Classics

At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever.

A devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time?

Describes Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world. This work describes his search for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth'.

Offers an account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it.

At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. In this book, the author entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in its imperfection and grandeur.

Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake.

Set in mid-19th-century Russia, this book tells the story of a married woman's passion for a young officer and of her tragic fate.

Anna is a beautiful, intelligent woman whose passionate affair with the dashing Count Vronsky leads her to ruin. Her story is also about a search for meaning, and by twinning it with that of Levin, an awkward idealist whose happy marriage and domestic trials form the backdrop for a similar quest.

Roald Dahl is well known as a master of the macabre and the unexpected in the tradition of Saki. This volume includes the stories in chronological order as established by Dahl's biographer, Jeremy Treglown, in consultation with the Dahl estate.

Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey - and finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn.