The Reef is a 1912 novel by American writer Edith Wharton. It concerns a romance between a widow and her former lover. The novel takes place in Paris and rural France, but primarily features American characters. While writing the novel, Edith Wharton visited England, Sicily, and Germany, among other locations. Anna Leath is a young widow, an Americ...

Ringworld: the most stunning artefact in known space, an articficial world with three million times Earth's surface area. Who built it? And where are they? In this stunning sequel to Larry Niven's Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, Louis Wu (now a near-hopeless lirehead hooked on electrical ecstasy), the aged Kzin warrior, Speaker-to-Animals, and...

In the fishing community of Fjallbacka, life is remote, peaceful - and for some, tragically short. Foul play was always suspected in the disappearance twenty years ago of two young holidaymakers in the area. Now a young boy out playing has confirmed this grim truth. Their remains, discovered with those of a fresh victim, send the town into shock. L...

In this book of tales from Africa there are stories about an evil-hearted shark, an extremely cunning hare, a very greedy spider, and the strongest man in the world. There are also answers to such questions as why the crab has no head, why the sun and moon live in the sky, and why flies buzz. Drawn from all parts of Africa, these stories illustrate...

Everything you need to know about A Taste of Honey to succeed in your GCSE Literature exam or essay task. York Notes: A Taste of Honey give you everything you need to know about Delaney's radical coming-of-age drama exploring questions of race, class and gender. From act and scene summaries to analysis of key characters including Jo, Helen, Geof an...

Meet Tom - a young boy with autism. Tom invites readers to learn about autism from his perspective, helping them to understand what it is and explaining the challenges he faces with issues such as social communication, sensory overload and changes in his routine. Tom tells readers about all the ways he can be helped and supported by those around hi...

Join Johnny Ball on a dazzling maths adventure to infinity and beyond. You'll find out maths isn't just about sums and calculations, but how numbers can take you anywhere! Learn to test your friends with magic tricks, discover mind-reading techniques and find out about the simple puzzles that stumped the world's brainiest mathematicians for centuri...

When Laura gets her first letter from her new Australian penfriend, she's delighted. She writes Malcolm a long letter telling him all about herself, but she doesn't receive a reply. At last she gets a letter from Malcolm's sister telling her that Malcolm has gone into hospital for an eye operation - he is nearly completely blind. Laura decides to l...

Grace Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures...

Come back to the Ringworld-the most astonishing feat of engineering ever encountered. A place of untold technological wonders, home to myriad humanoid races, and world of some of the most beloved science fiction stories ever written. The human Louis Wu; the puppeteer known as the Hindmost; Acolyte, son of the Kzin called Chmeee: legendary beings...

The Ringworld is a landmark engineering achievement, a flat band three million times the surface of the Earth, encircling a distant star. Home to trillions of inhabitants, not all of whom are human, and host to amazing technological wonders, the Ringworld is unique in all of the universe. Explorer Louis Wu, an Earth-born human who was part of the f...

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...

This is the story of how a special sort of stone formed deep inside the Earth, and came to the surface thousands of millions of years later. The Rock Factory looks at how minerals turn into rock crystals, how the Earth is structured and how volcanoes happen.

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...