House Classics

A door slams, and the echoes never fade. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) is a play that doesn't shout—it lingers, unsettling and undeniable. Beneath the surface of a seemingly ordinary household lies a quiet storm, gathering strength with every polite exchange, every carefully placed smile. Nora Helmer is a wife, a mother, a woman adored. Her home is warm, her life is comfortable, her husband sings her praises. But when a long-kept secret begins to unravel, so does the delicate balance of her world.

After exploiting India's divisions for years, the British depart in such haste that no one is prepared for the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1947.

Against the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, this volume sketches one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India.

In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.

Fatty, Larry, Diasy, Pip and Bets are forbidden to solve any mysteries this summer. Then they meet Ern, Mr Goon's nephew, and can't help giving him a few false clues. But they don't expect their fake mystery to turn into a real one, or for Ern to go missing!

A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world - modern, industrial America - pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, trying to claim his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust.

The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers and listeners for 700 years and has entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance.

"What is your favorite story?" is the question children across the country often ask professional storyteller Pleasant DeSpain. As he attempts to answer, his list grows longer and longer, until he confesses he likes them all. An untiring researcher of oral traditions, DeSpain is known for his concise versions of world folktales specifically crafted for retelling.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

Anne Shirley's childhood sweetheart, Gilbert Blythe, is finally a doctor, and in the old orchard, among their dearest friends, he and Anne speak their vows. The first year of marriage brings them new friends and their own dream house on the misty purple shores of Four Winds Harbour. A new life means fresh problems to solve - and fresh surprises.

Exiled from Paris, Maigret discovers some disturbing secrets in a sleepy coastal town in this new translation. A short, sprightly man appeared in the doorway, looked left and right, and went back into the passage. A moment later, the improbable happened. The little man reappeared, bent over, clinging to a long mass that he now started dragging through the mud. It must have been heavy. After four metres, he stopped to catch his breath. The front door of the house had been left open.

Author Edith Wharton was born to an extremely wealthy family and was raised among the elites of New York society. This gave Wharton a front-row seat to the goings-on, intrigues and drama of that strange and fascinating world, which she exposed and satirized in her two best known novels: "The House of Mirth" and "The Age of Innocence" (the latter of which won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the first for a female writer).

Most days, Sarya doesn't feel like the most terrifying creature in the galaxy. Most days, she's got other things on her mind. Like hiding her identity among the hundreds of alien species roaming the corridors of Watertower Station. Or making sure her adoptive mother doesn't casually eviscerate one of their neighbors. Again. And most days, she can almost accept that she'll never know the truth - that she'll never know why humanity was deemed too dangerous to exist.

Brillante y con tintes fantásticos como un Grimm, realista como un O. Henry o despiadado como un Saki, sus historias fueron adaptadas por Alfred Hitchcock para la televisión, y han inspirado a creadores como Steven Spielberg o Quentin Tarantino.

One of Elizabeth Bowen's most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen's celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers' well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother's. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains.

This collection of masterful reinterpretations brilliantly demystifies and breathes new life into Shakespeare's work, demonstrating the continued resonance of a playwright whose popularity remains more than 400 years after his death. Now, the passion, heartbreak, deception, reconciliation, and mortality of Shakespeare’s originals can be understood by all, without the need to cross-reference to an enjoyment-sapping study guide.

Este libro capital para la cultura del siglo XX transcurre en Argelia y narra la anodina vida de Meursault, un joven oficinista que vive en perpetua apatía. Cuando recibe la noticia del fallecimiento de su madre, la encaja con la mayor impasibilidad. Obligado a abandonar la capital y viajar para asistir al funeral, Meursault desea que la ceremonia sea breve para regresar a su casa.

Little Eepersip doesn't want to live in a house with doors and windows and a roof, so she runs away to live in the wild - first in the Meadow, then by the Sea and finally in the Mountain. Her heartbroken parents follow her at first, bringing her back home to 'safety' and locking her up in the stifling square of the house. But she slips away once more, following her wild heart out of the door and far away....

Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. What was it like to love, live, and rebel in Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries? These beloved British novels offer three dramatically different but universally recognisable experiences. Read by three luminaries of the stage and screen: Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, and Sir John Gielgud.

Mary Karr told the prize-winning tale of her hardscrabble Texas childhood with enough literary verve to spark a renaissance in memoir. The Liar's Club rode the top of The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, and publications ranging from The New Yorker to People picked it as one of the best books of the year. But it left people wondering: How'd that scrappy kid make it outta there? Cherry dares to tell that story. Karr picks up the trail and dashes off into her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom.

Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.