Self-absorbed Sir Willoughby Patterne seeks a bride. After being jilted by his first fiancée he settles on the spirited Clara Middleton; but she starts to realise that he only wants a mirror for himself and his opinions. As she becomes desperate to disengage, and he becomes desperate to hold on to her, so a series of farcical, labyrinthine misunderstandings ensues.

Tom, Carrie, Em, Michael–with their cats, fish, dog and hibernating turtle–are sent to live with their aunt and uncle when their mother is in hospital and their father is sailing round the world. However, Aunt Valentina can’t cope with their ‘private zoo’ and the children think she’s stupid. Doors bang, people yell, the cats fight, the piano is hammered in frustration. So Uncle Rudolph lets them live at ‘World’s End’ instead, a run-down inn that he acquired. To them, the broken windows, weeds and rickety benches that greet them represent a new rural life of excitement and freedom.

In our own time, when the dark threat of a dystopian world is not an alien or avoidable concept, The Last Man (1826) is revealed as a trailblazing novel. With a truly global view, Mary Shelley’s futuristic romain à clef–containing portraits of her husband Percy (Adrian), Lord Byron (Raymond) and several others–spearheaded the apocalyptic genre for an intimidated 19th-century readership that rejected her ‘diseased imagination’ and ‘polluted taste’.

Dazzlingly rich, lyrical and elegiac, Thomas Wolfe’s vibrant autobiographical first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, follows the story of Eugene Gant, the ninth and last child born to alcoholic Oliver and go-getting Eliza in the fictional town of Altemont, based on Wolfe’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. The novel recounts Eugene’s early life, up to his departure from home at the age of 19.

In 1890s America Thorstein Veblen attacked a careless acceptance of prevailing social structures, identifying ancient roots for ‘pecuniary culture’ and ‘conspicuous consumption’–realities that promoted materialism and squashed fulfilment. In The Theory of the Leisure Class the worthy Engineer, creating essential products for all, is pitted against the predatory Businessman, exempt from grubby industrial toil and focussed on useless profits.

1908. A gruesome death. An airship full of suspects. Maliha Anderson prefers to be alone, even on the long journey back to India. Unfortunately one of her fellow passengers is a murderer. She should stay out of the death of the General's nurse, but Maliha cannot leave a mystery alone. Besides, there is no one else on the vessel qualified to investigate, though she's the only person who knows that.

The blue-skinned old woman who made the mountains. Finfolk, selkies, and the Makers of Dreams. Within these sections are the little-known stories of Scotland, collected and retold by an oral storyteller who performs them throughout the world. From folk-tales and local legends to ancient epics, these stories will astonish and delight listeners everywhere. Daniel Allison is a USA Today best-selling author and acclaimed oral storyteller who performs everywhere from schools and prisons to global festivals.

Reincarnated into his old self, Li Wei starts over at the lowest point of his life. Marred with a crippled body, he has to depend on his mastery of arrays and future knowledge to carve his own path in the brutal cultivation world. With his old friends and animal companions, Li Wei sets out on an epic journey to fix his past life's mistakes, achieve his dao, and fight the heavens. With a SYSTEM to help him, his journey might be easier this time. Or it might not be.

It is 1929. The world is about to change. Finn Evans is a successful Boston banker harboring a secret that threatens to unravel his carefully constructed idyllic life. Isabelle Lazar, a young Ukrainian farmer, endures unspeakable hardships in her homeland as she fights to save her family from the Soviet Union's iron grip. Barely escaping the Terror-Famine, she washes up alone on America's distant shores. Fate throws Finn and Isabelle together just as the stock market crash causes a devastating collapse of his world.

Gwinny is at a stately home in the Yorkshire Dales, filming a small part in a gender-swapped remake of Dracula while looking after the dog of an elderly friend who lives nearby. During filming, an actor is found dead inside a locked trailer—with a stake through their heart! The film's star, an obnoxious big-shot Hollywood actress who once played a cop on TV, decides she will solve the crime. But Gwinny isn't impressed, and they clash as both women mount rival investigations.