Item category 1: Classic

Unicorns, dragons, sprites, will-o'-the-wisps: the inhabitants of an enchanted world, into which Bastian, a lonely young boy, ventures. His quest is filled with all the wonders of myth and fairy tale.

Maigret has been interrogating Carl Andersen for seventeen hours without a confession. He's either innocent or a very good liar. So why was the body of a diamond merchant found at his isolated mansion? Why is his sister always shut away in her room? And why does everyone at Three Widows Crossroad...

Mr Poligny is retiring as manager of the Paris Opera House. Before he leaves, he tells his replacements how to please the phantom who has haunted the opera house for years. Despite the mysterious death of a stagehand, the new managers insist the phantom is just a ghost story and the ballerinas ar...

Basil Hallward's latest portrait is the best he's ever painted. But when the portrait's subject, Dorian Gray, realises that he will never look as young and handsome again, he makes a terrible wish. From then on, Dorian becomes as ugly on the inside as he is beautiful on the outside. He lives his ...

Professor Timofey Pnin, late of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously perched at the heart of an American campus. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world: the ruination of his beautiful lumber-room-as-office; the removal of his teeth and the fitting ...

Father is in trouble, and Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis have to leave their home in London and go into hiding in the countryside. Each day, the children run down to the nearby railway station, where they say good morning to the Station Master and hello to Perks the Porter and wave at the passing Lo...

In 1894, the London evening newspaper the St James's Gazette announced 'a real acquisition', a new novel from the publishers Ward and Downey. It was the first collaborative success of many for Somerville and Ross, two Irish women who were second cousins, received as a fresh, original, and funny t...

Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it. Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors (and the law), Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as ...

Dig deeper into the extraordinary inner lives of Bigwig, Dandelion, Fiver, Hazel, and the legendary El-ahrairah steeped in rich tradition and unearth the untold legends, passed down through generations, that shaped their destinies. . .

A literary event-twenty short stories by the late Maeve Brennan, one of The new Yorker 's most admired writers. Five are set in the author's native Dublin, a city, like Joyce's, of paralyzed souls and unexpressed love. the others are set in and around her adopted Manhattan, which she once called ...