Thirty-six-year-old Grace McAllister never longed for children. But when she meets Victor Hansen, a handsome, charismatic divorced restaurateur who is father to Max and Ava, Grace decides that, for the right man, she could learn to be an excellent part-time stepmom. After all, the kids live with their mother, Kelli. How hard ... read more

Chronological depiction of the most important topics, featuring over 150 full-colour illustrations with detailed explanations, timelines and maps, along with a subject index and index of names.

'Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers is named after a damned lie for there is no redemption that goes on there and less sanctuary'. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers: vast, desolate, hopeless. Where children endure brutal cruelty and violence in the name of the One True Faith. Lost in the Sanctuary's huge maze of corridors is... read more

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination is Margaret Atwood's account of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as 'science fiction'.
 
This relationship has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, wh... read more

Orphaned at an early age, Jane Eyre leads a bleak and lonely life, until she is employed as a governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester - a man who guards a grim secret. This is a story of passionate love, travail and the triumph of an indomitable spirit.

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Hardy's powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the backdrop of a close-knit Dorset town.

Catherine Morland meets all the trappings of Gothic horror and imagines the worst. Disaster does eventually strike, as it does in the real world as distinct from the romantic one, but without spoiling the wonderful atmosphere of this story.

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Bella's pick... (Fiction) This collection of Poe's work contains some of the most exciting and haunting stories ever written. They range from the poetic to the mysterious to the darkly comic, yet all possess the genius for the grotesque that defines Poe's writing. They are peopled with neurotics and social outcasts, obses... read more

Every time we choose a route to work, decide whether to go on a second date, or set aside money for a rainy day, we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the financial crisis to ecological disasters, we routinely fail to foresee hugely significant events, often at great cost to society. In "The Signal and the Noi... read more

'Abandon all hope, you who enter here.' When Dante finds himself lost in a dark and menacing wood, the ghost of Virgil offers to lead him to safety. It is a path that will take him though the kingdom of Satan, through the nine circles of hell and the gruesome sufferings of the damned. Inferno has fascinated generations of rea... read more

The lavish and glorious Baz Luhrmann film tie-in edition of The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and extravagent lifestyle of his neighbour, Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is a self-made man famed for his decadent, champagne-drenched parties. Despi... read more

The "Sonnets of William Shakespeare", a cycle of 154 linked poems, were first published in 1609. This edition, beautifully illustrated with contemporary portraits and modern artwork by the illustrator Ian Penney, contains all of the poems and they deal with many of Shakespeare's most common themes: jealousy, betrayal, melanch... read more

In a remote Hertfordshire village, a country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise lies the erratic courtship of his second headstrong daughter, Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor - Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Each volume in the "Collector's Library" series has a specially commissioned Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword for this edition of is by Ned Halley.This is the story of Dorothy and her little dog Toto who are carried away from Kansas by a cyclone and transported to the wonderfu... read more

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Starting at the moment The Swimming-Pool Library ended, The Line of Beauty traces the further history of a decade of change and tragedy. Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, it is a major work by one of the finest writers in the English language. In the summer of 1983, 20-year-old Nick Guest moves into an... read more

'You must give up this mad idea, Frank ...there is but one course left open to you. You MUST marry money'. "Doctor Thorne", considered by Trollope to be the best of his works, is a telling examination of the relationship between money and morality. It recounts the story of the son of a bankrupt landowner, Frank Gresham, who i... read more

'That black figure, with its eyes of fire, struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind'. Adrift in a dinghy, Edward Prendick, the single survivor from the good ship Lady Vain, is rescued by a vessel carrying a profoundly unusual cargo - a men... read more

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