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Giant Print 24
Classic fiction
Austen, Jane
Emma. 1994. 5v.
Emma Wodehouse has led a simple life, but
during the course of this novel she at last reaps
her share of the world's vexations. In this comedy
of manners, the heroine learns to come to terms
with the reality of other people, and with her own
erring nature.

Austen, Jane.
Mansfield Park. 2008. 5v.
Adopted into the household of her Uncle, Sir
Thomas Bertram, Fanny Price grows up a meek
outsider among her cousins in the unaccustomed
elegance of Mansfield Park. Soon after Sir
Thomas absents himself on estate business in
Antigua, Mary Crawford and her brother Henry
arive at Mansfield, bringing with them London
glamour, and the seductive taste for flirtation and
theatre that precipitates a crisis.

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Austen, Jane.
Persuasion. 2008. 3v.
Anne Elliot has been persuaded to break off her
engagement, but meets Wentworth again after
some time, and the story is concerned with the
gradual revival of his passion for her.

Austen, Jane.
Sense and sensibility. 2008. 4v.
Mrs Dashwood and her two daughters must leave
the family home and move to a small house in
another part of the country. Soon Marianne and
Elinor both fall in love, but they must first learn
some terrible secrets before they find true
happiness

Barr, Robert.
Rock in the Baltic. 2008. 2v.
A chance meeting with a beautiful girl in the
banking hall of the Sixth National Bank in Bar
Harbour, Maine, sets Lieutenant Alan Drummond
of HMS Consternation off on a wild adventure and
dark dealings in pre-revolutionary Russia and the
Baltic.

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Bennett, Arnold
The old wives' tale. 2009. 7v.
Constance, a staid and sensible young woman,
marries the estimable and superficially
insignificant Samuel Povey, and spends all her life
in Bursley. The more passionate and imaginative
Sophia elopes with the fascinating but
unprincipled Gerald Scales, who carries her off to
Paris where she suffers many indignities and is
finally deserted. But the sisters are reunited, and
spend their last years together in Bursley.

Blackmore, R D
Lorna Doone. 1993. 7v.
Set in the times of Charles II and James II, this is
the story of John Ridd, an Exmoor yeoman, and
his revenge for the murder of his father by the
Doones. His love for Lorna complicates the issue
until it is discovered that she is the daughter of a
Scottish noble, so that the impediment to the
marriage becomes one of social situation. This is
soon overcome by her fidelity and by his services
to an old kinsman of Lorna and to the king.

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Brebner, Percy James.
The brown mask. 2008. 3v.
The story of the mystery relating to the identity of
a notorious highwayman whose lawlessness is
mixed with deeds of daring and chivalry. It is set
in the time of the Monmouth Rebellion in the late
17th Century.

Bront, Anne.
Agnes Grey. 2008. 2v.
An inexperienced girl has to earn her living as a
governess - a story of "small unhappiness
suffered without a murmur". But her resignation is
undercut by a gentle irony that borders at times
on near-caustic satire, and gives the novel an
edge over the more passionate, mystical and
enigmatic books written by Anne's sisters.

Bront, Anne
The tenant of Wildfell Hall. 2009. 5v.
The story of Helen Huntingdon and her
swaggering, debauched husband and of Gilbert
Markham, the man who falls in love with Helen.

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Bronte, Charlotte.
Jane Eyre. 2000. 1v.
The unhappy childhood of Jane Eyre, her time as
governess at Thornfield Hall and her love for Mr
Rochester.

Bront, Charlotte
Shirley. 2009. 8v.
Romantic hope and the denial of feeling are the
focus of this historical novel set in England at the
time of the Napoleonic Wars.

Bront, Charlotte
Villette. 2009. 6v.
A semi-autobiographical novel about a young,
poor and unattractive English teacher who takes a
post at a Belgian school where she gains esteem
and affection through sheer strength of character.

Bronte, Emily.
Wuthering Heights. 2003. 1v.
Set in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors, the story
tells of the relationship between Cathy and
Heathcliffe.

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Bunyan, John
The pilgrim's progress. 2009. 2v. Classic
fiction.
An allegorical account of Christian's
journey toward heaven or hell.

