had every reason to stay. But the two of them came from quite different worlds, and it is the story of their building a life together that Nevil Shute tells in his... read more »
Nellie March and Jill Banford manage an ailing Berkshire farm at the time of the First World War, a task which is made all the more complicated by the frequent rampages of a local fox through their chicken coop. When a young soldier turns up and begins to wrest control of the farm by asserting his own ideas for its... read more »
Set in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts during the height of the progressive era, the book centers on heroine Justine Brent, a professionally trained nurse who is called upon to attend her childhood friend Bessy Westmore, a rich textile mill owner left paralyzed by a riding accident. When Bessy begs to be... read more »
Theodore Dreiser heavily invested himself in The Genius, an autobiographical novel first published in 1915. Thoroughly immersed in the turn-of-the-century art scene, The Genius explores the multiple conflicts between art and business, art and marriage, and between traditional and modern views of sexual morality... read more »
A one-time resident of Chicago's notorious Red light district, Maggie Lynch sets out determinedly to end her life of sin and find a decent job. But on entering the respectable world Maggie finds that deceit and greed are as rampant in corporate offices as on the streets she so desperately wants to escape. read more »
In the foothills of the southern California mountains are the Rancho del Ganado, owned by Colonel Pennington, and a smaller ranch on which Mrs. Evan lives with her daughter Grace and her son Guy. Grace feels that she has dramatic talent and is determined to make a bid for fame as a motionpicture actress. Guy has... read more »
Halo Tarrant, abandoning her failed marriage, elopes to Europe with the brilliant young writer, Vance Weston. As they travel around, her only wish is to serve him and his genius. But, ignoring the pain her amiguous status brings, Vance takes her loving attentions for granted and rejects the critical advice he had... read more »
At the fashionable German spa town Bad Nauheim, two wealthy, fin de siecle couples -- one British, the other American -- meet for their yearly assignation. As their story moves back and forth in time between 1902 and 1914, the fragile surface propriety of the pre -- World War I society in which these four characters... read more »
Gender roles in the American Revolutionary War period were not exactly a bastion of progressiveness. However, even during a time when most women were encouraged to shrink from conflict and follow the lead of any man in the vicinity, there were a few iconoclastic females who broke this mold. The defiantly independent... read more »
Presenting itself as a biography of Rudolf "Rud" Whitlow, who is born with such an aggressive temperament that scarcely is he born but his monthly nurse exclaims: "It's a Holy Terror!" Rud Whitlow goes on to become the founder of the first world state, long a Wellsian dream. The events take place in the recognizable... read more »