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  The Invisible Man

  G.K. Chesterton

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  G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) is best known for his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown. In 'The Invisible Man', Father Brown is able to solve the mystery of the jilted lover who is able to track his beloved, threaten and attack his rival and yet is never seen by anybody, even those who are specifically on the look-out for him.Can it be that he really is invisible? And when he does manage to murder his rival, how does he make the body disappear too?

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  American Claimant The (Unabridged)

  Mark Twain

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  "The American Claimant is enormous fun. I'm here to celebrate the mad energy of this strange novel. In it we have the pleasure of seeing Mark Twain's imagination go berserk," writes Bobbie Ann Mason in her introduction.The American Claimant is a comedy of mistaken identities and multiple role switches-fertile and familiar Mark Twain territory. Its cast of characters include an American enamored of British hereditary aristocracy and a British earl entranced by American democracy. The central character, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, is an irrepressible, buoyant mad scientist, Mason writes, "brimming with harebrained ideas. Nothing is impossible for him....He's totally loopy."His voluble wackiness leaves the reader reeling in the wake of inventions that prefigure DNA cloning, fax machines, and photocopiers. Twain uses this over-the-top comic frame to explore some serious issues as well-such as the construction of self and identity, the role of the press in society, and the moral and social questions raised by capitalism and industrialization in the United States. A unique melange of science fiction and fantasy, romance, farce, and political satire, Twain's least-known comic novel is both thought-provoking and entertaining.

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  Oblomov

  Ivan Goncharov

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  Oblomov is one of the most distinctive characters in Russian literature - within a short time following its publication in 1859, the novel spawned its own saying: ‘Oblomovism'! From the pen of Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891) emerged a portrait of a young man, Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov, who represented a figure well known in prerevolutionary Russia at the time - one of the idle rich. A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need. From time to time, Oblomov is visited by friends, some of whom see him only as a bottomless financial source, though others, like the energetic Andrey Stolz, try genuinely to encourage him to shake off the spell of lassitude. There is a sudden period of success as the young and attractive Olga enters the story, drawing Oblomov from his cocoon, but will it last? This is Goncharov's masterpiece - skilled and imaginative literature; and it puts him unquestionably beside the major figures of Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Turgenev, even if it is really the one work by which he is remembered. Natalie Doddington's unabridged translation, used here, was the first in English and is fluent and nuanced, reflecting the gem of the original and remains highly respected. This sympathetic and characterful reading by Leighton Pugh is the first unabridged recording in English.

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  Lord Kitchener (Unabridged)

  G.K. Chesterton

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  Horatio Herbert Kitchener was Irish by birth but English by extraction, being born in County Kerry, the son of an English colonel. The fanciful might see in this first and accidental fact the presence of this simple and practical man amid the more mystical western problems and dreams which were very distant from his mind, an element which clings to all his career and gives it an unconscious poetry. He had many qualities of the epic hero, and especially this -- that he was the last man in the world to be the epic poet. There is something almost provocative to superstition in the way in which he stands at every turn as the symbol of the special trials and the modern transfiguration of England; from this moment when he was born among the peasants of Ireland to the moment when he died upon the sea, seeking at the other end of the world the other great peasant civilisation of Russia. Yet at each of these symbolic moments he is, if not as unconscious as a symbol, then as silent as a symbol; he is speechless and supremely significant, like an ensign or a flag. The superficial picturesqueness of his life, at least, lies very much in this -- that he was like a hero condemned by fate to act an allegory

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  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Alexandre Dumas

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  Edmond Dantès, an innocent young sailor, falls into despair when he is arrested on a false charge of treason and thrown into prison without a trial. He learns of his friends' betrayal from the Abbé Faria, an equally innocent prisoner, and plots his revenge following a daring, if nightmarish escape from the Chateau d'If. After becoming a wealthy man, he assumes the guise of the urbane Count of Monte-Cristo and begins to entrap his enemies one by one. However, a chilling realization finally dawns - that he is also harming those he loves.

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  A Midsummer Night's Dream: A...

  Michael Pennington

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  An intensely practical account of how A Midsummer Night's Dream actually works on stage.
  A scene-by-scene guide to Shakespeare's best loved comedy, from the well-know actor Michael Pennington, drawing on his own experience of directing A Midsummer Night's Dream at the famous Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London, in 2003 - described by London critics as 'a captivating Shakespearian experience' (Guardian) and 'riotously funny and genuinely touching' (Telegraph).
  Praise for Michael Pennington's User's Guides:
  'An insider's guide par excellence' Simon Callow
  'He is sharply intelligent, scrupulously careful, hugely knowledgeable and, above all, wonderfully readable' Peter Holland, The Shakespeare Institute
  'It is his range of knowledge - along with a gift for writing clearly and memorably - that makes him such a fine guide' TLS

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