Edmund De Waal   264 wood and ivory carvings none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the...

Robert Ludlum   Robert Ludlum’s wayward hero, the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins, returns with a diabolical scheme to right a very old wrong—and wreak vengeance on the [redacted] who drummed...

L Frank Baum Come along, Toto, she said. We will go to the Emerald City and ask the Great Oz how to get back to Kansas again. Swept away from...

George MikesHow to Be an Alien(Penguin Readers: Level 3)George Mikes says, 'the English have no soul; they have the understatement instead.' But they do have a sense of humour -...

George EliotGeorge Eliot's tale of a solitary miser gradually redeemed by the joy of fatherhood, Silas Marner is edited with an introduction and notes by David Carroll in Penguin Classics.Wrongly...

Robertson Davies   Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small -town embalmer, an expert...

John IrvingIt has been said before, and it shall be said 1,000 times again: John Irving is the American Dickens. Rich in characterization, epic in scope, The Cider House Rules...

Henry JamesAfter her parents' bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself turned into a 'little feathered shuttlecock' to be swatted back and forth by her selfish mother, Ida, and her...

Bram Stoker   Take the papers that are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read them, and then find the great Un-Dead, and cut off his...

Nathaniel HawthorneSet in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and will not...

Bernhard Schlink   Originally published in Switzerland and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading and shame in post-war...

Fred Mustard StewartAgainst the background of the Civil War, the tempestuous lives of Adam and Lizzie are shaped by history's forces, moving from Imperial India to London's salons and New...