The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Dyslexia Friendly) by Muriel Spark

$16.99 NZD

Category: Classic

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection Muriel Spark's classic The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie features a schoolmistress you'll never forget, in this beautifully repackaged Penguin Essentials edition.'Give me a girl at an impressio nable age, and she is mine for life . . .'Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the cr me de la cr me, each famous for something - Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty . . .The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a brilliantly comic novel featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in all literature.'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards' John Updike'Spark's most celebrated novel' Independent'There is no question about the quality and distinctiveness of her writing, with its quirky concern with human nature, and its comedy' William Boyd'A brilliant psychological figure' ObserverMuriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the Observer, and her many subsequent novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006. ...Show more

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

$19.99 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Macmillan Collector's Library

"It would have been far better if you had never been born." Esther, at 14, has never known love. Determined to live well, earn some love, and overcome the shadow of her birth, she takes her first steps into an unknown world. A family curse, a manipulating lawyer, poverty, and secrets threaten to destroy Esther's world. Are the walls of Bleak House strong enough to protect her and her new friends from such powerful forces? The reader will be caught up in an unfolding mystery, full of surprises. Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is: Who is Nemo? ...Show more

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

$19.99 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Macmillan Collector's Library

A story about money and avidity And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.-Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London as his father's heir, fakes his own death to hide his true identity, until he can get to properly know Bella Wilfer, the woman whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with motley characters and incidents and centers on the effects of corruption and greed that money brings. This book has been professionally formatted for e-readers and contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you'll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can't wait to hear what you have to say about it. ...Show more

The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas Fils

$35.00 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Penguin Classics

The landmark novel that inspired Verdi's opera "La Traviata," in a sparkling new translation "One of the greatest love stories of all time," according to Henry James, and the inspiration for Verdi's opera "La Traviata," the Oscar-winning musical "Moulin Rouge!," and numerous ballets, stage plays (starri ng Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Tallulah Bankhead, and Sarah Bernhardt, and films (starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, Isabelle Huppert, and Colin Firth), "The Lady of the Camellias" itself was inspired by the real-life nineteeth-century courtesan Marie Duplessis, the lover of the novel's author, Alexander Dumas "fils." Known to all as "the Lady of the Camellias" because she is never seen without her favorite flowers, Marguerite Gautier, the most beautiful, brazen, and expensive courtesan in all of Paris. But despite having many lovers, she has never really loved--until she meets Armand Duval, young, handsome, and hopelessly in love with her. "Marguerite and Armand are the kind of bright, self-destructive young things we still read about in magazines, watch on-screen, or brush up against today." --Liesl Schillinger, from the Note on the Translation ...Show more

1984

$11.99 NZD

Category: Classic

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Walker Percy (Foreword by)

$26.00 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Penguin Essentials Ser.

John Kennedy Toole's hilarious satire, A Confederacy of Dunces is a Don Quixote for the modern age, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes a foreword by Walker Percy.Never published during his lifetime, John Kennedy Toole's masterful comic novel takes its title, as well asfrom Jonathan Swift A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern - this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged. Ignatius ignores them, heaving his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him- Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission - and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with...John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969) was born in New Orleans. He received a master's degree in English from Columbia University and taught at Hunter College and at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He wrote A Confederacy of Duncesin the early sixties and tried unsuccessfully to get the novel published; depressed, at least in part by his failure to place the book, he committed suicide in 1969. It was only through the tenacity of his mother that her son's book was eventually published and found the audience it deserved, winning the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His long-suppressed novel The Neon Bible, written when he was only sixteen, was eventually published as well.If you enjoyed A Confederacy of Dunces, you might like Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities ... it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue'The New York Times ...Show more

Don Quixote (Vintage classics Europeans Series) by Miguel de Cervantes

$26.00 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Vintage Classic Europeans Ser.

The story follows the adventures of a hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality. It had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word "quixotic" and the epithet "Lothario". Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Wilhelm Meister.Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published, such as the Bokklubben World Library collection that cites Don Quixote as authors' choice for the "best literary work ever written". ...Show more

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby

$30.00 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: HS

Few novels have caused as much controversy as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece. Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, it tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these trouble d lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. "Last Exit to Brooklyn" was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers including Anthony Burgess. ...Show more

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS OR GOODBYE BLUE M by VONNEGUT KURT

$38.99 NZD

Category: Classic

In "Breakfast of Champions, " one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth. ...Show more

Anne of Avonlea (#2 HB) by L. M. Montgomery

$25.00 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Anne Shirley | Reading Level: Children's - Grade 4-6, Age 9-11

The inimitable Anne Shirley makes her mark on Avonlea in this artfully packaged edition of the sequel to "Anne of Green Gables." Five years after Anne Shirley came to the town of Avonlea, she feels (a little) more grown up, but she's still the same skinny, red-headed orphan Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert took in. After putting her dream of attending Redmond College on hold so she can help Marilla with the farm, Anne doubts she has many adventures ahead of her. But even in plain old Avonlea, her life proves to be anything but ordinary. This sequel to "Anne of Green Gables "follows Anne's endeavors to become a successful teacher, help raise a pair of rambunctious twins, and improve her beloved hometown--with the help of her former enemy, Gilbert Blythe, who's giving her an awful lot of attention... This addition to the renowned Anne of Green Gables series makes a wonderful gift and keepsake. ...Show more

Dracula (TV Tie-In) by Bram STOKER

$24.00 NZD

Category: Classic

"We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things." Bram Stoker's classic horror novel tells the story of English lawyer Johnathan Harker, who travels to Transylvania on business with the reclusive Count Dracula. Harker so on discovers Dracula's true nature- he is an immortal 15th century noble with an insatiable appetite for blood. Dracula, sensing new opportunities to feed and spread his undead curse, sets his sight on England, and Harker's fiance, the spitting image of his late wife. Accompanying the new BBC series from Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, creators of Sherlock, starring Claes Bang as Count Dracula. This Tie-in edition will introduce a whole new generation of fans to the wonders of Stoker's original novel. ...Show more

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

$26.00 NZD

Category: Classic | Series: Penguin Modern Classics

When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings h im to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy?s awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society. ...Show more