Burgess, Anthony
A clockwork orange. 2000. 2v.
Fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends start an
evening's mayhem by hitting an old man, tearing
up his books and stripping him of money and
clothes. Because of his delinquent excesses, Alex
is jailed and made subject to "Ludovico's
Technique", a chilling experiment in reclamation
treatment.

Chesterton, G.K.
The wisdom of Father Brown. 2008. 2v.
The loveable amateur detective delves into more
strange and baffling situations, applying his rich
intuitive skills to solve mysteries that leave
everyone else confounded.

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Chesterton, G.K.
The innocence of Father Brown. 2008. 2v.
Eleven more stories in which Father Brown,
priest-detective, solves plots of murder and
mystery.

Collins, Wilkie.
The moonstone. 1994. 7v.
An emormous diamond is bequeathed to Miss
Rachel Verinder by her uncle. In anticipation of
Miss Verinder's eighteenth birthday, the
Moonstone is spirited out of India and brought
back to England whereupon it goes missing.
Stolen in the first place from a Hindu shrine, the
ownership and indeed the whereabouts of the
sacred diamond is the question around which the
plot revolves. Credited with being the first
example of detective fiction the tale is told as a
series of eyewitness accounts.

Conrad, Joseph.
Heart of darkness. 2008. 1v.
Heart of darkness is a chilling tale of horror set in
the Congo during the period of rapid colonial
expansion in the 19th century. The story deals

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with the highly disturbing effects of economic,
social and political exploitation of European and
African societies.

Conrad, Joseph
Lord Jim. 1994. 5v.
The central figure is Jim, the sensitive first mate
of the Patna. "Lord Jim" traces the development
of this character as he moulds himself and the
society in which he is marooned. Plain Jim
becomes Tuan or "Lord Jim".

Conrad, Joseph.
The secret agent. 2008. 3v.
An anarchist bomb plot fails through a woman's
protective love for her simple-minded young
brother.

Conrad, Joseph
Typhoon. 2009. 1v.
'Typhoon' is the story of a steamship and her crew
beset by tempest, and of the stolid captain whose
dogged courage is tested to the limit.

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Defoe, Daniel.
The fortunes and misfortunes of the famous
Moll Flanders. 1994. 4v.
Abandoned at six months old, Moll has no option
but to use her considerable wit and looks to make
her way in a world where no mercy is given to the
unadaptable. As a woman her options are limited
and Moll embarks on a rollicking career of incest,
bigamy and crime.

Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe. 1994. 3v.
Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a
terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with
only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns
how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure
endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years
later, when he confronts another human being.

Dickens, Charles.
A Christmas carol. 1992. 1v.
Ebenezer Scrooge is a heartless old miser who
doesn't enjoy Christmas and doesn't think anyone
else should, either. But, one Christmas Eve, some

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ghostly visitors take Scrooge on a journey that
changes his mind for ever.

Dickens, Charles
A tale of two cities. 2009. 4v.
A story of the French Revolution set in London
and Paris. Sydney Carton sacrifices his life on the
guillotine for the happiness of Lucie Manette, the
French girl he loves.

Dickens, Charles.
Barnaby Rudge: a tale of the riots of 'Eighty.
2010. 8v.
Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of
1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and
suspense which begins with an unsolved double
murder and goes on to involve conspiracy,
blackmail, abduction and retribution. As London
erupts into riot, fathers and sons become
opposed, apprentices plot against their masters
and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the
streets. Meanwhile Barnaby Rudge struggles to
escape the curse of his own past.

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Dickens, Charles
David Copperfield. 2009. 11v.
David Copperfield relates the story of his life. On
his journey, David encounters a gallery of
memorable characters, kind, cruel or grotesque:
Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and Steerforth are
among the many that shape his development.

Dickens, Charles.
Dombey and Son. 2010. 10v.
Dombey has lost his beloved son, and his firm.
His wife and daughter are estranged from him
through his arrogance, and he lives alone and
desolate until his daughter returns to take care of
him.

Dickens, Charles.
Great expectations. 1998. 5v.
This novel charts Pip's progress from childhood to
adulthood and the extraordinary characters he
encounters, showing the danger of being driven
by a desire for wealth and social status. This
edition uses the text of the Clarendon edition.

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Dickens, Charles.
Hard times. 1994. 3v.
Charles Dickens gives us a close-up look into
what appears to be the ivory tower of the
bourgeoisie of his day, yet these middle-class
characters are viewed from a singular
perspective, the perspective of those at the
bottom of the social and economic system.

