Item category 1: Classics

Review: "Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. A chance pools win enables him to capture the art student Miranda and keep her in the cellar of the Sussex house he has bought with the windfall. The situation is seen first from the collector's poin...

This final classic collection of stories reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships. Brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice, the stories range from 'The Lotus Eater' in which a man has a vision of a life of b...

The third volume of Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories, introduced by the author, contains the celebrated series about Ashenden, a secret service agent in World War I. Based on Maugham's own experiences with the British Intelligence service in Switzerland, the stories are vignettes in whi...

All the sorrows of Evan Shepard's loutish adolescence were redeemed at seventeen, in 1935, when he fell in love with automobiles... In the small suburban town of Cold Spring Harbor, Evan and his young bride Rachel yearn to escape the mistakes of their parents. But as they discover, families exert...

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders, an eccentric group of relatives suffering from a wide variety of ailments. But Flor...

Acclaimed entertainer Hans Schneir collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won't marry her in the Catholic church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life- the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mo...

A Clockwork Orange is a widely acknowledged as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. This special edition, compiled and edited by Andrew Biswell, Burgess's biographer, restores the text of the novel as Burgess originally wrote it, and includes a selection of interviews, arti...

'What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence'. In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost...