A visionary whose writing broke through the boundaries of the science-fiction genre, Philip K. Dick is regarded as a major figure of twentieth-century fiction. In 2007, he became the first science-fiction writer to be included in the Library of America Series. This collection of nine of his outstanding shorter works includes such classics as Autofa...

When Mrs Dashwood is forced by an avaricious daughter-in-law to leave the family home in Sussex, she takes her three daughters to live in a modest cottage in Devon. For Elinor, the eldest daughter, the move means a painful separation from the man she loves, but her sister Marianne finds in Devon the romance and excitement which she longs for. The c...

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time" after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experienc...

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures ev...

Wharton's most erotic and lyrical novel, Summer explores a daring theme for 1917: a woman's awakening to her sexuality. Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, ignorant of desire until the arrival of architect Lucius Harney. Independent yet kept from love until now by society's expectations, Charity finds herself w...

Book 2 of the Time Odyssey series. Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth's history. Why...

In one of the most famous openings of any novel, Dickens masterfully presents the turmoil of the French Revolution which is the backdrop for a novel of love, patience, hope and self-sacrifice. It is read by Anton Lesser whose award-winning Dickens recordings in their abridged form have now resulted in the opportunity to read the full unabridged tex...

Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison's reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which...

Helen Huntingdon flees a disastrous marriage and retreats to the desolate, half-ruined moorland mansion, Wildfell Hall. With her small son, Arthur, she adopts an assumed name and makes her living as a painter. The inconvenience of the house is outweighed by the fact that she and Arthur are removed from her drunken, degenerate husband. Although the...

When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700-and everything has changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings-unearth their secret and then retum to his own time...

The first book in the Time Odyssey Series. For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind-until they act. In an instant, Earth's timeline is carved up and reassembled into a patchwork of different eras, from prehistory to the year 2037, each with its o...

Just before the First World War, the Ramsay family go to their holiday home in the Hebrides, bringing several guests with them. While they are there, one of the children wants to visit a lighthouse. After a ten year gap, during which the war wreaks its havoc on Europe, one of the guests returns to the house; and another trip to the lighthouse is pr...

Plagued all her life by her boisterous husband, strait-laced, outspoken, domineering Maudie Tipstafff is now on her own. Invited by her two daughters and her son to spend four months with each of them, she leaves Glasgow for the very first time, uncertain of what awaits her. But what she finds in the very different homes of her children is not what...

Kurt Vonnegut is a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as a "true artist" (NY Times) with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of the best living American writers." W...

Henry James' classic morality tale tells of a triangle of friends and lovers doomed to treachery by overreaching desire. In early-twentieth-century London, Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist possessed of all the qualities of an ideal husband except for money. By chance, Kate befriends American heiress Milly Theale, who i...

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth,...

When Mr Earnshaw brings a black-haired foundling child into his home on the Yorkshire moors, he little imagines the dramatic events which will follow. The passionate relationship between Cathy Earnshaw and the foundling, Heathcliff, is a story of love, hate, pity, and retribution: the effects of which reverberate throughout the succeeding generatio...

The artifact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its center. Pierson's puppeteers-strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens-discovered this "Ringworld" in a hitherto unexplored part of the galaxy. Curious about the immense structure, but frightened by the prospect of meeting the builders, they set about...

A vicious hit, a vengeful enemy, a drug addled Colombian club owner and a sex crazed Italian family... the ever powerful Lucky Santangelo has to deal with them all. Meanwhile Max - her teenage daughter - is becoming the 'it' girl in Europe's modeling world. And her Kennedyesque son, Bobby, is being set up for a murder he didn't commit. But Lucky ca...

A Russian billionaire and his state of the art yacht. His beautiful and sexy supermodel girlfriend. And five dynamic, powerful and famous couples invited on the yacht's maiden voyage. A senator and his lovely but unhappy wife. A very attractive movie star and his needy ex-waitress girlfriend. A famous black footballer and his interior designer wife...

Why would a woman marry a serial killer? Because she cannot refuse.. Kateryn Parr, a thirty-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives - King Henry VIII - commands her to marry him. Kateryn has no doubt about the danger she faces: the previous queen lasted sixte...