Fiction

'THE HARD-BITTEN CHAMPION OF BRITISH HEROIC FANTASY' - Joe Abercrombie 'HEROISM AND HEARTBREAK . . . GEMMELL IS ADRENALINE WITH SOUL' - Brent Weeks His name is DrussThe stories of his life are told everywhere. But the grizzled Drenai veteran has spurned a life of fame and fortune and retreated to the solitude of his mountain lair. The fortress is Dros Delnoch And it is the only route through the mountains for the invading army of the Nadir. The fortress was once the Drenai's greatest stronghold - now it will be their final battleground. And Druss their last hope. Legend is the classic Drenai novel from the British master of heroic fantasy, a powerful tale of courage and sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds.Novels by David GemmellThe Drenai seriesLegend The King Beyond the GateWaylanderQuest For Lost Heroes Waylander II: In the Realm of the WolfThe First Chronicles of Druss the LegendJon Shannow seriesWolf in ShadowThe Last GuardianBloodstone Stones of Power Ghost KingLast Sword of Power Hawk Queen seriesIronhand's DaughterThe Hawk Eternal Ancient Greece novelsLion of MacedonDark Prince Other novelsKnights of Dark RenownMorningstar

D. H. Lawrence's classic novel about a passionate love affair.

Maggie escapes the shame of her early life on 1880s Merseyside only to find that fate has dark plans for her future in this powerful and nostalgic saga from the bestselling author of THE HOUSE ON LONELY STREET and FROM LIVERPOOL WITH LOVE.

'A powerful novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal' Daily Mail When the mysterious and beautiful young widow Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall rumours immediately begin to swirl around her.

The abridged downloadable audiobook edition of Oscar Wildes classic tale of corrupted innocence and debauchery, The Picture of Dorian Gray, read by John Moffatt. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The novel was a succs de scandale and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb.

When Johnny Pascoe attempts to rescue a sick girl from the Tasmanian outback his plane crashes leaving him dangerously injured. As he waits overnight at Pascoe's house in order to try again the next day Clarke revisits the past of this unusual man - and reveals the shocking and tragic secrets that have influenced his life.

The ninety-six Anglo-Saxon riddles in the eleventh-century "Exeter Book" are poems of great charm, zest, and subtlety. This volume contains the author's translations of seventy-five riddles while a further sixteen are translated in the notes.

Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written. Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's life-span to making intersteller travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world Arrakis.Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe. When the Emperor transfers stewardship of Arrakis from the noble House Harkonnen to House Atreides, the Harkonnens fight back, murdering Duke Leto Atreides.Paul, his son, and Lady Jessica, his concubine, flee into the desert. On the point of death, they are rescued by a band for Fremen, the native people of Arrakis, who control Arrakis' second great resource: the giant worms that burrow beneath the burning desert sands. In order to avenge his father and retake Arrakis from the Harkonnens, Paul must earn the trust of the Fremen and lead a tiny army against the innumerable forces aligned against them.And his journey will change the universe.

One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, this uninhibited tale centres on the hapless members of a love triangle, and their sexual obsession and shared fascination with a mythic saint.Revolving around four central - and intrinsically flawed - characters, 'Beautiful Losers' is the frank and humorous story of a nameless narrator, his wife Edith, their domineering friend and mentor 'F' and Catherine Tekakwitha, a mythic 17th-century Mohawk virgin saint. The complexities of this three-way love, pain and lust are sent spiralling by the death of Edith and 'F' at the novel's start, leading the damaged narrator to question the nature of love, sexuality and spirituality in a series of explicit flashbacks.The extraordinary and inimitable singer-songwriter's classic novel, this is Leonard Cohen's most critically acclaimed literary work, echoing the dark poetry and wry humour of his timeless songs of loss, love, sex and religion.Not just an extremely funny novel, but an incredibly original and explicit examination of friendship, sex and spirituality.

Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war.

Presents an account of life in turn-of-the-century Russia. Through the workaday world of a rural dairyman, his grit, wit, and heart, his daughters' courtships and marriages, and the eventual menace of the pogroms, this title reveals the fabric of a vanished world.

Desperately tired after months living rough with Italian partisans, Richard makes a mistake behind enemy lines that results in devastating tragedy. Rose, performing for the troops crossing France, at last finds a man she feels she can love and is forced to make the most difficult decision of her life.Merry's lover is returned to him from the jaws of death only to be separated from him again by the demands of duty. But while the battle rages on they will fight for the future. In war and peace, in joy and despair, life continues - but never as expected.

Generally agreed to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century - and possibly any other - Proust's masterpiece is here presented in the latest revision to the classic Scott Moncrieff translation.

