Colin Swatridge Books

'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Dodgson, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. In the nonsensical Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom, order is turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig; time is abandoned at a tea-party; and a chaotic game of chess makes a 7-year-old a Queen.

"It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

A mysterious incident at the Marabar Caves, involving Adela Quested, newly arrived from England, and Dr Aziz, an Indian doctor, leads to a drama that divides the British and Indian communities in anger, distrust, and fear. Forster's great novel brings to life all the dangers and misunderstandings of colonialism but, as Forster himself wrote, the story is 'about something wider than politics, about the search of the human race for a more lasting home, about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky, about the horror lurking in the Marabar Caves...

This work is sure to improve the written work of any student required to demonstrate the key skills of critical writing and thinking. It is equally as valuable for professionals needing these skills as well as for anyone who has a case to put forward and would like to do so convincingly.