Dickens, Charles
Little Dorrit. 2009. 10v.
William Dorrit is a long-term inmate in the debtors'
prison, Marshalsea. For her entire life so far, his
daughter Amy has faithfully nursed him in jail.
Trying to keep herself out of debt she works as a
seamstress for the stern Mrs Clennam. When Mrs
Clennam's son, Arthur, returns home from years
abroad working for the family business, Amy's life
begins to change.

Dickens, Charles
Nicholas Nickleby. 2009. 10v.
Nicholas goes as usher to Dotheboys Hall, where
he meets the sadistic Squeers and his family. He

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foils the wicked plans of his uncle Ralph and
rescues his sister from Sir Mulberry Hawk.

Dickens, Charles
Oliver Twist. 1994. 3v.
Oliver Twist is an orphan who was born in a
workhouse. After an unhappy apprenticeship,
Oliver runs away to London where he falls in with
thieves, headed by Fagin. He is rescued by Mr
Brownlow but the gang kidnap him back. Oliver
discovers the identity of his parents and the gang
is exposed.

Dickens, Charles.
Our mutual friend. 2010. 10v.
The novel follows the fortunes of Bella Wilfer,
denied an inheritance by the death of the man
she was to marry, and the Boffins, who receive
the bequest in her place.

Dickens, Charles.
The mystery of Edwin Drood. 2010. 3v.
The betrothal of Edwin and Rosa by their fathers
when they were

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still very young leads to unhappiness, jealousy
and violent quarrels.

Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir.

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. 2008. 3v.
Eleven adventures of the Baker Street detective.

Dumas, Alexandre.
The man in the iron mask. 2010. 6v.
The Musketeers are back in another exciting
adventure! This time a terrible secret threatens to
bring down the throne of France. Aramis, Athos,
Porthos, and D'Artagnan must rally once again to
serve their king and save the country.

Dumas, Alexandre.
The three musketeers. 2010. 8v.
The classic historical adventure novel, set in the
1620s at the court of Louis XIII, where the
musketeers are engaged in a battle against
Richelieu, the King's minister, and a beautiful,
unscrupulous spy.

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Eliot, George
Middlemarch. 2009. 10v.
Dorothea Brooke marries Mr Casaubon, believing
his researches into ancient mythologies are
worthwhile. But sterility pervades his work and
their marriage. Parallel to this runs the story of
Lydgate, a young doctor also engaged in
research but frustrated by his shallow wife,
Rosamond. In contrast to Mr Casaubon, Will
Ladislaw, his young cousin, is intensely alive and
he and Dorothea are brought together at last.

Eliot, George
The mill on the Floss. 2009. 7v.
The story of the gifted Maggie Tulliver and her
spoilt, selfish brother.

Fitzgerald, F Scott
Tender is the night: a romance. 2000. 4v.
To the French Riviera come Dick and Nicole
Diver. Handsome, rich and glamorous, their
dinners are legendary, their atmosphere
magnetic. But something is wrong - Nicole has a
secret and Dick a weakness.

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Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
The Great Gatsby. 1990. 1v.
Set against a background of Long Island glamour
and New York squalor, this is the story of a
mysterious financier's passion for a young lady,
and a tale of adultery and murder.

Forster, E M
A passage to India. 2005. 4v.
A strange event at the Marabar caves involves
Adela Quested, newly come from England, and
the presumed guilt of the charming, mercurial Dr
Aziz.

Forster, E M
A room with a view.1990, c1978. 3v.
The love of a young British woman named Lucy
Honeychurch for a British expatriate living in Italy
is condemned by her stuffy, middle-class
guardians, who prefer an eligible man of their own
choosing.

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Flaubert, Gustave.
Madame Bovary. 2008. 4v.
Emma Rouault leaves her father to marry Charles
Bovary and live among the bourgeoisie of
Yonville. She fills her head with notions of
gallantry and high romance, which she finds in a
tempestuous love affair with the local squire.

Galsworthy, John
The Forsyte saga. 2008. 10v.
The Forsyte Saga traces the changing fortunes of
the wealthy Forsyte dynasty through fifty years of
material triumph and emotional disaster.

Garca Mrquez, Gabriel.

