Sardonic, wry and wise, Aesop’s Fables are some of the most enduring andwell-loved literary creations in history. In a series of pithy, amusingvignettes, Aesop created a vivid cast of characters to demonstrate different aspects of human nature. Here we see a wily fox outwitted by a quick-thinking cicada, a tortoise triumphing over a self-confident hareand a fable-teller named Aesop silencing those who mock him. Each jewel-like fable provides a warning about the consequences of wrong-doing, as well as offering a glimpse into the everyday lives of Ancient Greeks.

This adventure story tells of three men and their guide Umslopogaas who trek into the remote interior of Africa in search of a lost white race. Through unknown territories their perilous journey takes them to Zu-vendis, a kingdom ruled by the beautiful twin sisters, Nyleptha and Sorais.

As you like it By William Shakespeare

Set in mid-Victorian England, this novel follows the fight for
ascendancy among the clergy and dependants of a great English cathedral.

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour. Swift's savage satire views mankind in a distorted hallof mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with an uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

A young prince meets with his father's ghost, who alleges that his own brother, now married to his widow, murdered him. The prince devises a scheme to test the truth of the ghost's accusation, feigning wild madness while plotting a brutal revenge. But his apparent insanity soon begins to wreak havoc on innocent and guilty alike.

This is a title in an inexpensive range of classics in the Penguin Popular Classics series.

The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body, this classic horror story pits detective against dog. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the wild Devon moorland with the footprints of a giant hound nearby, the blame is placed on a family curse. It is left to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve the mystery of the legend of the phantom hound before Sir Charles' heir comes to an equally gruesome end. The "Hound Of The Baskervilles" gripped readers when it was first serialised and has continued to hold its place in the popular imagination.

An ageing king makes a capricious decision to divide his realm among histhree daughters according to the love they express for him. When the youngest daughter refuses to take part in this charade, she is banished,leaving the king dependent on her manipulative and untrustworthy sisters. In the scheming and recriminations that follow, not only does the king's own sanity crumble, but the stability of the realm itself is also threatened.

Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend - and reach, at the end of a perilous journey, an unknown land cut off from the world, where terrible dangers threaten anyone who ventures near the spectacular diamond mines of King Solomon...

With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality.Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralysed as her husband Clifford is paralysed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfilment.

Beautiful, aristocratic, an adored wife and young mother, Lady Windermere is 'a fascinating puritan' whose severe moral code leads her to the brink of social suicide. The only one who can save her is the mysterious Mrs Erlynne whose scandalous relationship with Lord Windermere has prompted her fatal impulse. And Mrs Erlynne has a secret - a secret Lady Windermere must never know if she is to retain her peace of mind.

Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king to ensure his ambitions come true. But he soon learns the meaning of terror - killing once, he must kill again and again, and the dead return to haunt him. A story of war, witchcraft and bloodshed, Macbeth also depicts the relationship between husbands and wives, and the risks they are prepared to take to achieve their desires.

This is a tale of Dives and Lazarus, of the comfortable pinnacle and the miserable base of the Victorian social pyramid. It is told, however, without simplification and without hatred.

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled 'A Story of a Man of Character', Hardy's powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit
Dorsetshire town.

'Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?' Shylock's impassioned plea in the middle of "The Merchant of Venice" is one of its most dramatic moments. After the Holocaust, the play has become a battleground for those who argue that the play represents Shakespeare's ultimate statement against ignorance and anti-Semitism in favour of a liberal vision of tolerance and multiculturalism. Other critics have pointed out that the play is, after all, a comedy that ultimately pokes fun at a 16th-century Jew. In fact, the bare outline of the plot suggests that the play is far more complex than either of these characterisations.

In this story the author recreates her own childhood through the story of the gifted Maggie Tulliver and her spoilt, selfish brother. Though tragic in its outcome, this comic novel combines vivid images of family life with a portrait of the heroine.

