CRW Publishing

Mary Lennox is sent from an India as an orphan to live at Misselthwaite Manor. She arrives as a sour-faced, sickly and ill-tempered little madam but becomes friends with local lad Dickon and her poorly cousin Colin. In their restoration of a secret garden all their lives are changed for the better.

This companion volume to Tales of Mystery & Imagination contains Poe's best-known poetry and a selection of his very best stories, including some fine tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems reflect familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love, but there are also tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes.

Treasure Island is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time but is a wonderful adventure story that can be enjoyed at any age.When Jim Hawkins finds a pirate's treasure map in an old sailor's sea trunk the local doctor and squire take him with them to find the island and the treasure. But Long John Silver, with his missing leg and talking parrot, has his own ideas about who should find the treasure.

Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the evils of slavery to the conscience and hearts of the American people by its moving portrayal of slave experience. In scenes of great dramatic power Harriet Beecher Stow shows us the human effects of an economic system in which slaves were property. Still controversial today, the novel is abrasive in its demand for change yet also brilliant in its deployment of dialogue, with great comic skill and powerful pathos.

Henry Thoreau's Walden is one of the most influential books in early American literature. It recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond in Massachusetts in the 1840s. His attempt to live independently and away from society produced a work that blends natural history with philosophical insights, and which raises questions that are still relevant today.

Widely regarded as the greatest novel in any language, War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys and the Rostovs who are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the wars against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence. The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all else is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism.

When Jonathan Harker is summoned to Transylvania to finalise a property deal for the mysterious Count Dracula he little suspects that he is unleashing a terrible evil on his fellow countrymen. In this classic novel about vampires Stoker captured the fears of his age. Dracula represents everything the Victorians feared: the irrational, the pagan, the erotic and the foreign.

When Emma Woodhouse sets out on a career of match-making in the little town of Highbury she manages to cause confusion at every step. Jane Austen was particularly proud of Emma, in which she takes apart the desires and foibles of small-town society with unnerving accuracy.

Father Brown, a small, round Catholic priest with a remarkable understanding of the criminal mind, is one of literature's most unusual and endearing detectives, able to solve the strangest crimes in a most fascinating manner. This collection draws from all five Father Brown books, and within their remarkable range these stories contain as much wisdom as they do wonder.

One of Dickens's most renowned and enjoyable novels, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, an orphan boy who wishes to transcend his humble origins and finds himself unexpectedly given the opportunity to live a life of wealth and respectability. Over the course of the tale, in which Pip encounters such famous characters as Miss Havisham, Herbert Pocket and Joe Gargery, he comes to realise that his money is tainted and the girl he loves will not return his affections; happiness must be found in the things he gave up in pursuit of a more sophisticated life.

The orphaned Jane Eyre suffers under cruel guardians, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. But her plain appearance belies her indomitable spirit, sharp wit and great courage. When she goes to Thornfield Hall to work as a governess for the mysterious Mr Rochester the stage is set for one of literature's great romances.

Drunk and bitter at the world, the young Michael Henchard sells his wife to a sailor at Weydon Priors fair. The next morning he vows to give up drink and mend his terrible ways. Twenty years later he is mayor of Casterbridge, a rich and important figure who little suspects the past is about to rear up and attack him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a masterpiece of Victorian literature, bringing the classical forms of tragedy into the modern world with striking force, showing a proud and noble man overwhelmed by his past and the forces of fate.

On a perfect June morning, Clarissa Dalloway fashionable, worldly, wealthy, an accomplished hostess sets off to buy flowers for the party she is to give that evening. She is preoccupied with thoughts of the present and memories of the past, and from her interior monologue emerge the people who have touched her life. On the same day Septimus Warren Smith, a shellshocked survivor of the Great War, commits suicide, and casual mention of his death at the party provokes in Clarissa thoughts of her own isolation and loneliness. Bold and experimental, Mrs Dalloway is a landmark in twentieth-century fiction and a book that gets better with each reading.

On its first publication The Picture of Dorian Gray was regarded as dangerously modern in its depiction of fin-de-sicle decadence. In this updated version of the Faust story, the tempter is Lord Henry Wotton, who lives selfishly for amoral pleasure; Dorian's good angel is the portrait painter Basil Hallward, whom Dorian murders. The book highlights the tension between the polished surface of high society and the life of secret vice. Although sin is punished in the end the book has a flavour of the elegantly perverse.

Two sisters of opposing temperament but who share the pangs of tragic love provide the subjects for Sense and Sensibility. Elinor, practical and conventional, the epitome of sense, desires a man who is promised to another woman. Marianne, emotional and sentimental, the epitome of sensibility, loses her heart to a scoundrel who jilts her. True love finally triumphs when sense gives way to sensibility.

A Tale of Two Cities is one of Dickens's most exciting books, set against the backdrop of the French revolution, in which two generations struggle against the injustices of first a corrupt aristocracy and then the mindless rule of the mob.

Tess Durbeyfield, an innocent village girl, is seduced by a wealthy rake, Alec D'Urberville. Though he makes her pregnant she does not love him and leaves him to return to her home in disgrace. Some time after the baby's death Tess meets her true love Angel Clare, but they cannot escape the consequences of the past. An unforgettably powerful tragedy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the great classics of the late nineteenth century.

Wuthering Heights tells the story of a romance between two youngsters: Catherine Earnshaw and an orphan boy, Heathcliff. After she rejects him for a boy from a better background he develops a lust for revenge that takes over his life. In attempting to win her back and destroy those he blames for his loss Heathcliff creates a living hell for those who live at Wuthering Heights. This tale of hauntings, passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of the dark side of love.

In a remote Hertfordshire village, a country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise lies the erratic courtship of his second headstrong daughter, Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor — Fitzwilliam Darcy.