'You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.' Humbert Humbert, a European intellectual adrift in America, is a middle-aged college professor. Haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love, he falls outrageously (and illegally) in lust with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Dolores Haze. Obsessed, he'll do anything, will commit any crime, to possess his Lolita. But once Lolita belongs to Humbert, once he has got what he wants, what next? And what of Lolita? How long is she willing to be possessed?
A young prince meets with his father's ghost, who alleges that his own brother, now married to his widow, murdered him. The prince devises a scheme to test the truth of the ghost's accusation, feigning wild madness while plotting a brutal revenge.
Count Dracula's castle is a hellish world where night is day, pleasure is pain and the blood of the innocent prized above all. Young Jonathan Harker approaches the gloomy gates with no idea what he is about to face. And back in England eerie incidents are unfolding as strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck.
This text is an updated edition of George Eliot's classic tale. The novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community.
The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves. Dickens' tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy.
This new edition of Emily Bronte's classic 1847 novel uses the authoritative Clarendon text. Patsy Stoneman's introduction considers the bewildering variety of critical interpretation to which the novel has been subject, as well as offering some provocative new insights for the modern reader.
Streetwise George and his childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But do dreams come at a price!
At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortunenor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all,it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Wellington leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten.
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman, as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities.
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society.
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach! Everybody who is anybody is seen at his parties. For Gatsby, always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled.
''It has been an honour to know and to learn from Iris.'' Ruven Afanador
''A force of nature.'' Tommy Hilfiger
''One of the industry''s oldest tastemakers.'' Vogue
This is not a book of secrets - I have no secrets. Sorry to disappoint if that''s what you''re looking for. I have some good stories though. And a few ideas. This book is about living, creating and colour. Because creativity and colour matter. I don''t want you to dress like me or think like me - that''s not the idea of this book. I want you to find the colours, confidence and creative inspiration that reflect you. My life has been filled with love, wonder and a very deep, incurable curiosity. This book is my treasure trove of inspiration, influences and ideas: My source. Be brave. Find your source. What makes you happy?
The narrator of this story is a boy who leaves California to attend a college in New England. He falls in with a group of students of Ancient Greek. Four of their number work themselves into a trance-like condition one night, and murder a local farmer. Bunny then tries to blackmail the others.
Celebrating the 80th anniversary of one of the most famous stories in the world, a beautiful Puffin paperback edition translated from the original French by Theo Cuffe.
This is the enchanting story of the little prince who lives on a tiny planet with three volcanoes and a haughty flower, which he must protect from the baobabs, the bad seeds. The rulers of the other planets he visits all suffer from the cares and stupidities of the everyday world. Only the little prince, through his clear, loving eyes, knows that the simplest of things can be of the utmost importance.
An allegorical tale that has captured the hearts and minds of children and adults since it's first publication in France in 1943.
Antony Beevor Stalingrad Stalingrad est sans doute le tournant capital de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sa chute aurait livré à Hitler les pétroles du Caucase. Et quel symbole que de prendre la ville qui portait le nom du « petit père des peuples ». De ces enjeux résulta un des plus gigantesques - et des plus atroces - affrontements militaires de l'Histoire. La Wehrmacht en ressortit brisée ; l'Armée rouge y forgea la légende d'un communisme libérateur.
Pour conter cette épopée, où l'héroïsme et la barbarie se côtoient à chaque page, l'historien britannique Antony Beevor a pu accéder, le premier, aux archives soviétiques, jalousement tenues secrètes jusqu'à la chute du régime, qu'il a confrontées aux archives allemandes ainsi qu'à d'innombrables témoignages.
Opérations militaires, relations entre les hauts gradés et le pouvoir politique, souffrances quotidiennes des combattants des deux bords et des civils : à tous les niveaux, ce récit rigoureux et inspiré apporte des révélations et des éclairages nouveaux. Il nous fait revivre au jour le jour une bataille où se joua le sort du monde.
On sort de ce bilan magistral abasourdi par l'ampleur et l'horreur des destructions humaines. mais aussi par le temps qu'il a fallu à l'Histoire pour qu'elle reprenne, sur un tel sujet, ses droits. Voilà qui est fait.
Pierre Daix, Le Figaro littéraire.
The ancient legend of the Baskervilles has persisted in the family history for generations. It is Sir Charles's mysterious death in the grounds of Baskerville Hall that brings Sherlock Holmes to the scene of one of his most famous and intriguing cases.
'Unmissable . Like chancing upon an oasis, you want to drink it slowly... Subtle, unpredictable, surprising' Guardian Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography' on writing and womanhood. Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory as a young woman and shape it to her need. Things I Don't Want to Know is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers. 'Superb sharpness and originality of imagination. An inspiring work of writing' Marina Warner
Fading southern belle Blanche Dubois depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley.
From the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home : Dazzling, essential, entirely unlike anything else -- a memoir on modern womanhood, rejecting oppressive social expectations and turning instead towards a thrilling, transformative freedom What does it mean to be free - as an artist, a woman, a mother or daughter? And what is the price of that freedom? In this dazzling memoir, Deborah Levy confronts the essential questions of modern womanhood with humour, pragmatism, and profoundly resonant wisdom. Reflecting on the period when she wrote the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Hot Milk - when her mother was dying, her daughters were leaving home, her marriage was coming to an end - she is characteristically eloquent on the social expectations and surreal realities of daily life. And expanding far beyond these bounds, she describes a uniquely frank, wise and thrilling manifesto for female experience: embracing the exhilarating terror of freedom, seeking to understand what that freedom could mean and how it might feel.
A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together the two lovers must be prepared to risk everything. Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Romeo and Juliet is a dazzling combination of passion and hatred, bawdy comedy and high tragedy.
Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statue of Peter Pan. Silk. Melancholy. The banana tree. A Pandemic. A love story.''br>br>br>From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final instalment in Deborah Levy''s critically acclaimed ''Living Autobiography''br>br>br>''I can''t think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman'' Observer on The Cost of Livingbr>br>br>Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy''s ''Living Autobiography'' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.br>br>br>''I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it - but we must also knock it down.'' br>br>br>''Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy''s every sentence is a masterpiece of clarity and poise... A brilliant writer'' Daily Telegraph on The Cost of Livingbr>br>br>''Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor-sharp insights'' Financial Times on The Cost of Living>
