di Thomas Hardy

di Dashiell Hammett

Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die – violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective around, has his doubts and finds himself confronting something infinitely more dangerous. This is the Continental Op’s most bizarre case.

di Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding wrote both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) in response to Samuel Richardson’s book Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy travesty. Joseph Andrews begins as a parody, too, but soon outgrows its origins, and its deepest roots lie in Cervantes and Marivaux. In both stories, Fielding demonstrates his concern for the corruption of contemporary society, politics, religion, morality, and taste.
This revised and expanded edition follows the text of Joseph Andrews established by Martin C. Battestin for the definitive Wesleyan Edition of Fielding’s works. The text of Shamela is based on the first edition, and two substantial appendices reprint the preliminary matter from the second edition of Richardson’s Pamela and Conyers Middleton’s Life of Cicero, which is also closely parodied in Shamela. This Oxford World’s Classics edition also features a new introduction by Thomas Keymer which situates Fielding’s works in their critical and historical contexts.

di Maria Edgeworth

During the 1790s with Ireland in political crisis Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice in Castle Rackrent her first novel she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo Irish class Castle Rackrent s narrator Thady Quirk givesus four generations of Rackrent heirs Sir Patrick the dissipated spendthrift Sir Murtagh the litigating fiend Sir Kit the brutal husband and gambling absentee and Sir Condy the lovable and improvident dupe of Thady s own son Jason With this satire on Anglo Irish landlords Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott s Waverly 1814 She also changed the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class and boldly predicted the rise of the Irish Catholic Bourgeoisie With her satire on Anglo Irish landlords in Castle Rackrent 1800 Maria Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott s Waverley 1814 Politically risky stylistically innovative and wonderfully entertaining the novel changes the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class and boldly predicts the rise of the Irish Catholic bourgeoisie

di Charles Dickens

di Lewis Carroll

di Angela Carter

“One day, Annabel saw the sun and moon in the sky at the same time. The sight filled her with a terror which entirely consumed her … for she had no instinct for self-preservation if she was confronted by ambiguities.”

Annabel and Lee are married; Lee and Buzz are brothers. A quirky threesome, they have set up a household on the fringes on university life in the late sixties. Their hermetic existence is filled with drugs, sex, alchohol, intensity, and madness; their relationships with one another are haunting and complex.

Carter’s compelling tale carries echoes of Poe and Bronte into the very modern world of artists’ flats, psychiatrists’ offices, and generational conflicts. It is ultimately a tale of the search for loyalty and love in the midst of emotional starvation.