Harry Potter's summer has included the worst birthday ever, doomy warnings from a house-elf called Dobby, and rescue from the Dursleys by his friend Ron Weasley in a magical flying car! Back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year, Harry hears strange whispers echo through empty corridors - and then the attacks start. Students are found as though turned to stone... Dobby's sinister predictions seem to be coming true.

With a plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts this year, Harry's adventures include an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls' bathroom. More torments and horrors arise, leading to the question: Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects... Harry Potter himself?

As part of a series that has become a classic of our time, the story of the Boy Who Lived continues to bring comfort and escapism. With their message of hope, belonging, and the enduring power of truth and love, the adventures of Harry Potter delight generations of new readers.

Stylish, suburban Katherine is eighteen when she is propelled into the heart of Professor Jacob Goldman's rambling home and his large eccentric family. As his enchanting yet sharp-tongued wife Jane gives birth to her sixth child, Katherine meets the beautiful, sulky Roger and his volatile younger brother, Jonathan.

Inevitable heartbreak sends her fleeing to Rome, but ten years later, older and wiser, she returns to find the Goldmans again. A little wiser and a lot more grown-up, Katherine faces her future.

Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family. By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in the Mortmain household, not the least of which is that Cassandra is deeply, hopelessly, in love.

Derby Days offers an in-depth look at all the derby matches, tracing the history of the hostility and showing the story from both sides—United and City.

Attention is paid not just to the famous derbies, like Liverpool versus Everton, but also to less-publicized confrontations such as Exeter versus Plymouth.

In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that's before the players even take the field.

Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby's memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom — its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men's coming-of-age stories.

Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.

Ted Hughes, formerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II, is recognized as one of the few contemporary poets whose work has a mythic scope and power. Few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.

The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her tragic suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work—animal, vegetable, mythological—as well as on Plath's famous verse.

This volume offers us Hughes's own account of their intense relationship. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.

Connie Willis' Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book uses time travel for a serious look at how people connect with each other. In this Hugo-winning companion to that novel, she offers a completely different kind of time travel adventure: a delightful romantic comedy that pays hilarious homage to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.

When too many jumps back to 1940 leave 21st century Oxford history student Ned Henry exhausted, a relaxing trip to Victorian England seems the perfect solution. But complexities like recalcitrant rowboats, missing cats, and love at first sight make Ned's holiday anything but restful - to say nothing of the way hideous pieces of Victorian art can jeopardize the entire course of history.

Moab Is My Washpot is a number one bestseller in Britain, written by the astonishingly frank, funny, and wise Stephen Fry. This memoir is the book that fans everywhere have been eagerly waiting for.

Stephen Fry, known for his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, has seen his American profile grow steadily, especially after his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action.

Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar. Now, he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, Fry survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction, and imprisonment.

By the age of eighteen, Fry was ready to start over in a world where he had always felt like a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry emerges as a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy, and real devotion.

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

With their message of hope, belonging and the enduring power of truth and love, the story of the Boy Who Lived continues to delight generations of new readers.

In Jilly Cooper's third Rutshire chronicle, we meet Ricky France-Lynch, who is moody, macho, and magnificent. He owns a large crumbling estate, holds a nine-goal polo handicap, and has a beautiful wife who is fair game for anyone with a cheque book. Additionally, he has the adoration of fourteen-year-old Perdita MacLeod.

Perdita can't wait to leave her dreary school and become a polo player. The polo set is ritzy, wild, and gloriously promiscuous. Perdita thinks she'll get along with them very well.

But before she has time to grow up, Ricky's life explodes into tragedy, and Perdita turns into a brat who loves only her horses—and Ricky France-Lynch.

Ricky's obsession to win back his wife, and Perdita's to win both Ricky and a place as a top-class polo player, take the reader on a wildly exciting journey—to the estancias of Argentina, to Palm Beach and Deauville, and on to the royal polo fields of England and the glamorous pitches of California. There, the most heroic battle of all is destined to be fought—a match that is about far more than just the winning of a huge silver cup.

