Classic Fiction

Black Beauty spends his youth in a loving home, surrounded by friends and cared for by his owners. But when circumstances change, he learns that not all humans are so kind. Passed from hand to hand, Black Beauty witnesses love and cruelty, wealth and poverty, friendship and hardship ... Will the ...

The sea roars dismally round the shores of Inverara. A stranger takes a room on the island. Here lives a couple whose married years have been joyless, until the presence of the stranger unleashes their passions.... For as spring softens the wild beauty of Inverara, the stranger becomes conscious ...

"Most young girls' experiences never involve hunting bearded seals on the ice, even within the Alaskan Eskimo culture. In Scott O'Dell's gripping novel, Bright Dawn is an exception. In her father's eyes, she became his son's replacement ever since her brother drowned. When Bright Dawn is 18 years...

At Blandings Castle trouble, as is often the case, rears its bothersome head to disturb the cosy peace.

Here is the firm, Jarndyce & Jarndyce, the young orphan and ward of court Esther Summerson (who tells much of the story). As always, it is the skilled pen of Dickens himself that creates the momentum with his acute eye for both individual characters and their traits, and the backdrop of Victorian...

At the heart of Bleak House is the longstanding case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce – a damning portrayal of the 19th century legal system. Dickens shines a light on the impact that overdrawn court proceedings could have on the lives of those involved, specifically through two of his protagonists, Richa...

Daybreak is a one-horse, one-pub town deep in the Western Australian outback. The close-knit community has been left in shock by a string of murders, with little visible connection between each tragic death.Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is on the scene, disguised as a horse breaker. He is convince...

A boy on a quest against the power of the storm.Eleven-year-old Danny's parents are storm chasers - which sounds fun and exciting, and it is, so long as you aren't the son who has to wait behind at home. And one night, after a particularly fierce storm, Danny's parents don't come back. Stranger s...

Truman Capote's provocative, naturalistic masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbour, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly – a World War II-era society girl in her late teens – survives via socialisation, attending parties and restaurants with me...

It was immediately embraced upon its original publication as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of the Second World War. In the intervening half century, this gripping story has become a perennial favourite, selling...