Real Reads Series

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.

Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now, circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her social circle and Anne finds her old feelings for him reignited. However, when they meet again Wentworth behaves as if they are strangers and seems more interested in her friend Louisa. In this, her final novel, Jane Austen tells the story of a love that endures the tests of time and society with humour, insight and tenderness.

Well's science fiction of time travel, and his protagonist's adventures in the future.

I had been given a simple but enormous task. This was the role for which I had spent my whole life preparing.

Pip is a poor young orphan, living with his sister and her husband Joe, a blacksmith. His life is changed forever by two very different meetings--one with an escaped convict and one with an eccentric old lady and the beautiful girl who lives with her. But who is the mysterious person who leaves him a fortune? -- p. 4 of cover.

In the persons of Gradgrind and Bounderby, Dickens stigmatized the prevalent philosophy of utilitarianism which, whether in school or factory, allowed human beings to be caged in a dreary scenery of brick terraces and foul chimneys, to be enslaved to machines and reduced to numbers.

While enjoying a stay in fashionable Bath, the young and callow Catherine Morland is introduced to the delights of high society. A satire on the gothic mode typified by the novels of Ann Radcliffe, 'Northanger Abbey' is a witty comedy of manners in the style of Jane Austen's later novels.

Dickens's classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

Classic fiction. Readers will love reading their favourite classics in this new Collins Classics series.

is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. The famous opening words of Pride and Prejudice carry the reader straight to the heart of the Bennet household, the home of no fewer than five marriageable daughters. Austen's best-loved romance unfolds around the two eldest, Jane and Elizabeth, and two eligible bachelors, Mr Bingley and his friend Mr Darcy. When the lively Elizabeth first meets the aloof, conceited Darcy she dislikes him immediately, but this is only the prelude to a classic attraction of opposites.

Personal account of the life of the man who freed India from colonization through the Satyagraha (nonviolent protest)movement. His early boyhood life, legal studies, purification,and ultimate salvation of his homeland is carefully recounted in this inspiring and critical work of insurmountable importance.

A strange figure stood in front of him, dressed from head to foot in white clothing. The moonlight showed her pale, youthful face.

In ancient China a magical monkey appears, creating chaos everywhere he goes. The only way to put his tricks and talents to good use is to make him protector of Xuanzang, a young and handsome monk determined to travel from China to India in search of the precious scriptures.

For David Copperfield, orphaned and with a cruel stepfather, the future looks bleak. But a new start beckons with the magnificent Mr Micawber, then with his eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood.

Poet and Homeric scholar Barry B. Powell offers a major new translation of this enduring epic poem.

There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it After a harrowing tour in Afghanistan, Dr. Watson returns to London to convalesce at 221B Baker Street, home to the enigmatic Sherlock Holmes. Their lives are irrevocably thrown together by news that a man has been found dead in a grimy 'ill-omened' house, with the word rache - German for revenge - written in blood on the wall. This grisly discovery is complicated further by the look of utter horror on the victim's face, and the complete absence of any wounds on the body or sign of a struggle. First published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet is the remarkable first-outing of one of literature's most famous partnerships.

READ BY DAVID SOUL Duration: 2 hours 28 minutes Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe’s full-blooded Gothic style influenced generations of writers, filmmakers and musicians, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Baudelaire to Roger Corman and Lou Reed. The five tales collected here range from the famous to the obscure, but each displays Poe's unique sense of the macabre and his love for the baroque. A victim of the Inquisition finds himself in a nightmarish torture chamber, a castle is besieged by plague, a man becomes obsessed by the evil eye of his fellow lodger, a mesmerist suspends a man's life at the point of death and a jester takes his revenge on his cruel employers.

The classic story of Amy Dorrit, who lives much of her life at the Marshalsea prison where her father is imprisoned for debt, earning meager wages at jobs outside the prison walls, including seamstress work for Mrs. Clennam, whose son Arthur takes an interest in her plight.

"Emma Woodhouse is a young woman in Regency England. She lives in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her father, a valetudinarian (one who is afraid they will become ill) who is principally characterized by excessive concern for the health and safety of his loved ones. Emma's friend and only critic is the gentlemanly Mr. Knightley, her neighbour from the adjacent estate of Donwell, and brother of her elder sister Isabella's husband. As the novel opens, Emma has just attended the wedding of Miss Taylor, her old governess and best friend. Having introduced Miss Taylor to her future husband, Mr Weston, Emma takes credit for their marriage, and decides that she rather likes matchmaking. Against Mr. Knightley's advice, Emma forges ahead with her new avocation; this time she tries to match her new friend Harriet Smith, a sweet but none-too-bright girl of seventeen Ñ described as "the natural [illegitimate] daughter of somebody" to Mr. Elton, the local vicar..."

Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test.

Penguin presents the companion book to the "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries starring Gillian Anderson (T"he House of Mirth, The X-Files"). This stunning production features a screenplay written by Andrew Davies ("Bridget Jones's Diary"). Part romance, part melodrama, part detective story, the novel spreads out among a web of relationships in every level of society.