Roman

In the gripping third volume of Christelle Dabos's best-selling saga, Ophelia, the mirror-travelling heroine, finds herself in the magical city of Babel, guarding a secret that may provide a key both to the past and the future. After two years and seven months biding her time on Anima, her home ark, it is finally time to act, to put what she has discovered in the Book of Faruk to good use. Under an assumed identity she travels to Babel, a cosmopolitan and thoroughly modern ark that is the jewel of the universe, and where automata have taken over the most humble jobs from humans. But under the surface of this pacific and orderly ark social unrest stirs, fed by the memories of a fateful purge long ago, and the inhabitants' growing fear of being replaced altogether. Will Ophelia's talent as a reader suffice to avoid her being lured into a deadly trap by her ever more fearful adversaries? Will she ever see Thorn, her betrothed, again?

Drawing on an astonishing cache of letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us a shrewd, enterprising, anxious man, as he makes deals, furnishes his sumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods on his legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture of daily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world of fourteenth-century Tuscany.

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.

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.

Dickens's final novel, left unfinished at his death, is a tale of mystery whose fast-paced action takes place in an ancient cathedral city and in some of the darkest places in nineteenth century London. Drugs, sexual obsession, colonial adventuring and puzzles about identity are among the novel's themes. At the centre of the plot lie the baffling disappearance of Edwin Drood and the many explanations of his whereabouts.