Allan Armadale makes a startling deathbed confession to be shared with his young son once he reaches adulthood-he murdered another man named Allan Armadale. It's a dark secret that inevitably looms over the child of the perpetrator and his victim. Before dying, Allan Armadale reveals that he previously killed a man also named Allan Armadale. It's a revelation meant for his young son who discovers the information as an adult. At this point, he's...

"Woolf's portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in artistic London, and finally making a trip to Greece. Jacob is presented in glimpses, in fragments, as Woolf breaks down traditional ways of representing character and experience."--Back cover.

"Set in the elegant Edwardian world of Cambridge undergraduate life, this story by a master novelist introduces us to Maurice Hall when he is fourteen. We follow him through public school and Cambridge, and into his father's firm. In a highly structured society, Maurice is a conventional young man in almost every way-- except that he is homosexual. Written during 1913 and 1914, immediately after Howards End, and not published until 1971, Maurice was...

Presents the eighteenth-century comic novel in which Tristram Shandy, the narrator, attempts to tell the story of his life but becomes totally bogged down in tales of his eccentric family. Doomed to become the 'sport of fortune' by an interruption at the crucial moment of conception, Tristram Shandy's life lurches from one mishap to another: his nose crushed by the doctor's forceps during birth, christened with the wrong name, an unfortunate incident...

"If Ted Ainsworth were to compare himself to one of the ice cream flavors made by his family's company, famous throughout his sleepy Lancashire hometown, it might be vanilla--sweet, inoffensive, and pleasantly predictable. At forty-three, Ted is convinced there's nothing remotely remarkable about him, except perhaps his luck in having landed handsome, charismatic Giles as a husband. Then Giles suddenly leaves him for another man, filling his social...

"Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel is by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth. The Liar is a thrilling, sophisticated...

Two of Dicken's novels are republished. The first follows a group from the tranquil roads of London to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror. The second follows the life of the orphaned Pip from the wild Kent marshes through a series of events as he abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

When his father dies, Nicholas is sent by his uncle to a school to be a teacher, but when Nicholas finds that the headmaster bullies the students, he must decide whether to stay, or leave and allow his uncle to cut off support.

"Danny arrives at Manchester University determined not to hide from the world any longer. This is the year his life will begin. He locks eyes with a handsome stranger across the hall at the Fresher's Fair. It starts with a wink and soon Danny and Guy are best friends. 2022: Now, both single for the first time in years, Danny and Guy return to the confetti-covered streets of the Gay Village for Manchester Pride. After years of shared adventures and...

"Liverpool, 1935: Raised in a strict Catholic family, Viv Byrne knows what's expected of her: marry a Catholic man from her working-class neighborhood and have his children. However, when she finds herself pregnant after a fling with Joshua Levinson, a Jewish man with dreams of becoming a famous Jazz musician, Viv knows that a swift wedding is the only answer. Her only solace is that marrying Joshua will mean escaping her strict mother's scrutiny....