Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowledge, it became the life's work of Germany's greatest poet. Beginning with an intriguing wager between God and Satan, it charts the life of a deeply flawed individual, his struggle against the nihilism of his diabolical companion Mephistopheles.

As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915.

Uhtred is an English boy, born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria. Orphaned at ten, he is captured and adopted by a Dane and taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtred's fate is bound up with Alfred, King of Wessex, who rules over the English kingdom to survive the Danish assault. This book is set in England during the reign of King Alfred.

What does persuasion mean - a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances.

A historical romance, "The Three Musketeers" tells the story of the early adventures of the young Gascon gentleman D'Artagnan and his three friends from the regiment of the King's Musketeers - Athos,

The title story transports the reader to a fabulous fantasy land of such opulence that it has to remain a secret and jealously-guarded domain. Fatal consequences lie in store for "bona fide" and uninvited guests alike. Other stories included are "The Cut-Glass Bowl", "May Day", "The Rich Boy", "Crazy Sunday", "An Alcoholic Case", "The Lees of Happiness", "The Lost Decade" and "Babylon Revisited"

The master stortyteller Andrew Lang draws on his classical learning to recount the Homeric legend of the wars bewteen the Greeks and the Trojans. Paris, the lovely Helen of Troy, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, the Amazons and the Wooden Horse all figure in this magical introduction to one of the greatest lengends ever told.

Often called the first modern novel, Don Quixote originally conceived as a comic satire against the chivalric romances. However, Cervantes did not destroy the chivalric ideal of the romances he rejected - he transfigured it. The work have been seen as a veiled attack on the Catholic Church or on the contemporary Spanish politics, or symbolizing the duality of the Spanish character.

Hans Christian Andersen is the best-loved of all tellers of fairy tales. This collection of over forty of Andersen's most popular stories includes The Mermaid, The Real Princess, The red Shoes, The Little Match Girl, The Snow Queen, The Tinder Box, The Ugly Duckling and many more.

"King Solomon's Mines" tells of the search by Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good and the narrator, Allan Quatermain, for Sir Henry's younger brother George. He has been lost in the interior of Africa for two years in the quest for King Solomon's Mines, the legendary source of the biblical kings enormous riches.

This volume includes all Wilde's plays from his early tragedy "Vera" to the controversial "Salome" and the little-known fragments, "La Sainte Courtisane" and "A Florentine Tragedy".

Crime Scenes is a sparkling collection of short stories written by modern masters and mistresses of the crime fiction genre. Within these pages you will find tales of murder, mystery and mayhem in a great variety of styles and tones from the time-honoured whodunnit to the psychological chiller to the history mystery to the crime procedural to the noir thriller to the gangster epic and the darkly humorous narrative.

The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her 18th birthday. That night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a group of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself.

Herodotus (c480-c425 BC) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining. Why did Pheidippides run the 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.195 kilometres) from Marathon to Athens? And what did he do when he got there? Was the Battle of Salamis fought between sausage-sellers? Which is the oldest language in the world?

Castigated for offending against public decency, "Madame Bovary" has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert's contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist's meticulous account of provincial manners. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection.

As a parody travel-memoir, this classic satirical fable reports on many fictional lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language, including the minute inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag and the Yahoos in the land of Houyhnhnms.

'Tales from Shakespeare' contents the following titles:
The Tempest
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Winter's Tale
Much Ado About Nothing
As You Like It
The Two Gentlemen of Verona

This book is one of Shakespeare's most popular commedies, but it remains deeply controversial. The text may seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre. In his intensity he can dominate the play,

This book is a Tolstoy's classic historical chronicle reflecting Russia's struggle with Napoleon. The novel is an affirmation of life itself, focusing on the lives of individuals and the physical reality of human experience and its bewildering complexity.

"Little Women" is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community.