At last! Here's a brand-new board book edition of an Eric Carle picture book that's a favorite with littlest cloud gazers everywhere! Little Cloud likes to stand out from the crowd. When all the other clouds drift up, he goes his own way, changing shapes to become a sheep, an airplane, a shark and a funny clown. It's all lots of fun, but so is playing with friends. So this time, Little Cloud joins the crowd, gathering with his pals into one giant cloud. And then they rain! In Little Cloud, Eric Carle celebrates the possibilities of imagination with textured collages of sky-blue and white in a story that will encourage the youngest child to read clouds. Eric Carle lives in Northampton and Charlemont, MA.

In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of the six most significant novels ever written. Set in Bismarck's Germany, Fontane's luminous tale of a socially suitable but emotionally disastrous match between the enchanting seventeen-year-old Effi and an austere, workaholic civil servant twice her age, is at once touching and unsettling. Fontane's taut, ironic narrative depicts a world where sexuality and the enjoyment of life are stifled by narrow-mindedness and circumstance. Considered by many to be the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century German novel, Effi Briest is a tale of adultery that ranks with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and brilliantly demonstrates the truth of the author's comment and women's stories are generally far more interesting.

On his twenty-fifth birthday, Leo Vincey opens the silver casket that his father has left to him. It contains a letter recounting the legend of a white sorceress who rules an African tribe and of his father's quest to find this remote race. To find out for himself if the story is true, Leo and his companions set sail for Zanzibar. There, he is brought face to face with Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed: dictator, femme fatale, tyrant and beauty. She has been waiting for centuries for the true descendant of Kallikrates, her murdered lover, to arrive, and arrive he does in an unexpected form. Blending breathtaking adventure with a brooding sense of mystery and menace, She is a story of romance, exploration discovery and heroism that has lost none of its power to enthrall.

Browning was one of the greatest of English poets, whose intense and original imagination enabled him to transform any subject he chose — whether everyday or sublime — into startling memorable verse. In his work he brought to life the personalities of a diverse range of characters, and introduced a new immediacy, colloquial energy and psychological complexity to the poetry of his day. This selection brings together verse ranging from early dramatic monologues such as the chilling My Last Duchess and the ribald Lippo Lippi, which show his gift for inhabiting the mind of another, to the popular children's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and many lesser known works. All display his innovative techniques of diction, rhythm and symbol, which transformed Victorian poetry and influenced major poets of the twentieth century such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost.

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail-hour to breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

'There is only one book to a man' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden, his most ambitious novel. Set in the rich farmland of Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families — the Trasks and the Hamiltons — whose generations helplessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love and the murderous consequences of love's absence.

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.' Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. This seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.

Twelve of the most successful and popular writers of today — including Helen Fielding, Robert Harris, Zadie Smith, Patrick Marber and Irvine Welsh — have written 6000-word fictional monologues along the lines of Alan Bennetts Talking Heads.

«Книга Джеймса Джойса «Улисс» — одна из самых необычных в мировой литературе. Это довольно объемная работа (в ней более 260 тысяч слов) и традиционно «Улисс» считается трудной книгой для прочтения. «Улисс» Джойса сразу после появления вызвал массу противоречивых откликов и споров. Действие книги происходит в родном городе Джойса — Дублине. Каждый эпизод происходит в определенном месте города, а место действия всегда имеет подробное описание.»

2001: A Space Odyssey is the classic science fiction novel that changed the way we looked at the stars and ourselves.... 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired what is perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made--brilliantly imagined by the late Stanley Kubrick.... 2001 is finally here....

Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner-party tip from Mrs Algernon Stitch, he feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising little war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. One of Waugh's most exuberant comedies, Scoop is a brilliantly irreverent satire of Fleet Street and its hectic pursuit of hot news.

In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder — for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him — but how and at what cost?

'We are Progress and the New Age. Nothing can stand in our way'. When Oxford-educated Emperor Seth succeeds to the throne of the African state of Azania, he has a tough job on his hands. His subjects are ill-informed and unruly, and corruption, double-dealing and bloodshed are rife. However, with the aid if Minister of Modernization Basil Seal, Seth plans to introduce his people to the civilized ways of the west — but will it be as simple as that?

«Controversial and compelling, «In Cold Blood» reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.»

«'It is the history of a revolution that went wrong — and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine', wrote Orwell for the first edition of «Animal Farm» in 1945. Orwell wrote it at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished. Its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain's ally, led to it being refused by publisher after publisher. Orwell's simple, tragic fable, telling what happens when the animals drive out Mr Jones and attempt to run the farm themselves, has since become a world-famous classic.»

There are a lot of monsters in Anita Blake's life. And some of them are human. One such individual is the man she calls Edward, a bounty hunter who specializes in the preternatural. He calls her to help him hunt down the greatest evil she has ever encountered. Something that kills and maims and vanishes into the night. Something Anita will have to face alone...

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the harsh totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty he begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker, Julia, but soon discovers that the true price of freedom is betrayal.