Middlemarch, a masterpiece of English literature by George Eliot, is set in the fictitious Midlands town during the years 1830-32. The novel intertwines multiple storylines to create a coherent narrative that delves into various themes such as the status of women, social expectations, hypocrisy, religion, political reform, and education. Often hailed as one of the greatest novels in the English language, Middlemarch offers a profound exploration of human relationships and societal dynamics.

The narrative follows a rich array of characters, each with their own complex stories and struggles. At the heart of the novel are Dorothea Brooke, the idealistic yet naive heroine, and Tertius Lydgate, a brilliant but morally flawed physician. Their journeys alongside other memorable characters like Rosamond Vincy, Edward Casaubon, Will Ladislaw, Fred Vincey, and Mary Garth provide both a critical social commentary and an engaging reading experience with elements of humor and irony.

Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets. Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a traveling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.

New Egypt is a village somewhere in the south of England. A village that nobody has ever left. Peach, the sadistic chief of police, makes sure of that.

Then, one misty morning, a young couple secretly set their baby son Moses afloat on the river, in a basket made of rushes.

Years later, Moses is living above a nightclub, mixing with drug-dealers, thieves and topless waitresses. He knows nothing about his past - but it is catching up with him nevertheless, and it threatens to put his life in danger.

Terror, magic and farce all have a part to play as the worlds of Peach and Moses slowly converge.

At the end of Five Children and It, the five children promised not to ask the Psammead for another wish as long as they lived, but they expressed a half wish to see it again some time. They find 'it' again in a pet shop in Camden Town, and their magic adventures start over again. 'It' leads them to a magic amulet - half of it actually - which they use to try and find the other half. It takes them back to ancient Egypt and Babylon. The Queen of Babylon visits them in London, bringing all her ancient customs with her - which is awkward. They visit the lost continent of Atlantis. They see Julius Caesar in the flesh, but none of these adventures run smoothly, and if they forget the 'word of power' or lose the amulet, what would happen to them?

In this conclusion to the Psammead Trilogy, Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane are reunited with the cantankerous Sand-fairy. While the old creature can’t grant them wishes anymore, it points them towards an old Egyptian amulet that can grant their hearts’ desire—in this case the return of their parents and baby brother. While their amulet is only half of a whole, it still acts as a time portal which they use to visit locales like Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Atlantis, and even a utopian future in search of the missing other half.

Perhaps one of E. Nesbit’s most personal works, The Story of the Amulet benefits from her interest in the ancient world, particularly Egypt. The titular amulet is shaped after the tyet, an Egyptian symbol also known as the “knot of Isis.” Likewise, the inscription at the back of the amulet is written in authentic Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The children encounter memorable characters during their adventures, chief among them the Queen of Babylon, who causes quite a stir when she later pays them a call in their contemporary London. When the visiting Queen witnesses the squalid living conditions of the London working class, she’s amazed at how poorly they’re treated compared to the slaves of her own Babylon.

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life is a partial autobiography by C.S. Lewis that describes his conversion to Christianity. Unlike typical autobiographies, this book contains less detail about specific events because Lewis's primary aim was not historical documentation. Instead, he sought to identify and describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of, and consequent search for, the phenomenon he labeled "Joy." This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, or longing.

Although the book is not devoid of information about Lewis's life, the principal theme is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good and so high up that it couldn't be explained with words. Throughout his life, he was struck with "stabs of joy" and finally finds what it's for at the end.

Lewis recounts his early years with a mix of amusement and pain, including his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. He described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" but defended the practice as "the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in."

The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism and then from theism to Christianity, ultimately discovering the true nature and purpose of Joy and its place in his life.

It is important to note that the book is not connected with his unexpected marriage later in life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking that he'd really been "Surprised by Joy."

The title also alludes to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy - Impatient As The Wind," which relates an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Four very different young men on the threshold of manhood dominate this opening volume: Jenkins, a budding writer; Templer, a passionate womanizer; Stringham, aristocratic and reckless; and Widermerpool, hopelessly awkward yet intensely ambitious, lurking on the periphery of their world.

Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, these four gain their initiations into sex, society, business, and art. Considered a masterpiece of modern fiction, Powell's epic creates a rich panorama of life in England between the wars.

Includes these novels: A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market, The Acceptance World.

Sally is sixteen and uncommonly pretty. Her knowledge of English literature, French, history, art, and music is non-existent, but she has a thorough grounding in military tactics, can run a business, ride like a Cossack, and shoot straight with a pistol.

When her dear father is drowned in suspicious circumstances in the South China Sea, Sally is left to fend for herself, an orphan and alone in the smoky fog of Victorian London. Though she doesn't know it, Sally is already in terrible danger. Soon the mystery and the danger will deepen - and at the rotten heart of it all lies the deadly secret of the ruby in the smoke.

This volume contains the six major novels by Jane Austen, which are:

• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Sense and Sensibility
• Pride and Prejudice

Dora and Nora Chance are a famous song-and-dance team of the British music halls. Billed as The Lucky Chances, the sisters are the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day.

At once ribald and sentimental, glittery and tender, this rambunctious family saga is Angela Carter at her bewitching best. Wise Children celebrates the lore and magic of show business while exploring the connections between parent and child, the transitory and the immortal, authenticity and falsehood.

Expect showgirls and Shakespeare, music, mischief, and mistaken identity – all wrapped in a big, bawdy tangle of theatrical joy and heartbreak.

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”

And Then There Were None begins with ten individuals, a curious assortment of strangers, summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate, as each has been marked for murder.

A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion, gradually becoming a chilling prophecy as one by one, the guests fall prey to a diabolical scheme. As the number of survivors diminishes, terror mounts. Who has choreographed this dastardly plot? And who will be left to tell the tale?

With a backdrop of an isolated island and the stormy weather trapping them, the characters must face the reality that the killer is among them, and nowhere is safe. This masterful tale of suspense leaves readers questioning, until the very end, who the murderer is.

Karim Amir lives with his English mother and Indian father in the routine comfort of suburban London, enduring his teenage years with good humor, always on the lookout for adventure and sexual possibilities.

Life gets more interesting, however, when his father becomes the Buddha of Suburbia, beguiling a circle of would-be mystics. And when the Buddha falls in love with one of his disciples, the beautiful and brazen Eva, Karim is introduced to a world of renegade theater directors, punk rock stars, fancy parties, and all the sex a young man could desire.

A love story for at least two generations, a high-spirited comedy of sexual manners and social turmoil, The Buddha of Suburbia is one of the most enchanting, provocative, and original books to appear in years.

If the Marquis de Sade were to crash one of P.G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this novel by the author of London Fields.

The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged and a pair of doddering tenants to be ingeniously harassed.

But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies" — dreary spasms of reality. Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past...

A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love.

Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spends a day on a country drive and embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's greatness and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

Precious Bane is a compelling story of passion, with an enduring air of enchantment throughout. This novel haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes. Set in Shropshire in the 1800s, it is alive with the many moods of Nature, both benevolent and violent, and the equally varied moods of the people making lives there.

Prue Sarn is an unlikely heroine, born with a facial disfiguration which the Fates have dictated will deny her love. But Prue has strength far beyond her handicap, and this woman, suspected of witchcraft by her fellow townspeople, rises above them all through an all-encompassing sweetness of spirit.

Precious Bane is also the story of Gideon, Prue's doomed brother, equally strong-willed but with different motives. Determined to defeat the poverty of their farm, he devotes all his energies to making money. His only diversion from this ambition is abandoned for the stronger drive of his money lust.

Finally, it is the story of Kester Woodseaves, whose steady love for all created things leads him to resist people's cruelty toward nature and each other. His love for Prue Sarn enables him to discern her natural loveliness beneath her blighted appearance.

Mary Webb's narrative is one of beauty and resonance, capturing the reader with its lyrical prose and profound insights into human nature.

