Tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead - but whose botched creature causes nothing but murder and destruction.
Horror, madness, violence and the dark forces hidden in humanity abound in this tales, including - among others - the bloody, brutal and baffling murder of a mother and daughter in Paris in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the creeping insanity of "The Tell-Tale Heart", and the Gothic nightmare of "The Masque of the Red Death".
Tells the story of a quiet cathedral town shaken by scandal. This title presents a drama of conscience that pits individual integrity against worldly ambition.
Lily Bart, beautiful and charming, living among the wealthy families of New York but reluctant to finally commit herself to a husband. In her search for freedom and the happiness she feels she deserves, Lily is ultimately ruined by scandal.
Naive suburban Londoners investigate a strange cylinder from space, but are instantly incinerated by an all-destroying heat-ray. Soon, gigantic killing machines that chase and feed on human prey are threatening the whole of humanity.
Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being.
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to advise Count Dracula on a London home, he makes a horrifying discovery. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck.
A tale of Hester Prynne, imprisoned, publicly shamed, and forced to wear a scarlet 'A' for committing adultery and bearing an illegitimate child, Pearl. In their small, Puritan village, Hester and her daughter struggle to survive, but in this searing study of the tension between private and public existence.
In the midst of the chaos two men - an exiled French aristocrat and a dissolute English lawyer - are both redeemed and condemned by their love for the same woman, as the shadow of La Guillotine draws closer...
Includes all issues such as political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. This title offers an essay on style.
Follows the fates of a ramshackle troupe of machine-gunners in the Second World War, as they argue, joke, swear, cadge a loaf of bread or a cigarette, combat both boredom and horror in the swamps and pine forests - and discover that war will make or break them.
The 1660s represent a turning point in English history, and for the main events - the Restoration, the Dutch War, the Great Plague, the Fire of London. This book offers an eyewitness account along with lively descriptions of the author's socializing, his amorous entanglements, his theater-going & music-making.
With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin the new guest at The Coach and Horses is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim.
Mr Polly is an ordinary middle-aged man who is tired of his wife's nagging and his dreary job as the owner of a regional gentleman's outfitters. Faced with the threat of bankruptcy, he concludes that the only way to escape his frustrating existence is by burning his shop to the ground, and killing himself.
Presented as a miraculous cure-all, Tono-Bungay is in fact nothing other than a pleasant-tasting liquid with no positive effects. Nonetheless, when the young George Ponderevo is employed by his Uncle Edward to help market this ineffective medicine, he finds his life overwhelmed by its sudden success.
When attractive English widow Lidia takes a holiday in Italy, she causes a scandal by marrying Gino, a highly unsuitable Italian 12 years her junior. Her snobbish in-laws make no attempts to hide their disapproval, and when Lidia's decision eventually brings disaster, her English relatives embark on an expedition to face the uncouth foreigner.
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation.
Beginning in the late 1940's, American literature discovered a four-letter word, and the word was "beat." This book collects the significant writings of the fellow members of the Beat Generation. In poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs, it captures the triumphant rudeness, energy, and exhilaration of a movement that swept through American letters.
From the publication of his first poems at the age of twenty, to his Nobel Prize in 1923, the author grew from an aspiring poet by the mystical life, to an Irish senator crafting modernist poetry around a complex system of symbolism. This volume proffers lush images of western Ireland full of faeries and otherworldly beings.
Moll Flanders - whore, wife, thief, felon, penitent - tells the racy tale of her life in Defoe's extraordinary novel. An account of opportunism, endurance, and survival that speaks as strongly today as it did to its first readers, this new edition provides a full introduction and notes to explore the book's eighteenth-century context.
Young Maggie Tulliver is devoted to her brother Tom, but as she grows older and discovers romantic love she comes into conflict with him and her family. She strives to reconcile moral claims and family loyalty with her own desires. Eliot's most autobiographical novel was also her most controversial, and this new edition examines its impact.
First published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series, this comprehensive selection of Kipling's stories and poems covers the full range of his career. It displays Kipling's comic mastery as well as his bleak insights into human behaviour, from the days of British India to the aftermath of the First World War. With Introduction and full notes.
Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. In this revised and updated version of the definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy's genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader.