This volume contains Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1877 short story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man". It begins with a man walking St. Petersburg's streets while musing upon how ridiculous his life is, as well as its distinct lack of meaning or purpose. This train of thought leads him to the idea of suicide, which he resolves to commit using a previously-acquired gun. However, a chance encounter with...

Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In nearby Bjørgvin another Asle, also a painter, is lying in the hospital, consumed by alcoholism. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions. In this final...

With an Introduction, explanatory notes, and annotated bibliography by Nicholas Seager. This collection brings together Jane Austen’s earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at the time of her premature death in 1817. In Sanditon, Austen exercises her acute powers of social observation in the setting of a newly fashionable seaside resort. This edition...

It is the French Riviera in the 1920s. Nicole and Dick Diver are a wealthy, elegant, magnetic couple. A coterie of admirers are drawn to them, none more so than the blooming young starlet Rosemary Hoyt. When Rosemary falls for Dick, the Diver\'s calculated perfection begins to crack. As dark truths emerge, Fitzgerald shows both the disintegration of a marriage and the failure of idealism....

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Now on BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week' Winner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021 Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction The gripping and shocking story of three generations of the Sackler...

'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.' Fifty-one years have passed since Fermina rebuffed Florentino and married Juvenal Urbino instead. Swearing his love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again. When Fermina's husband is killed, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find...

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation – awkward but electrifying – something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation...

Powieść ta, nazwana niemiecką Anną Kareniną, opowiada dzieje młodej kobiety, która w imię szczerości uczuć ośmieliła się zbuntować przeciwko pruskiej, junkiersko-ziemiańskiej moralności, ponosząc za to okrutną karę. Ta niezbyt u nas znana książka, zajmuje ważne miejsce w literaturze niemieckiej, czego dowodem jest tytuł ostatniej, głośnej powieści Günthera Grassa - Szeroka dziedzina, będący...

She knows your secrets. Now discover hers… You've never met anyone like Alice. She sees the best in people. And the worst. She always seems to know exactly what everyone around her is feeling: a thousand different emotions. Every. Single. Day. In amongst all that noise, she's lost herself. But there's one person she can't read. And that's the person who could change her life. Is she ready to...

Goliarda Sapienza\'s The Art of Joy was written over a nine year span, from 1967 to 1976. Sapienza had been unable to find a publisher for what was to become her most celebrated work, due to its perceived immorality. The manuscript lay for decades in a chest finally being proclaimed a \"forgotten masterpiece\" when it was eventually published in 2005.  This epic Sicilian novel, which...

Is Moses Herzog – philosopher, suffering romantic and cuckhold – losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend and he is left alone with his whirling thoughts, yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and those of the modern age. His head buzzing with ideas, he writes frantic, unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues...

"Four Chinese women, four America daughters - can they learn to understand each other? In 1949 a group of Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think...

Discover the #BookTok sports romance series everyone is talking about ZANDERS Chicago hockey isn't complete without me - everyone's favourite player to hate. I know my role, and I play it well. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy spending the majority of my game time in the penalty box before leaving the arena with a new girl on my arm each night. What I don't like is the new flight attendant on our...

Elsie Porter is an average twentysomething and yet what happens to her is anything but ordinary. On a rainy New Year's Day, she heads out to pick up a pizza for one. She isn't expecting to see anyone else in the shop, much less the adorable and charming Ben Ross. Their chemistry is instant and electric. Ben cannot even wait twenty-four hours before asking to see her again. Within weeks, the...

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.' Lawyer Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult...

‘We were perfect together. Until we met.’ I can’t help but smile at the lyrics in her letter. She misses me. In fifth grade, my teacher set us up with pen pals from a different school. Thinking I was a girl, with a name like Misha, the other teacher paired me up with her student, Ryen. My teacher, believing Ryen was a boy like me, agreed. It didn’t take long for us to figure out the mistake....

'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times 'The Sun always has ways to reach us.' From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She...

Dru has made it to Schola, the leading school where the vampire-fighting Order is based. There she is up against the capricious Anna, the only other female who shares her powers. Dru must unlock the mystery of who betrayed her mother, battle her intensifying feelings for both Graves and Christophe, and try to stay hidden from Sergej s deadly nosferat - bloodthirsty hunters who ll stop at...

The phrase `life's little ironies' is now proverbial, but it was coined by Hardy as the title for this, his third volume of short stories. While the tales and sketches reflect many of the strengths and themes of the great novels, they are powerful works in their own right. Unified by his quintessential irony, strong visual sense, and engaging characters, they deal with the tragic and the...

In 1915, Lawrence's frank representation of sexuality in The Rainbow caused a furore and the novel was seized by the police and banned almost as soon as it was published. Today it is recognised as one of the classic English novels of the twentieth century. The Rainbow is about three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840s to the early years of the twentieth...