Love in the time of cholera. 2007. 4v.
When Dr. Juvenal Urbino died, aged eighty-one-
and-a-half, his widow, the once breath-taking
Fermina Daza, instinctively recoiled from the one
hand extended to steady and comfort her. A hand
which for her long life had always been within
reach but which, in her haughtiness and guilt, she
would not acknowledge: the hand of Florentino
Ariza. Gabriel Garca Mrquez, winner of the

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1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, tells a haunting
love story.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel

One hundred years of solitude. 2000. 4v.
A saga spanning three generations of the Buendia
family. Jose Buendia founds a town in the heart of
the South American Jungle and the family is
dominated by his passion for alchemy. But the
world is changing, and succeeding generations
are caught up in a political and social
turmoil.Gaskell, Elizabeth

Gaskell, Elizabeth
Cranford and other stories. 2007. 5v.
In the village of Cranford, decorum is maintained
at all times. Despite their poverty, the ladies are
never vulgar about money (or their lack of it), and
always follow the rules of propriety. But this
discretion and gentility does not keep away
tragedy; and when the worst happens, the
Amazons of Cranford show the true strength of
their honest affections.

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Graves, Robert
I, Claudius: from the autobiography of
Tiberius Claudius. 2006. 5v.
Despised for his weakness and regarded by his
family as little more than a stammering fool, the
nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues,
bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the
imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he
watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of
its emperors.

Greene, Graham.
The third man, and, The fallen idol. 2001. 2v.
"The Third Man" is Graham Greene's brilliant
recreation of post-war Vienna, a 'smashed dreary
city' occupied by the four Allied powers. Rollo
Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless
to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry
has died in suspicious circumstances, and the
police are closing in on his associates..."The
Fallen Idol" is the chilling story of a small boy
caught up in the games that adults play. Left in
the care of the butler and his wife whilst his
parents go on a fortnight's holiday, Philip realises

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too late the danger of lies and deceit. But the truth
is even deadlier.

Goldsmith, Oliver.
The vicar of Wakefield. 2008. 2v.
A witty account of the adventures of a clergyman
and his family reduced to poverty.

Green, A.K.
Dark hollow. 2008. 3v.
The plot of this classic thriller includes two
murderers, one house of mystery surrounded by
high fences, one woman dressed entirely in
purple and heavily veiled, many policemen and
four corpses.

Haggard, H. Rider.
Ayesha: the return of She. 2008. 4v.
I die not, I shall come again, and shall once more
be beautiful. I swear it - it is true. These were
Ayeshas strange last words before her death, and
Leo Vinley and Ludwig Horace Holly set out to
determine if they are true. Exotic characters
include the Hesea of the House of Fire, a cult of

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Isis worshippers, and Khan, an insanely jealous
husband who has a pack of death hounds.

Haggard, H. Rider.
King Solomon's mines. 2008. 3v.
Following a map drawn in blood, adventurer Allan
Quatermain sets out with his intrepid companions
to find King Solomon's legendary diamond mines
in Africa. But their path is fraught with dangers,
especially when they encounter the evil 'wise
woman' who holds the secret of the mines.

Hardy, Thomas
Jude the obscure. 1994. 5v.
Jude Fawley, a stone-mason, has already
suffered. His academic ambitions were thwarted
by his poverty and class: trapped in a loveless
marriage, he is now alone but not free. He comes
to love his cousin Sue who, seemingly
emancipated, is herself miserably married.
Together they defy conventional morality to seize
a chance of happiness.

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Hardy, Thomas.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles. 1979. 4v.
Tess is driven by her poverty into the service of
her wealthy relations. Her lowly position leads her
to become the victim of her cousin, Alec, her
seducer and nemesis. When she marries Angel
Clare, she confesses her past, but Clare is
unforgiving and cruelly leaves her to face her
destiny alone.

Hardy, Thomas.
The mayor of Casterbridge. 1994. 4v.
One of the Wessex tales, this tells the story of the
brooding, and sometimes brutal Michael
Henchard and the women with whom he searches
for happiness in the harsh world of 19th-century
rural England.

Hardy, Thomas.
The woodlanders. 2010. 4v.
Grace Melbury, daughter of a well-to-do timber
merchant, returns home from finishing school;
and her father arranges her marriage to a young
doctor.

