Literature & literary studies

Book Cover: The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts

By Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 – 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' – and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s.

Published: 22/06/2000

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141182551

RRP: $19.95

Mao's Last Dancer

By Li Cunxin

In a small, desperately poor village in north-east China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, interested more in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day, some strange men come to his school – Madame Mao's cultural delegates. They are looking for young peasants to mould into faithful guards of Chairman Mao's great vision...

Published: 01/09/2003

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780670040247

RRP: $32.95

Nineteen Eighty Four

By George Orwell

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 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...

Published: 04/02/2004

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141187761

RRP: $22.95

Mia Culpa: Confessions from the Watercooler of Life

By Mia Freedman

Mia Culpa is funny, moving and just like one long, wonderful dinner-party conversation. Mia's blog Mamamia is one of Australia's most popular online destinations.

Published: 28/02/2011

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780670075515

RRP: $29.95

Pride and Prejudice

By Jane Austen

When Elizabeth first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lovely mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners...

Published: 06/03/2003

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141439518

RRP: $9.95

The Great Gatsby

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

In The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, Fitzgerald recreates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.
'A classic, perhaps the supreme American...

Published: 01/07/2000

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141182636

RRP: $14.95

A Streetcar Named Desire

By Tennessee Williams

With an introduction by
Arthur Miller

'One of the greatest American plays'
Observer

Published: 04/08/2009

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141190273

RRP: $19.95

A Fortunate Life

By A B Facey

Born in 1894, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a sheep farmer, survived the gore of Gallipoli, raised a family through the Depression and spent sixty years with his beloved wife, Evelyn. Despite enduring hardships we can barely imagine today, Facey always saw his life as a 'fortunate' one.

A true classic of Australian literature, his simply written autobiography is an inspiration. It is the story...

Published: 20/04/2005

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780143003540

RRP: $26.95

Frankenstein

By Mary Shelley

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover...

Published: 01/05/2003

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141439471

RRP: $9.95

Night

By Elie Wiesel

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective...

Published: 06/06/2006

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780140189896

RRP: $22.95

Hell's Angels: Popular Penguins

By Hunter S. Thompson

The Hell's Angels erupted into 1960s America, paralysing whole towns with fear. Determined to discover the truth behind the terrifying reputation of these marauding biker gangs, Hunter S. Thompson spent a year on the road with the Angels, documenting his hair-raising experiences with Charger Charley, Big Frank, Little Jesus and The Gimp. Hell's Angels was the result: a masterpiece of underground reportage...

Published: 29/06/2009

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141045566

RRP: $9.95

Emma

By Jane Austen

Beautiful, clever, rich – and single Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protigie Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel...

Published: 05/05/2003

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141439587

RRP: $9.95

Jane Eyre

By Charlotte Bronte

Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit – which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible...

Published: 02/08/2006

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141441146

RRP: $9.95

The Penguin Book of Australian Bush Writing

By John Ross

Full of adventure and peril, joy and longing, The Penguin Book of Australian Bush Writing is so rich and evocative that you will be able to smell the foliage and feel the crunch of sticks underfoot.

Published: 28/11/2011

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780670076413

RRP: $32.95

The Importance of Being Earnest & Other Plays

By Oscar Wilde

Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. Includes Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, A Florentine Tragedy and The Importance of Being Earnest, which appears in full with the 'Grigsby' scene which originally...

Published: 03/07/2000

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780140436068

RRP: $9.95

Charles Dickens: A Life

By Claire Tomalin

CHARLES DICKENS was a phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest novelist in the English language, the creator of characters who live immortally in the English imagination, Sam Weller, Mr Pickwick, the Artful Dodger, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Lady Dedlock, Mrs Gamp, Pip, Miss Havisham and many more. He was also a demonically hard-working journalist, father of ten children, indefatigable walker and traveller...

Published: 14/11/2011

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780670917679

RRP: $39.95

Heart of Darkness

By Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century as a literary classic, and also as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo by the Belgians in one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time. Conrad's narrator encounters at the end of the story a man named Kurtz, dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable...

Published: 06/02/2008

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141441672

RRP: $9.95

The Theban Plays: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

By Sophocles

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles to create a powerful trilogy of mankind's struggle aginst fate.

Published: 31/12/1963

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780140440034

RRP: $9.95

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Oscar Wilde

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succes de scandale . Early readers were...

Published: 06/03/2003

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141439570

RRP: $9.95

Wuthering Heights

By Emily Bronte

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance is now...

Published: 06/03/2003

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780141439556

RRP: $9.95