Adrian Mole has grown up. At least that’s what it says on his passport. But living at home, clinging to his threadbare cuddly rabbit ‘Pinky’, working as a paper pusher for the DoE, and pining for the love of his life, Pandora, has proved to him that adulthood isn’t quite what he hoped it would be. Still, intellectual poets can’t always have things their own way…

Included here are two other less well-known diarists: Sue Townsend and Margaret Hilda Roberts, a rather ambitious grocer’s daughter from Grantham.

In this powerful biography, the middle volume of William Manchester’s critically acclaimed trilogy, Winston Churchill wages his defining campaign: not against Hitler’s war machine but against his own reluctant countrymen. Manchester contends that even more than his leadership in combat, Churchill’s finest hour was the uphill battle against appeasement.

As Parliament received with jeers and scorn his warnings against the growing Nazi threat, Churchill stood alone—only to be vindicated by history as a beacon of hope amid the gathering storm.

Manchester has such control over a huge and moving narrative, such illumination of character, that he can claim the considerable achievement of having assembled enough powerful evidence to support Isaiah Berlin’s judgment of Churchill as ‘the largest human being of our time.’

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures.

The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

Since his first appearance in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created. Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan Doyle’s classic hero - a truly complete collection of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures in crime!

Volume I includes the early novel A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the eccentric genius of Sherlock Holmes to the world. This baffling murder mystery, with the cryptic word Rache written in blood, first brought Holmes together with Dr. John Watson. Next, The Sign of Four presents Holmes’s famous “seven percent solution” and the strange puzzle of Mary Morstan in the quintessential locked-room mystery.

Also included are Holmes’s feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the chilling The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the baffling riddle of The Musgrave Ritual, and the ingeniously plotted The Five Orange Pips, tales that bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes is a comprehensive collection that includes all of the master detective's adventures, penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This anthology contains:

• A Study in Scarlet
• The Sign of Four
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which features stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, and The Adventure of the Speckled Band
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes with tales like The Musgrave Ritual and The Final Problem
• The Hound of the Baskervilles
• The Valley of Fear
• His Last Bow, which includes The Adventure of the Devil's Foot and His Last Bow
• The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, featuring The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire and The Adventure of the Retired Colourman

An introduction by Loren D. Estleman is included in volume 2. This collection is an essential for any fan of detective fiction and a testament to Doyle's enduring legacy in the genre.

Thursday's Child is an enchanting tale of the irrepressible Margaret Thursday, an orphan determined to go far in life. Proud of her unusual history, she faces the unbearable conditions of an early twentieth-century English orphanage with spirit and determination.

Along the way, Margaret makes a host of friends who share in her adventures and challenges.

This story, set against the backdrop of historical England, offers a delightful blend of adventure, friendship, and inspiration. Join Margaret as she navigates the ups and downs of her remarkable journey.

New Grub Street by George Gissing re-creates a microcosm of London's literary society as he experienced it. This novel is both a major social document and a compelling story that draws readers into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances on Grub Street, including the ambitious journalist Jasper Milvain and the embittered critic Alfred Yule.

Gissing brings to life the bitter battles fought out in obscure garrets or in the Reading Room of the British Museum, portraying the conflict between integrity and the demands of the marketplace. The narrative delves into the miseries of genteel poverty and the damage that failure and hardship inflict on human personality and relationships.

Wuthering Heights is a classic tale of intense passion, destructive obsession, and the haunting power of love. Set in the wild, rugged Yorkshire moors, this novel explores the turbulent relationship between the enigmatic Heathcliff and the free-spirited Catherine Earnshaw. Their love defies social conventions and transcends time, leading to a series of dramatic events that leave a lasting impact on both their families.

Through its vivid characters and darkly atmospheric setting, the novel delves into themes of revenge, madness, and the supernatural. Emily Brontë's masterful storytelling captures the raw emotions and complexities of human nature, making Wuthering Heights a timeless masterpiece that continues to captivate readers.

One of the most well-loved and best-selling British humor titles of all time.