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Hardy, Thomas.
Under the greenwood tree. 2010. 2v.
The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village
of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a
convoluted love affair in its wake. While the
Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the
villages musicians with his decision to abolish the
churchs traditional string choir and replace it with
a modern mechanical organ, the new
schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of
a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of
three very different men a local farmer, a church
musician and Maybold himself.

Hemingway, Ernest
A farewell to arms. 1999. 3v.
An American's love for an English nurse during
the First World War ends in tragedy.

Hornung, E. W.
Mr Justice Raffles. 2008. 2v.
Raffles crosses the path of Brigstock, an
unscrupulous moneylender who preys upon the
facilities of the idle sons of rich men. Raffles

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decides to teach Brigstock a lesson he will not
forget.

Hughes, Thomas.
Tom Brown's schooldays. 1999. 3v.
A classic of Victorian literature, and one of the
earliest books written specifically for boys, Tom
Brown's schooldays has long had an influence
well beyond the middle-class, public school world
that it describes.

Huxley, Aldous.
Brave new world. 1994. 2v.
Written in 1932, when the Western world was
poised on the brink of social and scientific
revolution, this novel is Huxley's nightmare vision
of the future.

Irving, Washington
The legend of Sleepy Hollow and other
stories. 1999. 1v.
Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster in Sleepy Hollow,
loves Katrina Van Tassel, a wealthy farmer's
daughter. His chief rival for her affection is Brom
Van Brunt, a powerfully-built mischief-maker

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known as Brom Bones. At a "merry making" one
evening, Crane hears of a headless horseman
who haunts the region, and with whom he will
soon have a terrifying encounter.

Irving, Washington
Rip van Winkle and other stories. 1986. 1v.
The legendary enchantment of Rip Van Winkle in
the Kaatskill Mountains; the gruesome end of
Ichabod Crane, who met the headless horseman
of Sleepy Hollow; the spectre bridegroom who
turned out to be happily substantial; the pride of
an English village and the come-uppance of the
over-zealous Mountjoy - these witty, perceptive
and captivating tales range from fantasy to
romance.

James, Henry.
Washington Square. 2008. 2v.
James provides an acute analysis of middle-class
manners and behaviour in the New York of the
1870s.Through the relationships between Austin
Sloper: a celebrated physician, his sister Lavinia
Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and

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Catherines suitor, Morris Townsend, James
observes the contemporary scene.

Jerome, Jerome K
Three men in a boat. 2009. 2v.
Suffering from every malady in the book, three
men and a dog decide to head for a restful
vacation on the Thames. They encounter the joys
of roughing it, of getting their boat stuck in locks,
of having to eat their own cooking, and of course,
the glorious English weather.

Joyce, James
A portrait of the artist as a young man. 2000.
4v.
The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin
childhood and youth, his quest for identity through
art and his gradual emancipation from the claims
of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an
oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce
and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal
imagination'.

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Joyce, James
Ulysses. 2000. 10v.
The novel deals with the events of one day in
Dublin, 16th June 1904, now known as
"Bloomsday". The principal characters are
Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife
Molly.

Kafka, Franz.
The trial. 2009. 2v.
Josef K, 30, lives in a large town in an unspecified
country. He is summonsed to answer a charge
and appears in the court room for his trial. This
title aims to evoke the reality of trial without any of
the specifics in a society that seems to have
degraded into chaos: squalid environment, rats,
yellow liquid shooting out of a hole in the wall.

Lawrence, D.H.
Aaron's rod. 2008. 4v.
Aaron leaves his wife and family and his job at a
Midlands Pit taking only his flute Aaron's rod and
goes to London. He meets Lilly, a sympathetic
man who looks after him when he is ill.
Subsequently both meet again in Italy. The theme

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of this book is about self-knowledge and much of
it is about Lawrence himself, who is represented
in both Lilly and Aaron.

Lawrence, D H
Lady Chatterley's lover. 2006. 5v.
Constance Chatterley is deeply unhappy; married
to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralysed
as her husband. Oppressed by her dreary life,
she finds refuge and regeneration in the arms of
Mellors the game-keeper.

Lawrence, D.H.
Sons and lovers. 2008. 5v.
Gertrude Morel, a delicate yet determined
woman, no longer loves her boorish, inarticulate
husband and devotes herself to her sons, William
and Paul. There is conflict when Paul falls in love
and seeks to escape his mother's suffocating
grasp. Set in the period leading up to the First
World War, the text reflects the problems of
transition between the agricultural past and the
industrial future, between one generation and the
next, and between childhood and adolescence.

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Lawrence, D.H.
The virgin and the gypsy. 2008. 1v.
Set in a small village in the English countryside,
this is the story of a secluded, sensitive rector's
daughter who yearns for meaning beyond the life
to which she seems doomed. When she meets a
handsome young gipsy whose life appears
different from hers in every way, she is
immediately smitten and yet still paralyzed by her
own fear and social convention. Not until a natural
catastrophe suddenly, miraculously sweeps away
the world as she knew it does a new world of
passion open for her.

Lawrence, D H
Women in love. 2007. 7v.
This continues the story of Ursula and Gudrun
Brangwen begun in "The Rainbow". The
Brangwen sisters are now teachers in Beldover, a
small town dominated by a colliery. Ursula falls in
love with Birkin, while Gudrun has a tragic affair
with Gerald, son of the colliery owner.

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Leroux, Gaston.
The phantom of the opera. 2008. 3v.
Under the Paris Opera House lives a disfigured
musical genius who uses music to win the love of
a beautiful opera singer.

Melville, Herman
Moby Dick. 2009. 6v.
A young seaman joins the crew of the fanatical
Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale Moby
Dick.

Orwell, George.
Nineteen eighty-four. 1998. 3v.
The book is set in a society run by Big Brother
where people are made to conform to orthodoxy
by the Thought Police. Winston Smith yearns for
truth and liberty, but he comes to realize that he
cannot outwit the forces at work.

Rhys, Jean
Wide Sargasso Sea. 2000. 2v.
The life of Rochester's first wife, the mad woman
kept hidden at Thornfield Hall who later haunted
Jane Eyre.

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Scott, Walter, Sir.
Ivanhoe. 2008. 5v.
Scott's noble knight, Ivanhoe, returns home from
the Crusades to claim Rowena, an Anglo-Saxon
princess, to be his bride. Before long he is
embroiled in the struggle between Prince John
and his brother Richard the Lionheart.

Scott, Walter, Sir.

Kenilworth. 2008. 5v.
A story of the Earl of Leicester, favourite of Queen
Elizabeth I, and of his secret marriage to the
beautiful Amy Robsart.

Scott, Walter, Sir.

Quentin Durward. 2008. 5v.
The young Scottish adventurer, Quentin Durward,
embarks on a dangerous journey through the
forest of the Ardennes, seeking a name, a partner
and a position in the world. Meanwhile, the
machiavellian King Louis XI of France
manoeuvres his realm out of the hands of the
feudal barons, and into the centralised control that
Scott believed to characterise the modern state.

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Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. 1963.
2v.
Ivan is serving a ten-year sentence in a Siberian
labour camp. This is the story of one typical day. It
is a glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians
under Stalin, which shocked the world when it first
appeared.

Spark, Muriel
The prime of Miss Jean Brodie. 2000. 2v.
Miss Jean Brodie was a schoolmistress with a
difference. Proud, cultured, romantic, her ideas
were progressive, even shocking. And when she
decided to transform a group of young girls under
her tutelage into the "crme de la crme" of
Marcia Blaine school, no one could have
predicted the outcome.

Steinbeck, John.
Of mice and men. 2000. 1v.
George and Lennie are migrant American
labourers. George protects his strong but stupid

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friend and shares with him a dream of one day
settling down and farming their own land.

Steinbeck, John
The grapes of wrath. 2000. 6v.
Set against the background of dust bowl
Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of
the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are
forced to travel West in search of the promised
land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted
desires and broken dreams.

Thackeray, W. M.
Vanity Fair. 2009. 8v.
A story of English society during the Napoleonic
wars, in which Thackerey chronicles the exploits
of Becky Sharp, an unscrupulous young woman
who is determined to achieve wealth and social
success.

Trollope, Anthony.
Barchester Towers. 2008. 6v.
The Barsetshire chronicles; book 2. Clerical feuds
in Barchester centre round Mr. Slope, the

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Bishop's Chaplain, and Mrs. Proudie, the Bishop's
wife.

