One of the most revered works in English literature, Great Expectations traces the coming-of-age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire.Raised by a humble blacksmith, Pip is recruited by the wealthy Miss Havisham ...

In the fall of 1941, two years into World War II, British journalist John Russell is still living in Berlin with his fourteen-year-old son, Paul, and his longtime girlfriend, Effi, a German movie star. One of a handful of much-censored foreign journalists,Russell is investigating a story that he can’t publish from inside Germany: What’s happening to the Berlin Jews who are being shipped east? His search for the answer brings him into proximity with the local communist underground an...

Inspired by a true story, prize-winning historian and acclaimed novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore explores the consequences of forbidden love in this heartbreaking epic of marriage, childhood, danger, and betrayal that unfolds in Stalin's Moscow during the bleak days after World War II.As Moscow celebrates the motherland's glorious victory over the Nazis, shots ring out on the crowded streets. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl—dressed in traditional nineteenth-century costum...

Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge is assigned one of the most baffling investigations of his career—a cold murder case with an unidentified victim and a cold trail with few clues to follow.Chief Inspector Brian Leslie, a respected colleague of Ian Rutledge’s, is sent to Avebury, a village set inside a great prehistoric stone circle not far from Stonehenge.A young woman has been murdered next to a mysterious, hooded, figure-like stone, but no one recogniz...

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England's history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England-until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. Bu...

Narrated by Simon PrebbleFrom the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers comes a brilliant and boisterous novelA love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt’s long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers.Lucien (Lucy) Minor is t...

Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities is a sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris with a complex plot portraying the results of terror and treason, love and supreme sacrifice.“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”—opening line of A Tale of Two CitiesIt was the time of the French Revolution, a time of great change and great danger. It was a time when injustice was met by a lust for vengeance, and r...

“Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability.” — The New YorkerThe genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Matt Ridley’s Genome...

Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers' Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class among the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning his victims to death, and Bob becomes a ...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close—the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When "The Final Problem" was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself—on a mutiny at sea and a treasu...

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 20...

The Time Machine is the fascinating oral diary of the Time Traveler-the first man to journey beyond the conventional limits of time. As the first of H.G. Wells' visionary novels, it created the science fiction genre by giving us a tantalizing glimpse at the future. When the Time Traveler crash-lands in the year 802,701, he is surrounded by lush landscapes and a small, gentle people named Eloi. Amazed by their apparent bliss, he wishes to bring their secrets back to his troubled time. As th...