Fiction

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.” The life of Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, takes a horrifying turn when he wakes up one day to find that he has tran...

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.” Siddhartha is a profound exploration of one man's quest for enlightenment in ancient India. Discontent with traditional religious teach...

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” This tremendously famous novella, written in 1952, underlined Hemingway's influence and presence in the literary world. The Old Man and the Sea is a story of fr...

Virginia Woolf’s fifth novel, To the Lighthouse, was widely praised and has remained the most popular of all her novels. It is considered among the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century. There is minimal action. The novel works t...

In the delightful social comedy of Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen delicately handles the problem of love and money in marriage where, in spite of many hurdles, eventually love triumphs over 'pride' and 'prejudice'. With a mild satiric tone...

Newly married Tara struggles through the formative years of advocacy, attempting to balance her roller coaster professional and personal life. She soon discovers that material success matters, yet selfless pursuits often yield greater satisfaction...

Before Jane Eyre, The Professor was the first novel written by Charlotte Bronte. It was published posthumously in 1857 and remains a classic among her other novels Jane Eyre and Villette. The novel is a trajectory of the protagonist William Crims...

The Waves by Virginia Woolf The Waves is Virginia Woolf’s most audacious exploration of the possibilities of the novel form. Instead of narrating her characters’ outward actions, Woolf enters their minds and reports their thoughts and perceptions ...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a gothic and moral fantasy novel by Oscar Wilde. This is the only novel he wrote and published in 1891 after heavy editing because critics and editors deemed it immoral and indecent. However, it flourished to be a mas...

In Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last completed novel, unpublished until her death, satire and ridicule become milder and the tone is more grave and tender. This novel depicts her most memorable heroine – Anne Elliot, a young woman of perfect breeding...

Women in Love, the book Lawrence considered his best, was written during World War I, and while that conflict is never mentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurking catastrophe, continually informs its drama of two couples dynam...

Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, is a humorous account of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of loca...

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of thirteen very interesting Sherlock Holmes stories that were published in 1903-04 in the Strand Magazine in UK and Collier’s in the United States. The first story, “The Adventure of the Empty House”,...

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is a groundbreaking science fiction novel that depicts humanity's struggle against a devastating alien invasion. Set in late 19th-century England, it narrates the catastrophic arrival of Martians, showcasing the e...

Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel, Mrs Dalloway, marks an important stage in her development as a writer. In this novel she finally departs from the form of the traditional English novel, establishing herself as a writer of genius. Her stream of consc...

The story revolves around young and amorous but capricious Bathsheba Everdene and her enviable problem of coping with her three suitors simultaneously. The first is shepherd Gabriel Oak, financially ruined by his sheepdog driving his flock over a ...

The Great Gatsby is generally considered to be the finest novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written in an easy style, without complex literary experiment, at the height of the author’s maturity, it is now an undisputed classic of American lite...

Kipling's allegory, The Jungle Books, set in India and filled with high adventure and extraordinary characters that touch both our intellect and our emotions, is an unforgettable mythic tale of a boy Mowgli, the fearless man-cub, looking for where...

It is a fantasy novel published in 1928. It traces the career of the androgynous Orlando through four centuries from the late sixteenth century. It contains a great many well-observed literary and historical insights into the ages through which it...

When the starving French masses rise in hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent government, both the guilty and innocent become victims of their frenzied anger. Soon nothing stands in the way of the chilling figure they enlist for their cause - L...

When Frankenstein, a young idealist Genevan student of natural philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, stumbled into the secret of infusing life into matter, and created a living thing out of an assemblage of bones from charnel houses, little ...

Dubliners is one of the most magnificent short story collections in the English language. The manuscript was sent to the English publisher, Grant Richards in late 1905. After initial enthusiasm for the book, Richards became uncomfortable about sex...

Set against the backdrop of Napoleon's conquest and the French invasion of Russia, War and Peace is one of the best-known historical works, written over the course of six years and translated into numerous languages. It delves into the complexitie...

The Merchant of Venice is a 16th century play written by Shakespeare between 1596-1598 in which a merchant in Venice must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is usually classified as a romantic comedy though its d...

Oliver Twist, Dickens's critique of the harsh Poor Law of 1834, and a grim picture of the sordid reality the London underworld of Dickens's times, shows Dickens's deep concern for the underprivileged. The only token of identity left by his dying m...

Man and Superman, a four-Act drama, was written in 1903 as a response to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written a play based on the Don Juan theme. It deserves the position of Bernard Shaw’s masterpiece. The plot revolves aro...

Jacob Flanders is flawed, but also quite a brilliant man. An embodiment of solitude, Jacob is unable to concoct his affinity in life for traditions, contemporary society, intimacy with women, and philosophical contemplations. His life from childho...

Candide, a privileged and sheltered young man, is under the folly of optimism and believes he lives in the ‘best of all possible worlds’ as his mentor, Pangloss, espoused the worldly goodness of German Philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. But fa...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1894 by Arthur Conan Doyle. In the American edition there are eleven stories, while in others there are twelve. All these stories appeared in the St...

James Joyce was and remains unique among novelists for whatever he published was a masterpiece. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a key work of twentieth century literature that remains as fresh, challenging and relevant as the day it was...

