Classics Collection

The Iliad and The Odyssey are epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, of which the written versions are dated to the 8th century BCE. Chronicling events in the Greek Bronze Age, this magnificent pair of poems forms the cornerstone of Western literature. If The Iliad is a classic war story, The Odyssey is symbolic of the individual’s journey through life.

FINALIST FOR THE GILLER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE Bold and lyrical, sensual and highly charged, Cereus Blooms at Night is the beautifully written, sensational first novel by Shani Mootoo, one of Canada’s most exciting literary voices. At the core of this...

This is a summary of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Meditations is essentially a scrapbook of thoughts written over a 19-year period; it’s not ordered and it repeats itself frequently as ideas reoccurred to the author at different times. For this reason, it can be hard for a casual reader to extract the myriad messages contained within. This summary helps in that by interpreting Meditations and reducing it from around 50,000 words down to 4,400. While it has been interpreted, the author has done his best not to embellish it.

The Book of Wonder is one of the most important books in the lineage of fantasy fiction. It introduced themes that Lord Dunsany worked with for the rest of his career, which created tropes that you'll recognise as if you've read and loved this book many times before.

Expanding on his ideas from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's radical polemic Beyond Good and Evil undermines the assumptions of traditional morality and encourages us to think more critically about the world in which we live.

Dionne Brand, author of the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning collection Ossuaries, returns with a startlingly original work about the act of writing itself. On a lonely wharf a clerk in an ink blue coat inspects bales and bales of paper that hold a poet's accumulated left-hand pages—the unwritten...

Faith ultimately bursts into flame as Updike's major new novel, charting the lives of one family through four generations, shows readers an America whose dream of perfection is translated into an obsession with God and the Moving Picture. Paterson, New Jersey, 1910: When a Presbyterian minister...

The Rebel Alliance’s elite strike force must join together with Han Solo to take down their old foe, the warlord Zsinj. Wraith Squadron: they are the Rebel Alliance’s ultimate strike force. Sleek, swift, and deadly, they are the first in battle, the last line of defense. Now they must find...

Originally meant to be heard rather than read, this great epic returns to the oral form for today's listeners.

Among the oldest stories of human civilization, Aesop's fables are a collection of extended proverbs with moral messages attributed to the Greek slave Aesop, who lived in the fifth century BC. Children will delight in these basic human truths represented by talking animals and plants, and adults will marvel at the plainspoken language of these ancient tales.

Few ghost stories are as chilling as the ones written by Victorian writers. Featuring work by H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, F.G. Loring and Florence Marryat, this second volume of eight enduring stories, some well-known, others less familiar, transport you to a cosy fireside to hear tales of disembodied voices, haunted objects and unknown entities lurking in the shadows cast by candlelight.

A cosmic collection of bone-chilling and terrifying short horror stories by Laurie Blake.

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles. The finest classic account comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, the Greek poet of the 3rd century BCE and librarian at Alexandria. Though less well-known than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and much shorter, it is an epic poem which is both exciting and moving, with remarkably vivid portraits of the main characters, Jason and Medea.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is what many believe to be the foundation of Western Philosophy. It addresses what is visible and invisible, seen and observed versus intuited and imagined, and what is public versus private and just versus unjust. It also concerns the meaning and importance of education, the state of the soul, the conflict between truth and beauty, animal urges versus higher aspirations, knowledge versus ignorance, and on and on.

Guru Nanak was deeply spiritual from an early age, having being born into a society caught in the throes of orthodoxy and ritualism. The ills of child marriage, infanticide and a rigid caste system had further crippled his people. The outpouring of Nanak’s faith evolved into the universal...

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.

A fascinating collection of some of the great - but less well known - fairy tales of all time.

Set in Toronto and Italy, this powerful sequel to In a Glass House explores the sometimes forbidden aspect of desire and one’s longing for what is unrecoverable. Victor Innocente remeets his half-sister in Toronto, shortly after his father’s death. Uneasy with their new proximity in each...

An affecting memoir from the country’s youngest sommelier, tracing her path through the glamorous but famously toxic restaurant world At just twenty-one, the age when most people are starting to drink (well, legally at least), Victoria James became the country’s youngest sommelier at a...

The Complete Socrates Collection is the ultimate anthology of works capturing the life, thought, and paradox of history’s most enigmatic philosopher. This modern edition unites the classic writings of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes—each offering a distinct window into the mind and mission of Socrates. Spanning high philosophy, personal testimony, and comic satire, this collection presents Socrates as teacher, martyr, gadfly, and mystery.