A title, in which, the author narrates his own agonising experience of depression. It also portrays the pain of others, in different cultures and societies whose lives have been shattered by depression and uncovers the historical, social, biological, chemical and medical implications of this crippling disease.

Milton is a northern town centred around the cotton mills that employ most of its inhabitants. Arriving from a rural idyll, Margaret Hale is initially shocked by the social unrest and poverty she finds in her new hometown. However, as her stormy relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton develops, she starts to see Milton in a different light.

Catherine Morland is a young girl with a very active imagination. Her naivety and love of sensational novels lead her to approach the fashionable social scene in Bath and her stay at nearby Northanger Abbey with preconceptions that have embarrassing and entertaining consequences.

Tells the Viking story, from the first pinprick raids of the eighth century to the great armies that left their Scandinavian homelands to conquer larger parts of France, Britain and Ireland.

Toru Watanabe is looking back on the love and passions of his life and trying to make sense of it all. As his first love Naoko sinks deeper into mental despair, he is inexorably pushed to find a new meaning and a new love in order to survive.

The 900-day siege of Leningrad (1941-44) was one of the turning points of the Second World War. It slowed down the German advance into Russia and became a national symbol of survival and resistance. Using her own using notes and sketches she wrote during the siege, the author distils the collective experience of life under siege.

Arthur Maxley is a tense and listless young man. Arthur's fear and aversion to the man is powerful, yet his compulsion to see his father is irresistible. After their meeting, Arthur is propelled into a night of drinking and spontaneous intimacy with a beautiful young woman.

Introduces the village of Notwithstanding where a lady dresses in plus fours and shoots squirrels, a retired general gives up wearing clothes altogether, a spiritualist lives in a cottage with the ghost of her husband, and people think it quite natural to confide in a spider that lives in a potting shed.