Historical Classics

When Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, she discovers the historians there don't just study the past - they revisit it. But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And she soon discovers it's not just History she's fighting....

Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his "counting house" when he suffered an agonizing and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals. Yet, it was the incident in the parlor that confirmed Miss Marple's suspicion that here she was looking at a case of crime by rhyme....

For years d’Artagnan shared his adventures with his three comrades - Athos, Porthos, and Aramis - but now, in Between Two Kings, the First Musketeer returns to the forefront. This is truly d’Artagnan’s novel, bringing to a dramatic climax the story that began when he first arrived in Paris 30 years earlier in The Three Musketeers.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. He made his fifth appearance in this brilliant collection of ingenious short stories. The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey.

Napoleon, escaped from Elba, pursues his enemies across Europe like a vengeful phoenix. If he can corner the British and Prussians before their Russian and Austrian allies arrive, his genius will lead the French armies to triumph at Waterloo. In the Balkans, preparing a thrust northwards into Central Europe to block the Russians and Austrians, a horde of Muslim mercenaries is gathering.

The Greatcoats - legendary heroes, arbiters of justice...or notorious traitors? The Greatcoats are travelling magistrates bringing justice to all...or at least they were, before they watched the Dukes impale their King's head on a spike. Now the land's heroes are reviled as traitors, their Greatcoats in tatters. Facio, Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as mercenaries, but when they find their employer dead - and are forced to watch as the killer plants evidence framing them for the murder - they realise things are about to get even worse.

Written in the winter of 1849, The Scarlet Letter unfolds the story of Hester Prynne, a young woman branded as an adulteress in the harsh Puritan world of 17th-century New England. As Hester calls on her inner strength to transcend her shame, the scarlet letter ceases to be a stigma and finally becomes Hester's symbol of self-affirmation. This dramatic reading heightens the sense of lyric poetry that permeates every line of Nathaniel Hawthorne's great novel.

The Watter's Mou, meaning "the water's mouth," revolves around the romance between a young coast guard officer and his girlfriend, the daughter of a fisherman. The officer, William Barrow [or Sailor Willy], is tasked with dealing with smuggling going on among the local fishermen, including his girlfriend’s father. Maggie MacWhirter's father had fallen upon hard times, when once his fishing boat had brought him a prosperous living.

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft.

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is clearly seen in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle, all of them fully realized and equally memorable.

Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder - a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born.

Un soir de juin 1940, lorsqu'il se retrouve face à un peloton d'exécution improvisé, un garçon de six ans découvre la guerre. Il sait que, désormais, plus rien ne sera comme avant. Ce livre audio dit la misère, la faim, la fuite, les exactions vues par les yeux d'un enfant, puis l'interminable voyage dans le train qui l'emmène dans un camp. Ce récit est écrit comme il a été vécu: avec les tripes, par un gamin de la guerre qu'on a amputé de sa jeunesse. C'est aujourd'hui un classique étudié dans des écoles.

A tour-de-force novel set in ancient Japan filled with passion, fantasy, and feuding warlords. The first volume in the highly anticipated Tales of the Otori trilogy.

Jane Austen's most popular novel, originally published in 1813, some 17 years after it was first written, presents the Bennet family of Longbourn. Against the background of gossipy Mrs. Bennet and the detached Mr. Bennet, the quest is on for husbands for the five daughters. The spotlight falls on Elizabeth, second eldest, who is courted by Darcy, though initially she is more concerned with the fate of her other sisters.

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in China.

After losing her parents, young Mary Lennox is sent from India to live in her uncle's gloomy mansion on the wild English moors. She is lonely and has no-one to play with, but one day she learns of a secret garden somewhere in the grounds that no one is allowed to enter. Then Mary uncovers an old key in a flowerbed - and a gust of magic leads her to the hidden door. Slowly she turns the key and enters a world she could never have imagined.

Her Majesty's ship Sutherland is a humdrum ship of the line. But in command is none other than the heroic Captain Hornblower and, with his crew from the Lydia, he looks set to take on commando raids, hurricanes at sea, and Napoleons's gun batteries.

Naomi Novik’s beloved series returns, with Capt. Will Laurence and his fighting dragon Temeraire once again taking to the air against the broadsides of Napoleon’s forces and the friendly—and sometimes not-so-friendly—fire of British soldiers and politicians who continue to suspect them of divided loyalties, if not outright treason.

"L'Odyssée", est-il nécessaire de présenter ce " très vieux poème " ? La superbe traduction (en vers) de Philippe Jaccottet fait revivre l'épopée d'Homère, qui vient "à son lecteur ou, mieux peut-être, à son auditeur un peu comme viennent à la rencontre du voyageur ces statues ou ces colonnes lumineuses dans l'air cristallin de la Grèce...". D'après la tradition antique, Homère, l'aède aveugle, aurait vécu au IXe siècle avant J.-C. et serait l'auteur de cette épopée universellement connue, composée après "L'Iliade".