"Canute began by being a Bad King on the advice of his Courtiers, who informed him (owing to a misunderstanding of the Rule Britannia) that the King of England was entitled to sit on the sea without getting wet."

This humorous "history" is a book that has itself become part of the UK's history. The authors made the claim that "All the History you can remember is in the Book," and, for most Brits, they were probably right. But it is their own unique interpretation of events that has made the book a classic; an uproarious satire on textbook history and a population's confused recollections of it.

Behind the large house, the fragrant camomile lawn stretches down to the Cornish cliffs. Here, in the dizzying heat of August 1939, five cousins gather at their aunt's house for their annual holiday ritual. For most, it is the last summer of their youth, filled with the heady exhilarations and freedoms of lost innocence, as well as the fears of the coming war.

The Camomile Lawn moves from Cornwall to London and back again over the years, weaving the stories of the cousins, their family, and friends. They are united by shared losses, lovers, family ties, and the absurd conditions imposed by war as their paths cross and recross.

Mary Wesley presents an extraordinarily vivid and lively picture of wartime London: the rationing, imaginatively circumvented; the fallen houses; the parties; the newfound comforts of sex; and the desperate humour of survival—all evoked with warmth, clarity, and stunning wit. Through it all, the cousins and their friends try to hold on to the part of themselves that laughed and played dangerous games on that camomile lawn.

Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history, and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.

Waterland, like the Hardy novels, carries with all else a profound knowledge of a people, a place, and their interweaving. Swift tells his tale with wonderful contemporary verve and verbal felicity. A fine and original work.

An unabridged Miss Marple mystery from the Queen of Crime.

For an instant, the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder. Helplessly, she stared out of her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled.

Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses...and no corpse.

In this final part of the trilogy, we follow Titus, now almost twenty, as he escapes from the Castle, fleeing its oppressive Ritual, and becomes lost in a sandstorm. Helped by the owner of a travelling zoo, Muzzlehatch, and his ex-lover Juno, Titus ends up stranded in a big, bustling city. No one there has heard of Gormenghast, and the general consensus is that the boy is deranged. With no papers, he's soon arrested for vagrancy.

But there are a few people who believe in his story, or at least are intrigued by it, and they try to help him. Now Titus, the deserter, the traitor, longs for his home and looks for it all the time to prove, if only to himself, that Gormenghast is truly real.

De Profundis and Other Writings is a profound collection of works by the renowned Oscar Wilde. This collection showcases Wilde's humorous and epigrammatic genius that once captivated the London theatre. Through his writing, Wilde casts light from unexpected angles, thus widening the bounds of truth.

Nancy Mitford meets Nora Ephron in the pages of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Helene Hanff's delightful travelogue about her "bucket list" trip to London.

When devoted Anglophile Helene Hanff is invited to London for the English publication of 84, Charing Cross Road—in which she shares two decades of correspondence with Frank Doel, a British bookseller who became a dear friend—she can hardly believe her luck. Frank is no longer alive, but his widow and daughter, along with enthusiastic British fans from all walks of life, embrace Helene as an honored guest.

Eager hosts, including a famous actress and a retired colonel, sweep her up in a whirlwind of plays and dinners, trips to Harrod's, and wild jaunts to their favorite corners of the countryside. A New Yorker who isn't afraid to speak her mind, Helene Hanff delivers an outsider's funny yet fabulous portrait of idiosyncratic Britain at its best.

And whether she is walking across the Oxford University courtyard where John Donne used to tread, visiting Windsor Castle, or telling a British barman how to make a real American martini, Helene always wears her heart on her sleeve. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is not only a witty account of two different worlds colliding but also a love letter to England and its literary heritage—and a celebration of the written word's power to sustain us, transport us, and unite us.

Strange Meeting is a classic novel by Susan Hill that explores the power of love amidst the atrocities of war. The story follows young officer John Hilliard as he returns to his battalion in France after a period of sick leave in England. Despite having trouble adjusting to all the new faces, the stiff and reserved Hilliard forms a friendship with David Barton, an open and cheerful new recruit who has yet to be bloodied in battle.

