Books

Driven by a deep-seated desire to understand his mother's life before he was born, Derek Owusu offers a powerful imagining of her journey. As she moves from Ghana to the UK and navigates parenthood in a strange and often lonely environment, the effects of...

The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde gathers all nine of Oscar Wilde’s whimsical, poignant fabulations from The Happy Prince and Other Tales and The House of Pomegranates. Laced with Wilde’s legendary drollery, these fanciful tales touch on the themes of love, devotion, creativity,...

At twenty-six, Lucy Young is tired. Tired of fetching coffees for senior TV producers, tired of going on disastrous dates, and definitely tired of living in a damp flat share with flatmates who never buy toilet roll. She could quit her job for a...

The gothic classic that gave the vampire its teeth. When young solicitor Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to assist the mysterious Count Dracula in purchasing a London estate, he finds himself trapped in a nightmare of superstition, bloodlust, and ancient evil. As Dracula makes...

“In the Mountains” is a novel written by Elizabeth von Arnim that is narrated in the form of a diary. The narrator is an English woman who seeks refuge in the Swiss Alps after experiencing personal problems shortly after World War I.In July 1919...

Haunted by trauma and memory, Sethe is a woman who escaped slavery but cannot escape its scars. Living in a house shadowed by a restless spirit—the ghost of her baby, whose tombstone bears only the word Beloved—Sethe tries to forge a life of peace...

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow...

Thomas Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with evocative descriptions of rural life, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships. Its heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, takes up her position as a farmer on a large estate, where her confident presence draws...

The most widely staged dramatist after Shakespeare, Chekhov left a deep mark both on the development of Russian literature and world theatre, with plays that were remarkable not just for their dialogue but their atmosphere and the tensions expressed between the lines. Collected in...

Eleven-year-old Gopi has played squash for as long as she can remember. After the sudden loss of her mother, the game becomes her refuge—and her entire world. Under the watchful eye of her grieving father, her training turns rigorous, almost relentless. As Gopi hones...

Driven to his deathbed by an incurable disease, the thirty-year-old impoverished gentleman Chulkaturin decides to write a diary looking back on his short life. After describing his youthful disillusionment and his family's fall from grace and loss of status, the narrative focuses on his...

Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape. One...

Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from shell-shock and is on the brink of madness. Smith's day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her...

Despite his tragically short life, John Keats, a self-confessed “rebel Angel”, endures for many as a personification of the Romantic age. While contemporary critics mocked him as a “Cockney poet” and an uneducated lower-class “apothecary” who aspired to poetry, subsequent generations began to see...

During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received – as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham – what is purported to be an Elizabethan portrait. The painting depicts a beautiful young man in...

Between 1892 and 1895, Oscar Wilde's drawing-room comedies Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest made his name as a playwright who fearlessly mocked the hypocrisy and snobbery of Victorian society and took gleeful...

As a young girl from a wealthy family, Ginko Ogino seems set for a conventional life in the male-dominated society of nineteenth-century Japan. But when she contracts gonorrhoea from her husband, she suffers the ignominy of divorce. Forced to bear the humiliation of being...

The charismatic monk Medardus becomes implicated in a deadly mystery against his will. As he travels towards Rome he wrestles with the enigma of his own identity while pursued by his murderous doppelganger. The monk's only hope for salvation lies with the beautiful Aurelie;...

In Maylis de Kerangal’s Painting Time, we are introduced to the burgeoning young artist Paula Karst, who is enrolled at the famous Institut de Peinture in Brussels. Unlike the friends she makes at school, Paula strives to understand the specifics of what she’s painting—replicating...

A carriage transporting ten passengers fleeing from Rouen is stopped at a village inn by Prussian soldiers, who decide to detain them until one of their party, the prostitute Boule de Suif, consents to sleep with their officer. When Boule de Suif refuses to...

When the Basque dragoon Don José meets a Gypsy woman at the factory he is guarding, he is immediately ensnared by her wiles. After she is arrested for injuring a co-worker and he helps her to flee, he is imprisoned and demoted, but she...

James Joyce’s landmark debut novel traces the awakening of an artist—and the forging of an identity. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and intelligent boy growing up in late 19th-century Ireland, as he navigates childhood, faith,...

Found in the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci's writings and drawings, 'The Prophecies' are a collection of enigmatic divinatory pronouncements, some punning and playful, others dire and ominous. While the author's intentions behind these utterances are unclear, they clearly attest to the artist's...

In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death―and the truth about their marriage―in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery. Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival...

In the Burmese provincial town of Kyauktada, the world-weary John Flory – a thirty-something English teak dealer – leads a life of quiet disillusionment, hardly mixing with the natives or the expat community, and deriving some comfort only from his conversations with an Indian...

After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city's dreamy streets ruminating about race,...

Thomas Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with evocative descriptions of rural life, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships. Its heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, takes up her position as a farmer on a large estate, where her confident presence draws...

The sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn. Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry...

Soldier . Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold--a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even...

With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs...

A little life follows the lives of four college friends—Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm—as they build their lives in New York City, chasing careers, connection, and meaning. Over the decades, their incredibly strong bond is tested by ambition, addiction, and personal demons, and at...

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests...

Bad Thoughts plunges you into the raw, wild, and haunting minds of women navigating the messy, often surreal realities of modern life in Los Angeles. From rebellious party girls and desperate reality TV hopefuls to estranged daughters and restless spirits, these unforgettable characters live...

Toby Fleishman thought he knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost fifteen years separated: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, the occasional moment of tension in their co-parenting negotiations. He could not have predicted that...

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.  Soon...

A meddling aunt who frowns on hair removal. Two door-to-door saleswomen offering magical lanterns. A radiant lover who appears nightly to luxuriate in the bath. A silent visitor who cleans and babysits while a single mother works late. The women in Where the Wild...

Iron Window #1The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old...

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She's a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago,...

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression. They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging...

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred...

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through...

In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful,...

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on...

The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people, one Israeli and one Palestinian, that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East – with an updated afterword by the author. In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to...

In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year...

Katniss Everdeen's adventures may have come to an end, but her story continues to blaze in the hearts of millions worldwide. In The Girl Who Was on Fire - Movie Edition , sixteen YA authors take you back to the world of the Hunger...

Simone de Beauvoir delivers a stark and unflinching account of her mother’s final days. Written with clarity, tenderness, and unsparing honesty, this memoir traces the physical and emotional unraveling of a once-vibrant woman, as witnessed by a daughter grappling with love, guilt, and helplessness....

Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father's wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On his return, his passionate desire is to be reunited with the beautiful but forbidden lady Rowena, but he soon...

Originally published in 1942 and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs. In a secluded woodland castle an...

From the bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes an updated, timely, and visionary book about the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now—as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.  "All roads used to lead to Rome....