A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce's "Dubliners" and the symbolism of "Ulysses", and is essential to the understanding of the later work

The 'progress' of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First World War. What, then, did it mean to call ourselves 'human'? What are the definitive forms of our relationships - love, marriage, family, friendship - really worth? Without directly referring to the war, this novel explores these questions.

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy.

Hamlet is not only one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, but also the most fascinatingly problematical tragedy in world literature

Tom Sawyer, an adventurous boy, is as much at home in the respectable world of his Aunt Polly as in the self-reliant and parentless world of his friend Huck Finn. The two enjoy a series of adventures, accidentally witnessing a murder, establishing the innocence of the man wrongly accused, as well as being hunted by Injun Joe, the true murderer.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant detective to the readers of The Strand Magazine, followed by a second set of stories, The Memoirs. In the twenty three tales collected here you have some of the best detective yarns ever penned.

Encompasses witchcraft, bloody murder, and ghostly apparitions. This work tells the tragedy of a good, brave and honourable man turned into the personification of evil by the workings of unreasonable ambition.

Cervantes' tale of the deranged gentleman who turns knight-errant have found its way into films, cartoons and even computer games. Intended as a parody of the most popular escapist fiction, the 'books of chivalry', this precursor of the modern novel broadened and deepened into a sophisticated, comic account of the contradictions of human nature.