British Classics

This collection brings together some of the most influential and beloved novels in the English literary canon. From dystopian futures to sweeping romantic tales, these works explore human nature, social class, morality, and the quest for identity. Spanning genres and centuries, The Essential British Classics Collection is a celebration of the best of British storytelling, offering profound insights into the human experience.

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.

A legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) is one of the most enduring films of modern cinema – its famously visceral scenes acting like a traumatic wound we seem compelled to revisit. Exploring the ways in which Alien compels us to think about otherness, Luckhurst demonstrates how and why this interstellar slasher movie, this old dark house in space, came to coil itself around our darkest imaginings about the fragility of humanity.

Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon.

This hardcover edition of the classic tale of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS has been read and loved by children for generations. Start a new tradition of reading this timeless tale in your home today! Fully illustrated in color, bringing each tale to life Filled with humor, adventure and...

Read by Daniel Weyman (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) and featuring an author's note read by Peter James 'What a fool I've been not to have read Peter James until The Hawk Is Dead! A great story' – James Patterson, bestselling author of the Alex Cross series Roy Grace never dreamed...

This study of Jaws (1975) examines how Steven Spielberg's breakout film not only redefined the thriller but also pioneered the summer blockbuster, cementing his reputation as a master filmmaker. Against the odds of a catastrophic location shoot, 27-year-old Spielberg delivered a film so effective that it became the highest-grossing movie of its time, transforming Hollywood's approach to event cinema.

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic.

A rare meeting of literary genius: P. D. James, long among the most admired mystery writers of our time, draws the characters of Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice into a tale of murder and emotional mayhem. It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life...

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company’s ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II’s vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber...

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong - with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.

Two Bestselling Agatha Christie Novels in One Great Audiobook The Secret of Chimneys What is The Secret of Chimneys? A young drifter finds out when a favor for a friend pulls him into the heart of a deadly conspiracy in this captivating classic from Agatha Christie. Little did Anthony Cade...

"A buoyant tale about the path to acceptance and joy--beginning, like all journeys, with one brave step."--People "The best-selling novelist has done a masterful job of depicting the circumstances of a generation of women we seldom think about: the mothers, sisters, wives and fiances of men lost...

'One of the best British crime writers' – Lee Child Roy Grace is about to find out just how dangerous a dead man can be . . . Arriving late for a funeral, James Taylor spots a familiar face in the church – his old schoolfriend Rufus Rorke. Except it couldn’t be him, could it? Because two...

“Roald Dahl sometimes shared a tonal kinship with Ogden Nash, and he could demonstrate a verbal inventiveness nearly Seussian…[His] stories work better in audio than in print.” –The New York Times Where did Roald Dahl get all of his wonderful ideas for stories? From his own life, of...

Stanley Kubrick hailed The Shining as 'the scariest horror film of all time' before its release in 1980. Though the film opened to poor reviews, it has since become one of the most admired horror films in cinema history. Exerting an enormous influence on popular culture, The Shining has spawned a vast array of interpretations and conspiracy theories. Roger Luckhurst's illuminating study explores the film's themes, tropes and resonances through a detailed analysis of sequences and performances.

A rich and varied collection of classic short stories by British writers: 'Quality' by John Galsworthy, 'The Mark on the Wall' by Virginia Woolf, 'The Horse Dealer’s Daughter' by D. H. Lawrence, 'The Ticking of the Clock' by Louisa Baldwin, 'The Fiddler of the Reels' by Thomas Hardy, 'The Return' by R. Murray Gilchrist, 'Kew Gardens' by Virginia Woolf, 'Seashore Macabre' by Hugh Walpole, 'Satan’s Circus' by Eleanor Smith, 'The Coffin Merchant' by Richard Middleton....

After being jilted by her fiance, Dulcie Mainwaring despairs of ever finding true love. For a distraction, she goes to a publishing conference, where she meets Viola Dace, a dramatic woman who refuses to live without romance, as well as Aylwin Forbes, an editor whom Viola adores. The fact that Aylwin is married doesn't stop Viola. When her amorous pursuit prompts Aylwin's wife to leave him, the academic heartthrob is wide open to Viola's romantic attentions. That is, until Dulcie's 18-year-old niece moves in with Viola, and the young girl soon catches Aylwin's roving eye.

The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.

The guns of Navarone, huge and catastrophically accurate, embedded atop an impregnable iron fortress in the Mediterranean Sea.

Twelve hundred British soldiers trapped on a...

A sudden murder in an English village pub sets off the twenty-sixth novel in the bestselling series starring superintendent Richard Jury, from bestselling author Martha Grimes, still “one of the most fascinating mystery writers today” (Houston Chronicle). One calm night in Twickenham, a...