With an introduction from Haifaa al-Mansour, director of Mary Shelley.There is something in my soul, which I do not understand.Written by a teenage girl, Frankenstein is one of literature's greatest Gothic horror stories.Now with a striking new cover, discover one of the books considered to be a pioneer of YA.-----Victor Frankenstein has made a terrible mistake. In his desperate pursuit to create life, he has created a monster.A monster which, abandoned by his master and shunned by everyone it meets, follows Dr Frankenstein to the very ends of the earth with horror and murder in its recycled heart.Shelly takes the reader on a journey through St Petersburg, to the beautiful Swiss Alps, to the desolate waste of the Arctic Circle, in a story that has sent a chill down the spines of generations.

Those who have read Williams's earlier novels will not want to be told anything about Descent into Hell except that it is one of his best. Those who do not know the author's work will find that when they have read this novel, they will want to read all the others.

394 pages, paperback. Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home. He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together. So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again. The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed. What could possibly go wrong?

It might sound like a man's favorite fantasy - to live forever, destined to be the lover of thousands of women. But for Julian of Macedon, it's a nightmare. Once he was a proud Spartan general; now he's a love-slave, his essence magically held captive in a book, cursed to spend all eternity pleasing women. Then, one day, Grace Alexander summons Julian to fulfill her passionate dreams - and sees beyond the fantasy to the man himself.Long years as a sex therapist, listening to other people's bedroom problems, have taken a lot of the fun out of the physical side of love for Grace. But with or without sex, the rules of the enchantment cannot be changed - Julian is hers for the next month. And, as their time together slips by, Julian and Grace find more to share than sympathy and conversation and they begin to wonder if love might be within their grasp. That leaves only one question. Is love enough to break a 2,000-year-old curse?

'Small Island is a hard act to follow, but in her new book Levy has moved into top gear' - Observer

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye). Their constant skirmishes ensure that every game of bridge, tea or dinner-party, church service, council meeting or art-exhibition are thrilling encounters that ensure Tilling is always on 'a very agreeable rack of suspense'. Both Elisabeth and Lucia are gross hypocrites, snobs and bullies, the huge differences in temperament and style ensure the battle is usually unequal. Elisabeth is incurably mean-spirited and Lucia suffers from splendid delusions of grandeur and personal prestige. Driven by demons of revenge, Elisabeth always acts impulsively, and therefore every revelation of her meanness allows Lucia, the consummate actress, to kill her ally with a sickening kindness.In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson, like Jane Austen, invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth and through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia. Carabine also concentrates on the novels' disturbing, bitchy, 'camp' humour whenever 'that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised'

A STUNNING COLLECTION OF POEMS CURATED BY THE NEW POET LAUREATE AND THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FOUR FIELDS___________________________'Some of the most ethereal verse ever written' Sunday Telegraph 'A glorious collection of works old and new' Independent on Sunday 'Truly inexhaustible . . . to be read again and again' Daily Mail 'A rich and sustaining larder, a marvellously realized sourcebook of flights of feathered fancy' Guardian 'A life-affirming celebration of the commonplace yet enduringly mysterious creatures we share this world with and the poetry they have inspired' Daily Telegraph

A new translation of Georges Simenon's novel set in claustraphobic provincial town, book eighteen in the new Penguin Maigret series.Cars drove past along with the trucks and trams, but by now Maigret had realised that they were not important. Whatever roared by like this along the road was not part of the landscape. ... What really counted was the lock, the hooting of the tugs, the stone crusher, the barges and the cranes, the two pilots' bars and especially the tall house where he could make out Ducrau's red chair framed by a window.Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as The Lock at Charenton.'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian 'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

Edward Lear was the greatest nonsensicalist of all time. He was the inventor of the limerick and created the Jumblies and The Owl and the Pussycat. This complete edition of Lear's nonsense verse - including the limericks, longer verses, alphabets and his own illustrations - is lovingly restored and beautifully presented, for adults and children to enjoy together.

In the 1920s and '30s, H P Lovecraft pioneered a new type of fiction that fused elements of supernatural horror with the concepts of visionary science fiction. Lovecraft's tales of cosmic horror revolutionised modern horror fiction. This title collects Lovecraft's fictions.

Druss. The Legend. Saviour of Skeln Pass. Protector of Dros Delnoch. The most famous - and dreaded - of Drenai's heroes.But before all men knew Druss he was a young husband, hewing tress instead of men - most of the time - and held in check by his beloved wife, Rowena. When she is stolen by slavers Druss becomes a killing machine intent on only one thing: Rowena's return.

Book four of the After series by Internet sensation Anna Todd

DEATH IS MISSING - PRESUMED...ER...GONE. Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. Meanwhile, on a little farm far, far away, a tall dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There's a harvest to be gathered in...

The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translationThrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dant s is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.Translated with an Introduction by ROBIN BUSS