H. E. Marshall’s classic children’s chronicle of Britain Our Island Story includes all the best-loved (and most infamous!) stories from history: King Alfred and the cakes; King John and the Magna Carta; Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar; Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada; and many others. This box set contains the complete and unabridged text, released previously in separate volumes. It is read with aplomb by Anna Bentinck and Daniel Philpott.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of n...

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of n...

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of n...

Thomas Hardy’s first published novel, Desperate Remedies is a thrilling blend of Gothic mystery and love-triangle romance. After the untimely death of their parents, Cytheria and Owen Graye must go out into the world and fend for themselves. Cytheria’s journey leads her to the dark and mysterious household of Miss Aldclyffe, a capricious and eccentric woman, who steers Cytheria into a love affair with her charismatic steward Aeneous Manston. All is not what it seems, and Cytheria finds her...

Tess of the D’Urbervilles tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family’s poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles. Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past. Set among the lush pastures and bleak uplands of Hardy’s imagined Wessex, and filled with unforgettable images of tenderness and tragedy, the story examines conventional morality through Tess herself, one of the bes...

This book provides the reader with rich evidence of the very contemporaneity of Karl Abraham, reminding the reader of his unique clinical contributions to such diverse areas of concentration as the psychoses, depression, and the pre-oedipal.

Hardy’s third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a sparse sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: Stephen Smith, a young architect restoring the old parish church, and the respectable, older man of London society, Henry Knight. The blue-eyed and high-spirited protagonist must untangle the conflicting messages of her heart and her mind.

Subtitled ‘A Story of To-day’, A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern world of the 1880s complete with falsified telegraphs, fake photographs, and perilous train tracks. The story follows the life of Paula Power, heiress of her late father’s railroad fortune and the new owner of the medieval Castle Stancy. With the castle in need o...

Bloomsbury presents The Playground Murders by Lesley Thomson, read by Anna Bentinck'A class above' IAN RANKIN.Forty years ago, in the dark of the playground, two children's lives were changed for ever.The case of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in an empty playground, haunted Hammersmith police for decades. Not just because the victim would never see her seventh birthday. But because solving the case meant arresting another child on suspic...

***Now a major new Netflix series*** Don’t Trust This Book Don’t Trust These People Don’t Trust YourselfLouiseSince her husband walked out, Louise has made her son her world, supporting them both with her part-time job. But all that changes when she meets…DavidYoung, successful and charming – Louise cannot believe a man like him would look at her twice let alone be attracted to her. But that all comes to a grinding halt when...

Emma is a literary classic by Jane Austen following the genteel women of Georgian-Regency England in their most cherished sport: matchmaking. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied. After a couple she has introduced gets married, she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities and, blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, proceeds to forge ahead in her new interest despite objections. What follows is a comedy of manners, in which Emma repeatedly counsels h...