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The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume One is a continent-hopping, century-spanning collection of 15 essential classic novels by British, American, and Russian authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, David Rintoul, and many more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Charles Dickens; Franz Kafka; Herman Melville; Leo Tolstoy, amongst a host of others.

The British Classics Collection: Volume One is a century-spanning collection of 24 classic works of fiction and poetry by British authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Joanne Froggatt, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, and many more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Charles Dickens; Emily Brontë; Jane Austen; Thomas Hardy; George Eliot; D.H. Lawrence; and Mary Shelley, amongst a host of others.

Julia Bird loves a walk in the countryside. There’s nothing quite like the fresh air and green rolling hills of the Cotswolds to clear your head. Unless you come across a dead body, that is… When the local Berrywick vet, Dr Eve Davies, is found dead at the bottom of a cliff, the police believe it’s nothing more than a tragic accident, but Julia isn’t so sure. Just a few days earlier when she took her dog, Jake, to the vets, Dr Eve said she believed something awful was about to happen. It turns out she was right…But who would want the beloved village vet dead?

One of the most influential gay and lesbian novels, The Well of Loneliness recounts the life and loves of Stephen Gordon, a defiant woman who simply wants to be true to herself. Named by a father who wanted a boy, Stephen is a keen fencer, horse rider and lover of women. Her less-than-feminine behavior causes a rift between her and her mother and eventually she leaves home, living on her own terms and experiencing a series of affairs. Her journey of self-discovery takes her from bohemian Paris to the battlefield of World War One, where she becomes a hero.

The year is 1885 and a young woman is on the run, knowing if she’s caught, she’ll be hanged for murder. Moments from a safe haven, she collides with a gruff stranger, falling and breaking her ankle. To her surprise, the man – Marcus Greybourne – convinces the local constable that she is his reclusive wife of ten years, Luna. He carries her back to the neglected and crumbling Ravenswood Hall, promising if she agrees to maintain this charade, he will keep her safe until her injuries have healed. But the house is haunted by shadows and secrets.

As the sun rises over the little Provence village where single mother Adeline has escaped with her little girl Lily, she breathes deeply. This is their new beginning. Here, she can forget the lies her family told her. Here, she can start her story again. Later she opens the door to the town’s tiny bookstore, where she is to work, ready to meet the mysterious owner Monique for the first time. She expected an ordinary bookshop. But this bookstore feels somehow different… magical. Breathing in the smell of books, she feels a jolt of something. It feels like a new chapter beginning.

Recently divorced and reluctantly retired, Julia Bird has fled London to enjoy idyllic rural life in the Cotswolds. Determined to have the perfect English garden, her first job is to tear down the old shed, where she unearths much more than she’d bargained for: a body, apparently buried for decades. But who could it be, and who killed them? The police draw a blank, and even the gossip-fest that is the local book club can’t remember anyone going missing in the village.

Britain is in the throes of war, but Katharina Valentine feels sidelined. Employed as a shorthand-typist in the War Office, she is transferred to the basement below – having had no idea that this dark, airless, underground maze, home of the top-secret Cabinet War Rooms, even existed, let alone what her work will entail. Unexpected staff shortages present an opportunity to work directly for Winston Churchill himself, and Katie jumps at the chance. And as she grows closer to Wing Commander Baxter Edwards, things start to look up…

Only child out of the house – so far out that she’s gone all the way to Australia! A husband, who has requested a break. Life isn’t quite going as planned for Katy. She’s suddenly at a loss, but she still has her friends Sam, Vicky and Ivy. The girls have been there for her through thick and thin and they’re not about to stop now. However, they think Katy might need more than boot camp...so they kidnap her and head off to France on a last minute retreat.

Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?

Margaret Thursday was named after the day she was found on the church steps as a baby. But she isn’t really an orphan – each year a bag of gold coins is left at the church for her keep. When the money suddenly stops, her guardians have no choice but to send her away to an orphanage. The orphanage is worse than they could have imagined. Vowing to protect her new friends, Peter and Horatio, Margaret plans their daring escape...but she’ll have to outwit Matron at every turn.

Kate Middleton’s life story seems like a modern-day fairy tale. An attractive, clever, and ambitious girl from unexceptional beginnings meets and falls in love with a wealthy prince when they are both college undergraduates. Now, with the British monarchy in transition, Catherine is destined to become the first “commoner Queen” in British history since Anne Hyde, wife of James II.

Only she knows the truth. Only he can tell the world. Vienna, 1946. A brilliant German scientist spirited out of the ruins Nazi Europe in search of a new life. Moscow, 1964. A rising star of the British diplomatic service whose job is not what it seems. London, the present day. A once promising academic offered an opportunity to seal his place in history. Their stories, their lives, and the fate of the world, are bound by a single document: The Scarlet Papers. The devastating secrets contained within teased by a brief invitation: Tomorrow 11AM. Take a cab and pay in cash. Tell no one.

Hampshire, 1913. Amidst the glitz and glamour of England’s High Society, Sarah Trenwith is more of a wallflower living in the shadow of her beautiful sister Marianne. But as the war approaches Sarah will have to step out of the place society and her family have assigned her if she’s to do her part and claim the love she always dreamed of from afar.

Click buy: a French chateau. Condition: ‘may require improvement'. It seemed like a good idea. Selling everything we owned. Just Mark and me, swapping our tiny, little terraced London home – and the heartbreak of not being able to start a family – for an entire chateau in the middle of France… It’s everyone’s dream. And now it’s coming true for us. As I use the rusty key to open the big creaking wooden door of the tumbledown fairytale chateau that’s officially our new home, I wonder: what could possibly go wrong?

Munich. September, 1938. When twenty-one-year-old Madeleine Hamilton is asked to smuggle two young pupils to Berlin, she nervously agrees. But, when they run into trouble on the train, it is Maddie’s turn to be saved by a chance encounter with a handsome man. Bletchley Park. September, 1939. A year later, Maddie is undertaking training in Morse code when a familiar face shows up unexpectedly. The attraction between them is as deep as it is instant, but Maddie knows one person holds the potential to harm her country and her heart – and it is her duty to protect both.

Set in the turbulent years following the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, George Eliot's fourth novel, Romola, moves the stage from the English countryside of the 19th century to an Italy four centuries before her time. It tells the tale of a young Florentine woman, Romola de' Bardi, and her coming of age through her troubled marriage to the suave and self-absorbed Greek Tito. Slowly Tito's true character begins to unfurl, and his lies and treachery push Romola toward a more spiritual path, where she transcends into a majestic, Madonna-like role.

Satan’s final judgement on Victoria sums up a shocking novel, set in Venice at the end of the 15th century, that tracks the path of its heroine from abused victim to fully fledged criminal. Her conscious embodiment of vice seems to know no limits. Depicting unfettered desire and gratuitous cruelty, and challenging taboos of race and class, this tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder has Dacre moving beyond the limits of contemporaneous gothic heroes into a truly hellish zone of her own.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson's epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. The recording is divided into three volumes.

Among Jane Austen's favorite novels, and a key work in the rise of Romanticism, Camilla follows the story of three young women, from childhood to young adulthood, and their pursuit of matrimony. Kind but naive Camilla is in love with Edgar Mandlebert, a handsome and noble young man. Intelligent Eugenia, destined to inherit her uncle's great wealth, is plagued with misfortune as she is left disfigured by smallpox and has men court her for financial gain only. Meanwhile their cousin, beautiful but selfish Indiana, never finds a fortune for her good looks.