Classics

From the author of the much-loved Mapp and Lucia series comes an unforgettable small-town heroine

Includes adventures of doughty female Victorian explorer describe stumbling upon five hippos by night, dodging elephants and fighting off a leopard with a stool.

Whether in fogbound London or deep in the English countryside, this title includes action-packed stories, set during the 1880s and early 1890s, before Holmes' disappearance at the Reichenbach Falls, faithfully recreate the atmosphere of Conan Doyle's early Holmes stories.

Trapped in a stifling marriage, Anna Karenina is swept off her feet by the dashing Count Vronsky. When the truth about their passionate liaison comes out, Anna's husband is more concerned with keeping up appearances than anything else, but at last he seeks a reluctant divorce.

Tells a beguiling story of happiness and hope, of the joys of companionship, domestic harmony and infinite mother love, all seen through the life of the March family.

Miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge views Christmas as humbug. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased business partner Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future that he begins to see the error of his ways.

Features the English seaman Marlow who tells the story of his time as a riverboat captain for a trading company on the Congo, specifically his intense interest in investigating the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory-procurement agent with almost godlike status.

A gothic drama, set in Puritan Boston, that tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair. Branded with a scarlet letter A and isolated in a strict conformist community intent on pushing her to the fringes of this wild country, Hester struggles to forge a new, dignified existence with her daughter.

Looks at the well-to-do Ramsey family as they holiday, over the years, in their summer home on the Isle of Skye. Sparked by the postponement of a jaunt to a nearby lighthouse, this novel develops into an intricate study of childhood emotions and adult relationships, of conflict between the sexes and the complex nature of families.