Early Classics

Welcome to Malory Towers, where there's more to life than lessons! In book 1 of Enid Blyton's best-loved boarding school series, Darrell Rivers is thrilled to start her first term at boarding school. She soon makes friends - and mischief! Another new girl, Gwendoline, is beginning to get on everyone's nerves. Will Darrell be able to keep her fiery temper under control?

Welcome to Malory Towers, where there's more to life than lessons! Darrell Rivers is delighted to be Head Girl of her form - and this year her sister Felicity joins Malory Towers, too. Most of the time Darrell couldn't be prouder of Felicity, but she's much less keen on her sister's trouble-making new friend. With twins Connie and Ruth also causing problems, Darrell's first term in charge is a big challenge....

This collection of over 50 stories brings together three of Enid Blyton's earliest and most imaginative story collections - The Book of Fairies (1924), The Book of Brownies (1926) and The Book of Pixies (1989) - and shows Blyton at her most imaginative and playful.

Welcome to Malory Towers, where there's more to life than lessons! Darrell Rivers is excited to be going into her second year at Malory Towers - but is she ready for the drama it will bring? Jealousy flares when a new head of the form is chosen, and the girls become suspicious when their belongings go missing. Who could the thief be? And why on earth has timid Mary-Lou ventured out during a terrible storm?

Welcome to Malory Towers, where there's more to life than lessons! Darrell Rivers is Head Girl of Malory Towers, and there is plenty to keep her busy. Spoilt Gwendoline is up to her usual tricks, and Amanda is prepared to risk everything to be chosen to swim in the Olympics. Can Darrell stop Gwendoline from ruining their final term before it's time to wave goodbye?

Welcome to Malory Towers, where there's more to life than lessons! Now that Darrell Rivers and her friends are fifth formers, it's their turn to produce the school play. There is plenty of talent on show, but everyone has their own ideas, and competition for the starring role is fierce. Can the girls overcome their quarrels so that no one is upstaged?

Welcome to Malory Towers, where there's more to life than lessons! This term, the girls get a surprise when Darrell Rivers returns to Malory Towers with a glamorous new girl in tow. Zerelda soon catches everyone's eye for all the wrong reasons! Meanwhile, Bill is causing a stir with her horse-mad ways - and there's a big shock in store for Darrell....

For new girl Darrell Rivers, there are friends to be made, pranks to be played and fun to be had at Malory Towers in Enid Blyton's best-loved boarding school series. Music concert or Tennis tournament? In audiobook ten, feisty June and new girl Millicent can't agree what's more important. Soon all becomes irrelevant when things begin disappearing. Is there a thief in fifth form? Expect more drama at Malory Towers!

Forty-five magical short stories to enjoy round the clock from one of the world's best-loved children's authors. Fly away with the Snippet Pixies in search of a new home, discover the secret ingredient in the fairies' spell to make people better, and join Chitter-the-gnome as he discovers a Wishing Balloon!

For new girl Darrell Rivers, there are friends to be made, pranks to be played and fun to be had at Malory Towers in Enid Blyton's best-loved boarding school series. In audiobook nine, Susan's in charge of the winter concert, but new teacher Miss Tallant won't let her make any decisions. When Miss interferes in a midnight feast, the girls realise that there's a spy in their midst. Expect more drama at Malory Towers!

For new girl Darrell Rivers, there are friends to be made, pranks to be played and fun to be had at Malory Towers in Enid Blyton's best-loved boarding school series. In audiobook eight, someone has stolen Julie's horse. And there's money missing, too. Can Felicity and the girls find out who would do such a terrible thing? Expect more drama at Malory Towers!

For new girl Darrell Rivers, there are friends to be made, pranks to be played and fun to be had at Malory Towers in Enid Blyton's best-loved boarding school series. In audiobook 12, the sixth form girls are to attend finishing school before they're sent out into the world. They are to learn deportment, etiquette and obedience. Oh dear! Expect more drama at Malory Towers!

Recently rediscovered in the archives of the New York Public Library, these short stories provide an unparalleled look at Truman Capote writing in his teens and early twenties, before he penned such classics as Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and In Cold Blood. This collection of more than a dozen pieces showcases the young Capote developing the unique voice and sensibility that would make him one of the twentieth century’s most original writers.

In this extraordinary World War II alternate history, master storyteller Harry Turtledove begins with a big switch: what if Neville Chamberlain, instead of appeasing Hitler, had stood up to him in 1938? Enraged, Hitler reacts by lashing out at the West, promising his soldiers that they will reach Paris by the new year.

In Harry Turtledove's mesmerizing alternate history of World War II, the choices of men and fate have changed history. Now it is the winter of 1941. As the Germans, with England and France on their side, slam deep into Russia, Stalin's terrible machine fights for its life. But the agreements of world leaders do not touch the hearts of soldiers. The war between Germany and Russia is rocked by men with the courage to aim their guns in a new direction. England is the first to be shaken.

Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1870) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an early science fiction novel. The setting is a strange subterranean world inhabited by beautiful entities that resemble the angels described in scripture. The advanced beings known as Vril-ya live underground - using the mysterious "Vril" as an energy source - but intend to reclaim the surface of the earth as their own. The narrator ends up deep inside the Earth via a natural chasm in a mine shaft.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was born in Dublin, Ireland and is acknowledged as an influential writer in the genre of gothic and supernatural fiction of the 19th century. Many of his short stories were originally published in various magazines. Here are six of them: “The White Cat of Drumgonnial”, “Dickon the Devil”, “The Drunkard's Dream”, “The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts”, “The Vision of Tom Chuff”, and “An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House”.

Out of the mixture of Latin and Germanic paganism and the Christianity of the Early Middle Ages has sprung one of the world's supremely great pieces of literature. J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, delivered a famous lecture to the British Academy in 1936 in which he maintained that Beowulf was a poem all of a piece, and not (as had been suggested) a jumble of fragments for pedantic scholars to paw over.

Ted Hughes wrote a series of stories for children from the early 1960s through until 1995 about how the world, and the creatures in it, came into being. Meet the Polar Bear whose obsession with her snowy white fur is so great that she can live only in a landscape surrounded by her own reflection; the Whale, growing in God's garden beside the carrots; King Leo, who began life because God was hungry for his sausages; poor Parrot's painful defeat in the marriage song contest at the wedding of Man and Woman; and Sparrow's heroic battle against the bird-swallowing Black Hole.

Portraits of generations of family members line a great hall in the lavish home of the Pentlands; a wealthy upper-class family who were among the first settlers in the fictional town of Durham, New England. Members of the family desperately try to keep their prestigious reputation alive while the world around them is changing. This classic novel by Louis Bromfield was published in 1926 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1927. His perspective of the social norms of his day is as relevant in today’s world as it was then, and his rich language shines just as bright.