English Literature Great

Tempers are fraying and the cream is melting as summer temperatures hit the competition tent at Broomewode in the UK just in time for patisserie week. With only four contestants left, the pressure is mounting in the race to be chosen the best amateur baker in the UK. Poppy's working hard to find out who her parents were and what happened to them, even as she's trying to become a more accomplished witch, so she definitely doesn't have time for romance. Then someone dies and it looks like a crime of passion. Can she unmask a killer before she's the one who gets creamed?

Paul is a recently demoted adjunct instructor of freshman comp, a divorced but doting Brooklyn father, and a self-desc­ribed “curmudgeonly crank” cataloging his resentment of the priorities of modern life in a book called The Luddite Manifesto. Outraged by the authoritarian creeps ruining the country, he is determined to better the future for his young daughter, one aggrieved lecture at a time.

James Baldwin gives an electrifying reading about a young gay American in Paris recalling a dramatic and transforming incident from his boyhood, as he struggles to accept his sexual identity.

When Loveda Brown arrives in the tiny mountainside town of Idyllwild, California, as yet theWild West of 1912, she is running from her husband. But when a body turns up the next day, she realizes she might have worse things following her… that cold, clenched fist holds something that forces Loveda to stay in Idyllwild and use all of her wits to stop another murder from happening. Probably her own.

A great new collection of classic short fiction, brilliantly read by a selection of narrators. Includes the following stories: "The Lightening-Rod Man" by Herman Melville, "One of the Missing" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Leopard Man's Story" by Jack London, "Tennessee's Partner" by Bret Harte, "The New Catacomb" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin, "My Watch" and "The Widow's Protest" by Mark Twain, "An Ideal Family" by Kate Mansfield, "A Painful Case" by James Joyce, "Small Fry" by Anton Chekhov, and more!

Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book Series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. Among these are Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; and "Cyclists' Raid", the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One.

Naxos AudioBooks begins its new series of Great Poets with William Blake. This program contains all of his most popular works - including "Tyger", "The Auguries of Innocence", and "Jerusalem" - as well as some lesser-known poetry that demonstrates the range and power of his verse.

The world now has its first sage in over a century! Luciel returns at last from his extended stay in the City in the Sky with wondrous powers in hand, and this displeases a very particular faction within the Church of Saint Shurule. Red carpets were never the timid S-rank’s style, but an armed platoon isn’t exactly what he had in mind for his homecoming either. To make matters worse, just about everywhere Luciel turns is yet another plot in the making.

Luciel arrives at the City in the Sky, hopeful he can retrieve what he’s lost. All is not as it seems, though, as Neldahl holds many secrets in unlikely places. How many of the city’s curious features are merely the proclivities of Lord Reinstar, and how many speak to conspiracy? The S-rank isn’t sure he wants to know, so it’s a good thing he has plenty to occupy him, like hitting the books, practicing magic, and exploring the labyrinthine halls of the Sorcerer’s Guild.

Something is wrong with Tom Collins. More wrong than usual. Tom's being nice. I should have known trouble was right around the corner. One attempted murder later, and Reynard is forced to disarm Tom (literally). No bartender means no bar. Zee is grumpy and avoiding me, and the hotel's measly profits are dwindling by the day. Things are not going well. We need our broken, foul-mouthed Tom Collins back. But don't worry. Zee says saving Tom should be a walk in the park for us. Turns out that walk in the park is more like a road to hell. But I've got this.

A potential worldwide catastrophe looms large, while CIA Officer Jennifer Lear waits in a Berlin café to meet with her agent who has critical information regarding the chilling emerging threat. But the agent is late, and the meeting turns into a frantic struggle to survive, generating many questions about how it all could have gone so wrong - the first being: Who exactly is Jennifer Lear?

Now a major motion picture directed by Stephen Frears ( The Queen, High Fidelity) and starring Judi Dench ( Skyfall, Notes on a Scandal) and Steve Coogan ( The Trip, Hamlet 2): the heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years. When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman". Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him.

Gargamel has taken the world by storm with his magic show—but the show is really helping him carry out his evil new plan to capture the Smurfs and extract their essence! Can the Smurfs and their friends the Winslows stop Gargamel before it’s too late?

Julia Cummings has long been acquainted with loss - her mother, her brother, her sister, her friend, all gone too soon. But the loss that pushed her grief to the limit as a young girl was that of her best friend, Lucas Jonquil, who abandoned her without looking back. Now, eight years later, Lucas has returned to Lampton Park, and Julia has steeled herself - she will never forgive the man who broke her heart.

It’s been a little over two years since Judas infected the world. Mankind was no match for a virus with a stronger will to survive. The sick wander aimlessly, with a hunger that is never satisfied. The only hope for humanity lies within the immune. A group of survivors set out to rebuild in spite of the apocalypse, but they are faced with the reality that man is the most dangerous threat when they are no rules.

Balto has a quiet life as a sled dog - until tragedy strikes. Dozens of children in Nome become sick with diphtheria. Without antitoxin serum, they will perish - and the closest supply is 650 miles away! The only way to get the serum to Nome is by sled, but can the dogs deliver it in time? Heading bravely into a brutal blizzard, Balto leads the race for life.

As the Great Blizzard of 1888 cripples the vast machinery that is New York City, heiress Prudence MacKenzie sits anxiously within her palatial Fifth Avenue home waiting for her fiance's safe return. But the fearsome storm rages through the night. With daylight, more than 200 people are found to have perished in the icy winds and treacherous snowdrifts. Among them is Prudence's fiancé - his body frozen, his head crushed by a heavy branch, his fingers clutching a single playing card, the ace of spades.

Don't toss out the cake and candles just yet. Philip Roth, who, among other notable achievements, changed the way Americans laugh about masturbation, celebrates his birthday on March 19th. Check out: I Married a Communist and Operation Shylock.

The Complete Charles Dickens Collection: Part Two contains all of Charles Dickens' major published works from 1844 to 1865. Dickens wrote most of his most influential and beloved novels during these years - introducing us to characters such as Pip, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, Esther Summerson, and many more who have lived long in the memory for generations. Also included here are a selection of his essays, travelogues, letters, and a short biography of Dickens by his daughter, Mamie.

Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defence is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness). Worse than being eaten by Trolls is the prospect of the Mighty Shandar requisitioning the Quarkbeast and using him to achieve supreme power and domination.