Poetry was Louis de Bernieres' first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience. This collection of love poems captures its many forms - from rapture, infatuation, urgency, to sorrow, heartache and disillusion.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. From Athens to Rhaetia, Jamestown to Delhi, and Putney to Pretoria, this book shows how democratic systems are always a reflection of culture and history of their birthplaces, and come about through seizing fleeting opportunities.

A poetic meditation on life and death, by one of the most renowned and respected film-makers and intellectuals of our time. It is a remarkable narrative - part pilgrimage, part meditation, and a confrontation between a great German Romantic imagination and the contemporary world.

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.

You might find it hard to imagine that those ageing spinsters living quietly in small English towns ever led lives of passion or hardship, that they ever possessed beauty or romantic ideals. This title tells the story of two such old wives, sisters Constance and Sophia, from youth, through marriage, heartbreak, triumphs and disasters, to old age.

Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape. This work conjures up the capital's underworld, full of prostitutes, thieves and lost and homeless children.

Meet the Artful Dodger, as roistering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four foot six. With him, you'll run down the dirty backstreets of London to be entertained by the Respectable Old Gentleman and his brood of thieves and pickpockets. Fagin will bring you to 'the trade', and make something of you, something profitable.

From riffs on country music, George Bush, and his mother's midnight mania, to a bittersweet tribute to a dead friend, this book demonstrates why Kurt Vonnegut is equally well known as an essayist and commentator as he is a novelist. It resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice.