Literature

IndependentNora's life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth she finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. Which raises the ultimate question: with infinite choices, what is the best way to live?

From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural - at ping-pong. Even with his improvised bat (the Collins Classic edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) he can chop, flick, half-volley like a champion. At sex he is not so adept, but with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis Team and stalwart of the Kardomah coffee bar, his game improves. Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

This novel, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. As the headstrong Maggie Tulliver grows into womanhood, the deep love which she has for her brother Tom turns into conflict, because she cannot reconcile his bourgeois standards with her own lively intelligence. Maggie is unable to adapt to her community or break free from it, and the result, on more than one level, is tragedy.

THIS COLLECTION explores the theme of longing in today's fast-moving global world where sentiments are relegated as vintage. Words that took years, months, weeks, and days to get from one partner to the other now fly through in seconds with technology. How does that alter and morph our perspective on love, our perception of the world around us? The author navigates from ancient emotions to the 'modern' feelings probed in her poems.

This selection of poems is also a tribute in gratitude to the kindness and openness of the contemporary Greek
poets the author is involved with via her Athenian poetry society, A Poets' Agora.

When our heroine Ophelia is promoted to Vice-storyteller by Farouk, the ancestral Spirit of Pole, she finds herself unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight. Now that her powers-and the threat they present to the secretive denizens of this new world-are known to all, she is forced to reveal the nefarious plots that have been brewing beneath the golden rafters of Citaceleste and to throw herself into the political machinations of the Pole. In this perilous situation, the only person she may be able to trust is Thorn, her enigmatic fiance. As one after another influential courtier vanishes in suspicious circumstances, Ophelia again finds herself unintentionally implicated in an investigation that will lead her to see beyond Pole's many illusions to the heart of the formidable truth.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Upton Sinclair earned a reputation as a prolific writer, committed socialist, and political activist. He gained enormous popularity when his eloquent 1906 novel The Jungle exposed conditions in the U.S. meat-packing industry, and years later, he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his series tale, Dragon's Teeth. In The Money Changers, Sinclair explores the Wall Street panic of 1907 in novel form, exposing greed and corruption within the American system. Originally published a century ago, it's a cautionary tale with a theme that could have been ripped from today's headlines. Allan Montague is a prosperous New York lawyer trying to help an old friend from Mississippi who's just moved to the city. Young widow Lucy Dupree, whose beauty makes men's hearts skip a beat, is eager to move forward and establish herself in the right social circles. As a favor, Montague offers to help Lucy sell a block of stock. But with that one transaction, they unwittingly become tangled in a web of unscrupulous power brokers who've concocted a daring scheme to manipulate the stock market for personal gain. If their plan succeeds, a rival trust company will fall, sparking a Wall Street bloodbath . . . and financial chaos throughout the world!

"A masterpiece of the Gothic genre, The Monk tells the story of the Capuchin friar Ambrosio and his fall from grace through desire, greed and lust. Favourably reviewed at first, the novel was later so widely and raucously denounced for its perceived licentiousness, blasphemy and corrupting influence that Lewis had to remove controversial passages from future editions. Unsurprisingly, amidst this furore, the book was immensely popular with the reading public.

Suffused with eroticism, and focusing on the corrupting influence of power, The Monk pioneered a shocking new form of Gothic novel, where elements such as mob violence, incest and brutal murder replaced the gentler horrors of earlier practitioners of the genre."

Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is at once a satiric caricature of Edwardian conventions and a vivid portrayal of the mentality of a genius.

Agatha Christie's most audacious crime mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Now, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose. But the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information. Unfortunately, before he could finish the letter, he was stabbed to death...

From its first appearance in 1903 The Murderess has been regarded as Alexandros Papadiamandis’s finest work. Set on his native island of Skiathos it tells the story of Hadoula, a widow with grown-up children, who has convinced herself that it is better little girls should leave this life when young so that they and their parents should not suffer the trials that inevitably would be inflicted on them by an inequitable society. In the throes of this misguided compassion she first murders her own granddaughter and afterwards finds herself set on a course she is unable to stop despite the promptings of her conscience and her awareness of the consequences. Papadiamandis charts this course and the events in her life that preceded it, and against a background of the island’s verdant and untrodden places and the living presence of the Church he explores the particular quality evil has of disguising itself as good, but without ever passing judgement on the murderess herself. Long considered one of Greece's most important writers, Papadiamandis's reflections on and observations of modern Greek life define the Greek experience in a way unmatched by any of his contemporaries. his new translation of The Murderess has been undertaken and published to mark the centenary of Papadiamandis's death.