1013

Once there was a Spanish knight who charged at windmills! Is this all there is to the great epic tale by Shakespeare’s contemporary?

1009

A play about crazy people at the end of an era, or the greatest play about the end of serfdom and the beginning of a new note in Russian history?

1037

A charming tale of a young Parisian girl who marries well? Or Colette’s exploration of her own virtual child abuse, written fifty years after the event. This short novel is a wonderful fable about a particular section of French society at the turn of the 19th Century.

1041

A mad woman on the loose in 1860s London, or a lady in extreme and justified fear for her life? Collins will keep you enthralled and appalled with his intricate plot and brilliant cast of characters. And is Count Fosco the villain of the piece?

1014

‘Bah! Humbug!’ An exploration into the origins of Scrooge and the absolute necessity of charity and compassion for a happy life.

1015

LONDON AND PARIS…THE GUILLOTINE. A story of war, love and self-sacrifice…the ultimate sacrifice of which the human is capable!

1016

A drama of patricide and intense family rivalry. This is Dostoyevsky’s absolute masterpiece. How does it come out of his own dramatic life?

1039

'Middlemarch' is the novel which changed the possiblities of the novel form forever. Eliot creates a web of characters, each with his or her own unique voice, and whose every action affects everyone else. The 'Chaos theory' in human practice in the mid 19th Century!

1017

Flappers and gangsters…the beautiful and the damned! Why should we care about the ‘Jazz Age’ generation? Fitzgerald will make you care.

1018

A bored housewife looking for trouble? Or a female Flaubert? Was this novel worth five years of his life and the ‘dessication of his heart’.

1058

The finest novel about India not written by an Indian! One of E.M.Forster's greatest achievements.

1019

‘All lies!’ said the mill owners. Gaskell was uniquely placed to register the terrible truth about poverty in 1840s Manchester. I know who to believe!