A man whose brain never sleeps .... the enemy Richard Hannay must defeat if he is to save Britain from the clutches of Germany during the crucial days of the World War II.

At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.

Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement thatresults in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly
disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction. Arthur Dimmesdale stands as a classic study of a seld divided; trapped by the rules of society, he suppresses his passion and disavows his lover, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl. As Nina Baym writes in her Introduction, "The Scarlet Letter" was not written as realistic, historical fiction, but as a 'romance', a creation of the imagination that discloses the truth of the human heart.

A low-priced collection of Wordsworth's poetry.

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, "Sons and Lovers" (1913) is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

This title presents beautifully told tales, a perfect introduction to Shakespeare's greatest plays. Charles and Mary Lamb's labour of love brings vividly alive the power of "Hamlet" and "Othello", the fun of "As You Like It" and "The Taming of the Shrew", the magic of "The Tempest" and the drama of "Pericles". Conveying all Shakespeare's wit, wisdom and humanity, and never losing the feel of his beautiful language, these tales are classic literature in their own right.

The most poetic and magical of Shakespeare's comedies, this play contrasts lyrical fantasy surrounding the spirit Ariel and the savage Calaban, with a tale of political intrigue focused around Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, now a wizard living on a remote island.

So popular did it prove that Jerome reunited his heroes for a bicycle tour of Germany. Despite some sharp, and with hindsight, prophetic observations of the country, Three Men on the Bummel describes an equally picaresque journey constrained only 'by the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started'.

Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing a countess on his behalf, she is stunned to find herselfthe object of his beloved's affections. With the arrival of Viola's brother, and a trick played upon the countess' steward, confusion reignsin this romantic comedy of mistaken identity.

This is a title in an inexpensive range of classics in the Penguin Popular Classics series. The story takes place at the close of the 18th century. Hetty Sorrel, the niece of farmer Martin Poyser is loved by Adam Bede, the village carpenter, but is deluded by the attentions of a young squire.

Wild child Huck has to get away. His violent drunk of a father is back in town again, raising Cain. He won't rest until he has Huck's money. So the enterprising boy fakes his own death and sets out in search of adventure and freedom. Teaming up with Jim, an escaped slave with a price on his head, the two fugitives go on the run, travelling down the wide Mississippi River. But Huck finds himself wrestling with his conscience. Should he save Jim, or turn his friend over to a terrible fate?

From his rooms in Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes's brooding figure emerges into the foggy streets of Victorian London to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue, and evil.

When her family becomes impoverished after a disasterous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess. This is a personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women in Victorian society. Agnes Grey is undoubtedly a deeply personal novel, in which Anne Bronte views on the 'contemporary' issue of the treatment of governesses, as well as her passionate religious sympathies, find very deliberate expression; but she also touches on issues of moral behaviour, moral responsibility, and individual integrity and its survival.

Probally one the original "story within a story" book. Arabian nights is a selection of stories told by a young girl on her wedding night to a price who has sworn he will kill any girl who marries him. Her clever stories keep him from murdering her night after night. This is where
classic fairy tales such as Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Theives come from as well as moral tales and metaphors.The use of djins, magic and Eastern splendour makes Arabian Nights dazzle. A must read and a perfect counter point to western fairy tales such as Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

This is a title in an inexpensive range of classics in the "Penguin Popular Classics" series.

Stung by the difficult reception of Moby Dick, Herman Melville became obsessed with the difficulties of communicating his vision to readers. His sesne of isolation lies at the heart of these later works. "Billy Budd, Sailor" is a classic confrontation between good and evil, and the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation. The other stories also illuminate the way fictions are created and shared by society.

This is Robert Louis Stevenson's historical romance set during the War of the Roses.

Black Beauty begins life in a loving home. But his owners are forced to sell him, and Black Beauty's fortunes change. He is moved from place to place and job to job, often suffering cruel treatment and harsh conditions - until a chance encounter leads to a new turn of events.