As the pair approach the front line, facing the proximity of death and destruction, their strange friendship deepens. But each knows that soon they will be separated. Hill masterfully communicates the feeling of men under appalling stress at a particular moment in history with uncanny power.

A remarkable feat of imaginative and descriptive writing, this novel captures the essence of human connection in the face of war and is a testament to the enduring spirit of camaraderie.

The classic multimillion copy bestseller

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world's most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.

For over forty years, generations of readers have thrilled to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot's periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot's recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.

The Beautifull Cassandra is one of Jane Austen's most charming youthful works, written when she was just twelve or thirteen years old. This deluxe illustrated edition is a celebration of Austen's early writing, showcasing her wit and her already mature stylistic mastery.

The story follows the slightly criminal adventures of the sixteen-year-old title character, Cassandra, who, after stealing a hat, embarks on a journey around London. She indulges in eating ice cream and taking coach rides without paying for them, and encounters handsome young ladies and gentlemen without speaking to them. Cassandra's day out is one of joy and mischief, culminating in her return home with a sense of satisfaction: "This is a day well spent."

This edition features elegant and edgy watercolor drawings by Leon Steinmetz and is edited by leading Austen scholar Claudia L. Johnson. In her afterword, Johnson regards The Beautifull Cassandra as "among the most brilliant and polished" of Austen's juvenile writings, hinting at the great novelist she would become. The book is a literary treasure and a delightful read for Austen fans of all ages.

Jassy is the tale of a remarkable woman born from a unique lineage, the daughter of a preacher and a gypsy.

She emerges as a strange and elusive child with powers of prophecy, maturing into a woman even more enigmatic. Those around her are drawn into a web of love and admiration or furious hatred; there is no middle ground.

Jassy has the uncanny ability to transform even those who cherish her into adversaries. Barney Hatton, the dispossessed heir of Mortiboys, finds himself in love with her but not sufficiently. Lindy, the servant girl, loves her excessively, while Elizabeth Twysdale, Jassy's teacher, grows to despise her more each day.

The lives of these individuals, intertwined with Jassy's own, are destined for passion and anguish, a journey of intense emotions that only Jassy could navigate.

Greeneland has been described often as a land bleak and severe. A whisky priest dies in one village, a self-hunted man lives with lepers in another. But Greeneland has its summer regions, and in the sunlight everything looks a bit different.

Here Aunt Augusta travels with her black lover, Wordsworth, Curran, the founder of a doggie's church, the CIA, a man obsessed by statistics and his hippie daughter; and old Mr. Visconti, who has been wanted by Interpol for twenty years.

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, unexpectedly caught up with them, describes their activities at first with shock and bewilderment and finally with the tenderness of a fellow traveler going their way.

George Bowling, the hero of Orwell's comic novel, is a middle-aged insurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban row house with a wife and two children. One day, after winning some money from a bet, he goes back to the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before.

The pool, alas, is gone, the village has changed beyond recognition, and the principal event of his holiday is an accidental bombing by the RAF.

Gipsy's Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea – and in Michael Rogers, it stirred a child-like fantasy. There, amongst the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl, and live happily ever after. Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land. This was the place where accidents happened.

Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals’ warnings: 'There’s no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy’s Acre.' Michael Rogers is a man who is about to learn the true meaning of the old saying 'In my end is my beginning.'

The title Endless Night was taken from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence and describes Christie’s favorite theme in the novel: a “twisted” character, who always chooses evil over good.

A Man for All Seasons is a classic play that vividly portrays the dramatic events surrounding the life of Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor who stood firm in his beliefs and faced execution under the reign of Henry VIII.

This compelling narrative captures the intense conflict between church and state, as well as the personal and political turmoil faced by More. His unwavering eloquence and endurance, coupled with his pure and saintly nature, earn him a place as one of modern drama's greatest tragic heroes.

The play, first staged in 1960 at the Globe Theatre in London, has been celebrated for its sparse yet powerful writing, confirming Robert Bolt as a significant force in modern theatre.