The 'north and south' of the title are the Satanic mills of the industrial north and the leisured life of London society and rural Hampshire. When her father leaves the Church, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice and a turbulent relationship with mill-owner John Thornton. North and South depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal of what divides people, and what brings them together.

Julius Caesar's exciting plot, brilliant rhetoric and searching characterisation have made it one of Shakespeare's most popular plays with both readers and theatre-goers. When it seems that Julius Caesar may assume supreme power, a plot to destroy him is hatched by those determined to preserve the threatened Republic. But the different motives of the conspirators soon become apparent when high principles clash with malice and political realism. As the nation plunges into bloody civil war, this taut drama explores the violent consequences of betrayal and murder.

The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies, and feminists have been divided in their responses. The central relationship, in which Petruchio boisterously 'tames' a rebellious Kate, has often appeared problematic. In the theatre, it has been treated in a diversity of ways, so that Kate's apparent capitulation varies between the ironic and the sincere. But the play remains one of Shakespeare's most popular dramas, and has been memorably staged and filmed as the musical Kiss Me Kate, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter.

Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself.

Brighton Rock was published in 1938, and made into a film in 2010. The novel is a murder thriller set in 1930s Brighton. Greene's iconic tale of the razor-wielding Pinkie is gripping and terrifying, an unputdownable read.

One of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal created a new thriller genre. It is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who in, the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the OAS, to assassinate General de Gaulle.

Hammett's 1930 detective novel is widely regarded as the first and finest novel of the hard-boiled private detective. Sam Spade has a cold detachment, keen eye for detail and an unflinching determination to achieve his own justice. Regarded by many as the greatest crime novel of the 20th century, it has been ranked in the top 100 of English-language novels. The Maltese Falcon has been filmed several times, most famously by John Huston with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade.

Trollope's witty, satirical story of a quiet cathedral town shaken by scandal — as the traditional values of Septimus Harding are attacked by zealous reformers and ruthless newspapers — is a drama of conscience that pits individual integrity against worldly ambition. In The Warden Anthony Trollope brought the fictional county of Barsetshire to life, peopled by a cast of brilliantly realised characters that have made him among the supreme chroniclers of the minutiae of Victorian England. It is the first book in The Chronicles of Barsetshire, and its sequel is Barchester Towers, also available in The Collector's Library.

This is the story of Dorothy and her little dog Toto, who are carried away from Kansas by a cyclone and transported to the wonderful world of Oz. She meets three companions — the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion — and the three journey to the Emerald City of Oz to ask the Wizard of Oz to give them their hearts' desires, which in Dorothy's case is to return home to Kansas. On their way to Oz and while fulfilling the tasks that the surprising Wizard asks of them they encounter witches, winged monkeys, the Deadly Desert, fighting trees and magic shoes. This edition is evocatively illustrated with the original drawings of W. W. Denslow which have been sensitively re-coloured by Barbara Frith, one of Britain's leading colourists.

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there', begins L. P. Hartley's tale of nostalgia, the reawakening of lost memories and sexual awareness. It is 1952. Leo, now in his sixties, comes upon an old diary describing one long, hot summer with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, where he acted as a messenger between Ted, a local 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. This haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society.

Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed. Soon a pitched battle breaks out over who will take power, involving, among others, the zealous reformer Dr Proudie, his fiendish wife and the unctuous schemer Obadiah Slope, the smooth Archdeacon Grantly and his father-in-law, the saintly Mr Harding. Barchester Towers is one of Trollope's best-loved novels and captures nineteenth-century provincial England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterisation.

One of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal created a new thriller genre. It is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who in, the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the OAS, to assassinate General de Gaulle.

«Sherlock Holmes is the greatest fictional detective in the world. The hero of 56 short stories and four novels, he is so convincing that letters still arrive at 221b Baker Street seeking his help, and when it was thought that he had died in his clash with the evil Professor Moriarty ('the Napoleon of Crime') young men in London wore black armbands. This handsome edition, bound in real cloth, with head and tail bands, a ribbon marker, top edge gilt and a gold-blocked jacket, presents all of the short stories, many illustrated by Sidney Paget, who prepared these drawings for the original publication in «The Strand Magazine». It also contains the four novels: «A Study in Scarlet» in which Holmes and Dr Watson first meet, «The Sign of the Four», «The Valley of Fear» and the chilling masterpiece «The Hound of the Baskervilles». This title features Introduction by David Stuart Davies, former editor of «Sherlock Holmes: The Magazine».»

This book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell when he lived with his family lived on the island of Corfu. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the novelist), the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. The procession of animals includes toads, and tortoises, bats and butterflies scorpions and geckos, ladybirds, glow-worms, octopuses and rose-beetles, Ulysses, the Scops owl, Quasimodo the pigeon, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and of course the magpies. The family is fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro, and Gerald is mentored by the polymath Dr Theodore Stephanides who provides his education in natural history.

John Leech's original magnificent illustrations to A Christmas Carol have been beautifully hand-coloured by Barbara Frith. A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased business partner Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future that he begins to see the error of his ways. With heart-rending characters, rich imagery and evocative language, the message of A Christmas Carol remains as significant today as when it was first published.

Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road. Two men — Kim, a boy growing into early manhood and the lama, an old ascetic priest — are fired by a quest. While Kim plays the Great Game, the Intelligence-led rivalry with Russia's expansionist ambitions in the north, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.

Little Women is an outstanding achievement of nineteenth-century American literature, and the first children's novel written in the United States to have become an enduring classic. The March girls are shown throughout as real people and not mere moral examples as we follow them from childhood through Little Women and Little Women Part Two (known in Europe as Good Wives). The portrayal of the strains and delights of family life is unsurpassed in literature of the time, and has a telling message for the modern world.

In his lifetime, Kipling was widely regarded as the unofficial Poet Laureate, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His poetry is striking for its many rhythms and popular forms of speech, and Kipling was equally at home with dramatic monologues and extended ballads. He is often thought of as glorifying war, militarism, and the British Empire, but an attentive reading of the poems does not confirm that view. This edition has the endorsement of the Kipling Society, of which Dr Welby is a Council Member.

William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience contain some of Blake's finest and best-loved poems, which are presented here in the form which best satisfied the high expectations of his poetic and artistic aspirations. The fifty-four plates which Blake originally etched and coloured by hand are beautifully reproduced, and each has the text of the poem printed on the facing page. Here the reader will find The Lamb, The Little Black Boy, The Chimney Sweeper, Infant Joy, The Sick Rose, The Tyger and Infant Sorrow.

The Collector's Library volumes of short stories — Best Ghost Stories, Best Fairy Stories, Celtic Fairy Tales and Tales of the Macabre have proved popular throughout the world. This new collection of chilling tales is designed to be read as autumn nights draw in as Hallowe'en approaches. Stories from famous writers such as Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson and Elizabeth Gaskell are matched with equally terrifying tales from E.F. Benson, Edith Wharton, W.W. Jacobs, W.F. Harvey, F. Marion Crawford, Ambrose Bierce and many others.