Hemingway's words strike you, each one, as if they were pebbles fetched fresh from a book.' In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway's most celebrated novel, his stark and emotive style of writing reaches its zenith. The plot follows the doomed lov...

Sense and Sensibility, the first of Austen’s novels to be published, remains as fresh as ever it was. The basic theme of the novel is concerned with the personalities of the two sisters of contrasting temperaments who share comparable experiences ...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his most famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The individual stories had been serialized in The Strand Magazine between June 1891 and...

King Solomon’s Mines, the first English adventure novel set in Africa describes a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. The novel is Allan Quatermai...

Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by Jules Verne. It is the story of a rich English gentleman living a life of modesty and solitude. Phileas Fogg accepts a challenge from his fellow members at the Reform Club and sets of...

“But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.” Composed in the 8th century BCE, Homer's The Odyssey narrates the arduous journey of Odysseus, the ...

Treasure Island, a wonderfully crafted edition of Stevenson’s classic adventure story, is known for its great plot, immortal characters and vivid images. Its captivating story, that holds the readers’ interest throughout, relates of a great treasu...

This nightmarish tale by H.G. Wells contains all the suspense and adventure of science fiction at its best. It begins with a quiet country inn and a mysterious stranger, his features masked by gloves, dark glasses, and bandages that completely cov...

Sons and Lovers is considered to be D.H. Lawrence’s first mature novel. What is unique about this novel is its profound psychological insights into the complex relationships between son and mother and between son and other women. Novel is largely ...

Louisa M. Alcoa, (29th November, 1832, Germantown, 6th March, 1888, Pennsylvania Boston, Massachusetts), Was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, best known for the children's books, especially the classic Little Women (1868) and it...

Journey to the Centre of the Earth published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre is the second book in Verne's popular science-fiction series Voyages Extraordinaires (1863-1910). The story involves German professor Otto Lidenbrock wh...

Gulliver's Travels, first published in 1726, was an immediate success and was read 'from the Cabinet - council to the Nursery' (Gay). It continues to appeal to readers of all ages, both as a travel book and as a powerful satire. George Orwell rate...

Wuthering Heights is a classic tale of possessive and thwarted passion, one of the forerunners of today's soap operas and romance novels. The tempestuous and mythic story of Catherine Earnshaw, the precocious daughter of the house, and the ruggedl...

Northanger Abbey, written during the same period as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, represents Jane Austen's genius at its freshest and most enchanting. It grew out of her distaste for the absurdities of the novels of her time and i...

Mansfield Park is a unique novel in its moral design, with a heroine remarkably different from the author’s previous creations. This young lady, Miss Fanny Price, the eldest daughter of a large improvident family, is brought to live at Mansfield P...

Jane Eyre remains one of the most widely read of English Classics. In this novel, Charlotte Bronte invented a romantic tale of passion and thrill and created one of the most unforgettable heroines of all the times. When her first novel, The Profes...

“Let us strike the keynote, Coketown, before pursuing our tune... It was a town of machines and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever, and never got uncoiled...” — Hard Times The novel is set in the...

Once considered scandalizingly immoral, Flaubert’s exquisite debut novel unsparingly depicts a woman’s gradual corruption and the human mind in search of transcendence. Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy local doctor, Emma fulfils her epicurea...

Kim, a picaresque novel by Rudyard Kipling, was published serially in McClure’s Magazine, before being published in book form in 1901. The story is set in India in the backdrop of the political conflict between Russia and Britain, after the end of...

Twelfth Night is a tale of unrequited love, hilarious and heartbreaking, written around 1601-02 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centers on the twins Viola and Sebastian, who are separated in a shi...

A universal classic and a masterful exploration of humanity’s unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a ...

(1) The Jungle Books: - Kipling's allegory, The Jungle Books, set in India and filled with high adventure and extraordinary characters that touch both our intellect and our emotions, is an unforgettable mythic tale of a boy Mowgli, the fearless ma...

The Return of the Native, both powerful and sombre, is considered to be the most representative of Hardy’s novels. It is set in Egdon Heath whose lowering, titanic presence dominates the men and women who live on it, and whose menace and beauty Ha...

Collection of (1) Oliver Twist : The only token of identity left by Dicken's dying mother to Oliver Twist – born in the workhouse, and orphaned at birth – is stolen. Spending his early childhood in neglect and near starvation Oliver joins the work...

Heart of Darkness is the finest of all Conrad's tales, showing him at the height of his powers as a writer of great vividness, intensity, and sophistication. The story has come to be regarded as classic of the twentieth century. Its ambiguity has ...

Emma was the last novel which Jane Austen lived to see through the press and is perhaps her most accomplished and representative work, happily combining the qualities for which she has been most praised—irony, wit, realism, vivid characterization,...

Regarded notoriously pornographic when published in 1928, the novel is a triumph of passion, an erotic celebration of life, exploring the emotions of a lonely woman, Constance Chatterley, trapped in a sterile marriage and her growing love for Mell...

Mr. Utterson goes for a walk with his friend and relative Mr. Enfield, who tells a sad story in which a brute of a man knocks down a little girl, everyone yells at him, and he provides to pay a lot of money and brings a large cheque drawn from Dr....

The Mayor of Casterbridge displays the influence of Hardy's upbringing, rural background, and architectural studies. His characters are primitive and exhibit all the passions, hates, loves and jealousies that rustic life seems to inspire. Yet thes...