Foreign Literature

Le protagoniste du roman du meme nom de l’ecrivain francais Honore de Balzac (1799—1850), l’usurier cynique Gobseck, «l’homme-billet», est convaincu que le monde est gouverne par l’or, et l’usurier regne sur l’or. L’auteur montre a quoi conduisent les depenses excessives et le pouvoir de l’ar...

When the Quidditch World Cup is disrupted by Voldemort's rampaging supporters alongside the resurrection of the terrifying Dark Mark, it is obvious to Harry Potter that, far from weakening, Voldemort is getting stronger. Back at Hogwarts for his fourth year, Harry is astonished to be chosen b...

The second in this new series, The Virgin Book of Hit Singles is the most-up-to-date and comprehensive record of the music charts available today and a perfect, collectable complement to The Virgin Book of Hit Albums and The Virgin Book of Top 75 Charts. Now improved and fine-tuned, and drawn...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR In a prison in Occupied France during the Second World War, the order is given that every tenth inmate is to be executed. Louis Chavel, a rich lawyer, draws the short straw and barters everything he owns to exchange places with another man and survive. Dest...

This is the story of Francis Andrews, a young man whose betrayal of his fellow smugglers has left a man dead. Fearing vengeance, he flees and takes refuge in the house of a young, isolated woman who persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court. But neither she nor Andrews i...

A delightful insight into the formation of an artist who would become one of the world's most respected writers. Born in 1922 in the tiny Portuguese village of Azinhaga, Jose Saramago was only a baby when his family moved to a series of cramped lodgings in a working-class neighbourhood of Li...

Read Thomas Mann's meditation on the power of literary representation and the tyranny of the writer's imagination. Mann's novel, written some 150 years after Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, follows Lotte Kestner, Goethe's real-life heroine, as she makes a pilgrimage to Weimar to meet ...

Discover Thomas Mann's comic novel of deception and misplaced confidence - back in print for the first time in over twenty years. Waiter by day, man about Paris by night; the young and good looking Felix Krull has created for himself a personality to charm and deceive the world of wealth. Wh...

Discover George Eliot's powerful tragedy about the struggle between head and heart. **As Heard on BBC Radio 4** Maggie and Tom Tulliver are both wilful, passionate children, and their relationship has always been tempestuous. As they grow up together on the banks of the River Floss, Tom's s...

A heartwarming and poignant tale of a lonely man brought back to life and faith. Silas Marner lives a friendless and isolated existence near the country village of Raveloe, hoarding his gold. One night his fortune is stolen and Silas loses everything he holds dear. But then the golden-haired...

After killing his brother Abel, Cain must wander for ever. He witnesses Noah's ark, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf. He is there in time to save Abraham from sacrificing Isaac when God's angel arrives late after a wing malfunction. Written in the last years o...

Taking inspiration from classic authors from Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy, Williams shines a light on our society's changing views of the rural and industrial landscapes in which we work and live. Our collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of ...

Far Eastern Tales is a collection of short stories born of Maugham's experiences in Malaya, Singapore and other outposts of the former British Empire. Whether portraying a ship-borne flight from a lover's curse, murder in the jungle, or a marriage shattered by a past indiscretion, they all re...

Ernest Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting. 'I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death' This is Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting....

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARL Edgar Allan Poe invented detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin: 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'. Dorothy L. Sayers would later describe ...

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic e...

'Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom' Sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those w...

This is a fabulous collection of stories based on many of the witches from Joseph Delaney's Spooks books. Ever wondered why the Spook doesn't trust girls who wear pointy shoes? Or why Grimalkin became the Assassin for the Malkin Witch clan? Find out all this and more in this dark and eerie co...

I Am Grimalkin is the ninth book in Joseph Delaney's terrifying Wardstone Chronicles - over 3 million copies sold worldwide! 'I am Grimalkin, and I have already chosen those I will kill . . .' Grimalkin has made it her lifetime ambition to destroy the Fiend. Having assisted the Spook and hi...

The Spook's Destiny is the eighth book in Joseph Delaney's terrifying Wardstone Chronicles - over 3 million copies sold worldwide! 'You belong to the blade now. You'll belong to it until the day you die . . .' Tom, the Spook's Apprentice, has travelled to Ireland, where he must tackle a gro...