Trollope, Anthony.
The warden. 2008. 2v.
The Barsetshire chronicles; book 1. This book
centres on Reverend Harding and his youngest
daughter Eleanor. With humour and satire, it tells
of the moral dilema he faces when accused of
living on the funds that should be distributed to
the almshouse for which he is warden. One of his
chief critics is John Bold, with whom Eleanor is in
love. Harding wants to act courageously but in a
way which will not alienate Eleanor or her lover

Verne, Jules.
Around the world in 80 days. 2008. 2v.
Phileas Fogg is certain that he can travel around
the world in eighty days - an incredibly short
period of time in 1873. He's so sure that it can be
done that he's wagered half of his fortune and set
off on the grand adventure with his servant
Passepartout.

35
Verne, Jules.
Journey to the centre of the earth. 1996. 2v.
Professor Lidenbrock, a neurotically impatient
scientist, discovers a cryptic manuscript written by
a long-dead explorer; with the help of his nephew,
he decodes the cryptogram to read an account of
a journey to the center of the earth begun
beneath a dormant volcano in Iceland.

Wallace, Edgar.
Clue of the twisted candle. 2008. 2v.
Mystery writer John Lexman is sentenced for the
killing of a moneylender. Commander T.X.
Meredith, convinced there has been a miscarriage
of justice, searchs for evidence to clear his friend.
Wealthy Greek Remington Kara has other plans.

Walpole, Horace.
The castle of Otranto. 2001. 2v.
The earliest and most influential of the Gothic
novels. This book gives us a series of
catastrophes, ghostly interventions, revelations of
identity, and exciting contests. Crammed with
invention, entertainment, terror, and pathos, the
novel was an immediate

36
success and Walpole's own favourite among his
numerous works.

Waugh, Evelyn
Brideshead revisited: the sacred and the
profane memories of Captain Charles
Ryder. 2003. 5v.
This tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation
with the Marchmain family and the rapidly
disappearing world of privilege they inhabit.
Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford then by
his doomed Catholic family, in particular his
remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to
recognize his spiritual and social distance from
them.

Waugh, Evelyn
Decline and fall. 2001. 2v.
When pious Paul Pennyfeather is sent down from
Scone College, Oxford for "indecent behaviour"
he is cast out into a chaotic world to earn his
living. He embarks upon a series of bizarre
adventures which start in a minor public school
and end in Egdon Heath Prison.

37
Wells, H G
The history of Mr Polly. 2005. 3v.
The 'little man', inefficient and lovable, prepares
for suicide when his unprofitable shop, based in a
small seaside town, faces bankruptcy. But
courage fails him and he sets fire to the place
instead. He calls upon resources he never knew
he had to save himself from his landlady's
ferocious nephew ....

Wells, H G
The invisible man. 2005. 2v.
The classic story of the extraordinary experiences
of a chemistry student who succeeded in making
himself invisible.

Wharton, Edith
Ethan Frome. 2009. 1v.
Ethan Frome works his New England farm, and
struggles to maintain a bearable existence with
his difficult wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's
cousin enters their household, Ethan finds himself
obsessed with her and the happiness she comes
to represent. The ill-starred trio move towards
their tragic destinies.

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Wharton, Edith.
The age of innocence. 2008. 3v.
Fashionable life of the 1870s in New York and
Newport as seen by a woman looking back from
the changed post-war world to a girlhood passed
amidst the totems of these vanished tribes.

Woolf, Virginia
A room of one's own. 2002. 1v.
"A room of one's own" grew out of a lecture that
Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton
College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane
Austen and Charlotte Bronte and why neither of
them could have written "War and peace", over
the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (and
imaginary) sister and over the effects of poverty
and chastity on female creativity.

Woolf, Virginia
Mrs Dalloway. 1996. 2v.
Past, present and future are brought together one
day in June 1923. Clarissa Dalloway prepares for
her party, remembering those she once loved. In
another part of London, Septimus Smith is on the

39
brink of madness. His day interweaves with
Clarissa's.

Woolf, Virginia
To the lighthouse. 2000. 3v.
This is the story of the Ramsays, based on
Virginia Woolf's own family. Written in the stream-
of-consciousness style, the book examines family
relationships, the traditional roles of the sexes,
the tensions and love between husband and wife
and the resentment children can feel for their
parents.

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