The sap had dried up; the sap, the incentive, the fever, the desire to do, to act, to act the fool, make love, create' A middle-aged woman breaks with her handsome young lover; a placid husband is suspected of infidelity; and a dying man reflects on his extramarital affairs, in these tales of love and disillusionment from the author of Bonjour Tristesse.

"Much of George Orwell's best writing, brought together in this comprehensive collection, is concerned with England, a country that he found both endearing and frustrating. In the brilliantly perceptive The English People, he lists the national characteristics as 'suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated class distinctions, and an ...

Michael Wood's selection of Dostoevsky's shorter works is drawn from the timeless translations of Constance Garnett whose work, he says in his preface, gives readers the best of several worlds.

When news of Volkswagen’s clean diesel fraud first broke in September 2015, it sent shockwaves around the world. Overnight, the company long associated with quality, reliability and trust became a universal symbol of greed and deception. Consumers were outraged, investors panicked, the company embarrassed and facing bankruptcy. As lawsuits and criminal investigations ...

In these five long stories, written specifically for Christmas, Dickens combines his concern for social ills with the myths and memories of childhood and traditional seasonal lore. A Christmas Carol, the first of the selection, has become a touchstone of English festive fiction and an enduring favourite internationally. Repeatedly adapted, parodied, staged and filmed, this ...

George Eliot's final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), follows the intertwining lives of the beautiful but spoiled and selfish Gwendolene Harleth and the selfless yet alienated Daniel Deronda, as they search for personal and vocational fulfilment and sympathetic relationship. Set largely in the degenerate English aristocratic society of the 1860s, Daniel Deronda charts their ...

Tender is the Night is a story set in the hedonistic high society of Europe during the ‘Roaring Twenties’. A wealthy schizophrenic, Nicole Warren, falls in love with Dick Diver - her psychiatrist. The resulting saga of the Divers’ troubled marriage, and their circle of friends, includes a cast of aristocratic and beautiful people, unhappy love affairs, a duel, incest, and the problems...

Mr Dombey is a man obsessed with his firm. His son is groomed from birth to take his place within it, despite his visionary eccentricity and declining health. But Dombey also has a daughter, whose unfailing love for her father goes unreturned. 'Girls' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son'. When Walter Gay, a young clerk in her father's office, rescues her ...

This collection of 100 of O Henry's finest stories is a showcase for the sheer variety of one of America's best and best-loved short story writers The variety of the storie is amazing; O Henry is as at home describing life south of the Rio Grande as he is chronicling the activities and concerns of 'the four million' ordinary citizens who inhabited turn-of-the-century New ...

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: a spectacular, widely-ranging drama of love and war, passion and politics. Antony is divided between the responsibilities of imperial power and the intensities of his sexual relationship with Cleopatra. She, variously generous and ruthless, loving and jealous, petulant and majestic, emerges as Shakespeare's ...

When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he disovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to ...

Nick only remembers the hospital and the car. The doctor says he's going to be well; you're going to walk again. But Nicky can't walk. He doesn't want to because his girlfriend's dead. 

Life changes completely for Margaret Hale and her parents when they move to a smoky northern city. There, Margaret meets Mr Thornton, a wealthy cotton mill owner, and dislikes him immediately. But the mill owner falls passionately in love with her. Then his workers strike. Against a background of industrial drama and personal tragedy, is there any hope for Mr ...

Poziom 4 - 1700 słów. An artist paints a picture of the young and handsome Dorian Gray. When he sees it, Dorian makes a wish that changes his life. As he grows older, his face stays young and handsome. But the picture changes. Why can’t Dorian show it to anybody? What is its terrible secret?

 Most people around the world today know something about American life. The United States is a big country. Not all Americans are the same! In this book you will see the many faces of American life.

The Russian Revolution - four young people, Yury, Tonya, Lara and Pasha, find love and lose in this extraordinary time. Their heart-breaking stories make Dr Zhivago one of the greatest romantic books, and films, of the lat century.  

Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: organised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants' greed, colonial ambition and the hopeless complacency of Leibnizian philosophy that believes 'all is for the best in the best of ...

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman in Edo – now known as Tokyo – and a portrait of a great city on the brink of momentous change The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a life much like her mother’s. [...]

General Maximus is unfairly sent into exile by the Emperor. He is captured by slave traders and forced to fight as a gladiate, but his chance for revenge soon comes This Oscar winning film stars Russell Crowe.

Eric Baner is the Hulk - half-hero, half-monster. But is he strong enough to stop General Thunderbolt and his army? The Hulk is one of America's most popular magazine characters, and one of the biggest movies of 2003.