Lear's nonsense books were quite popular during his lifetime, but a rumor developed that "Edward Lear" was merely a pseudonym, and the books' true author was the man to whom Lear had dedicated the works, hispatron the Earl of Derby. Promoters of this rumor offered as evidence the facts that both men were named Edward, and that "Lear" is an anagram of "Earl." The falls of the Kalama, Albania 1851 Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delightin the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper." A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud.

The Canterbury Tales, compiled in the late fourteenth century, isan incisive portrait, infused with Chaucer's wry wit and vibrant, poetical languauge. He evokes a spectrum of colourful characters, from the bawdy Wife of Bath to the gallant Knight, the fastidious Prioress and the burly, drunken Miller. As they wend their way from Southwark to Canterbury, tales are told to pass the time, and the stories are as diverse as the narrators, encompassing themes such as adultery, revenge, courtly love, lechery, avarice and penitence. As humorous today as when it was written over six centuries ago, The Canterbury Tales remains one of the most popular and enjoyable of the classic works of literature.

A collection of poems to celebrate childhood. From the make-believe world of "The Land of Counterpane" to the simple pleasure of "At the Seaside", the curiosity of "Auntie's Skirts" to the dreams of "Foreign Lands", these poems capture a child's wonder and fascination with everyday things.

This story is of life in the New Forest, where four children live in hiding, disguised as a forester's grandchildren, after their father has been killed at Naseby, fighting for the king. Cromwell rules the land now. The family home has been burnt and they are supposed to have died in the flames.

Dickens's story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by a series of ghostly visitors, has proved one of his most well-loved works. Ever since it was published in 1843 it has had an enduring influence on the way we think about the traditions of Christmas. Dickens's other Christmas writings collected here include 'The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton', the short story from The Pickwick Papers on which A Christmas Carolwas based; along with shorter pieces drawn from the 'Christmas Stories' that Dickens wrote annually for his weekly journals. In all of them Dickens celebrates the season as one of geniality, charity and remembrance.

When three boys find themselves shipwrecked on a South Pacific island, they must learn to survive in a sometimes beautiful, sometimes deadly new world. Sharks, cannibals, and pirates are only the start of their adventures. A classic tale of high adventure and boyhood courage!

This title is part of an inexpensive range of classics in the Penguin Popular Classics series.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting fora higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator,
Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption.

Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leave her perilously exposed.In Daisy Miller James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces.

David Copperfield: The story traces the life of David Copperfield fromchildhood to maturity. David is born in England in 1820. David's fatherhad died six months before he was born, and seven years later, his mother re-marries Mr. Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has similar feelings for Mr Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards.
Mr Murdstone thrashes David for falling behind with his studies. Following one of these thrashings, David bites him and soon afterwards is sent away to a boarding school, Salem House, with a ruthless headmaster, Mr. Creakle. Here he befriends James Steerforth and Tommy Traddles, both of whom become significant later on in the novel.

6 of the Roaring Twenties chronicler's most scintillating short stories,chosen from Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). This inexpensive volume comprises The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, The Ice Palace, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, May Day, The Jelly-Bean, and The Offshore Pirate.

Everyone has a dark side. Dr Jekyll has discovered the ultimate drug. A chemical that can turn him into something else. Suddenly, he can unleash his deepest cruelties in the guise of the sinister Hyde. Transforming himself at will, he roams the streets of fog-bound London as his monstrous alter-ego. It seems he is master of his fate. It seems he is in complete control. But soon he will discover that his double life comes at a hideous price ...

Everyone has a dark side. Dr Jekyll has discovered the ultimate drug. A chemical that can turn him into something else. Suddenly, he can unleash his deepest cruelties in the guise of the sinister Hyde. Transforming himself at will, he roams the streets of fog-bound London as his monstrous alter-ego. It seems he is master of his fate. It seems he is in complete control. But soon he will discover that his double life comes at a hideous price ...

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidentsunfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master'. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre.