Maugham, English novelist, short-story writer, and playwright is best remembered for his novel Of Human Bondage. The Casuarina Tree contains six stories by Maugham including: Before the Party; P. and O.; The Outstation; The Force of Circumstance; The Yellow Streak; and The Letter.

    A. Milne's texts have been skillfully adapted by veteran Easy Reader author Stephen Krensky, so they retain all of their original charm. And every spread of these inviting books features full-color Ernest Shepard illustrations. In Pooh Goes Visiting, Pooh eats a bit too much and faces the prospect of being stuck in Rabbit's hole-until he loses weight!

    Fortunately, Pooh finds the bottle. Unfortunately, he can't read the Missage. But Christopher Robin can, and that, along with Pooh's Brilliant Idea, sets the rescue mission on it's wobbly way.--front flap

    His early poems, collected and published in 1645, include the much loved pair 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' ('the cheerful man and the thoughtful man'), 'Lycidas' (his great elegy on a fellow poet) and 'Comus' (the one masque which is still read today). When the Civil War began Milton abandoned poetry for politics and wrote a series of pamphlets in defence of the Parliamentary party, then in defence of the execution of Charles I: these include his great defence of the freedom of the press, 'Areopagitica'. In the course of this work he lost his sight, and was blind for the last twenty years of his life.During this time he wrote his two great epics, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and his retelling of the story of Samson as a Greek tragedy.

    He cannot do other than write beautifully." - Humbert Wolfe"The book abounds in glowing experiences of a world of colour and sensation, minutely imagined. . . . The description of dawn at Kew Gardens is so lovely that the reader will be tempted to endanger his respectability by emulating Judy and climbing the wall." - Times Literary Supplement"Among the few highly important and significant novelists of the day." - The Observer"There is poetry beneath Mr. Fraser's fantastic humour as there is a cunning grace in his prose." - The Times"The erotic awakening of a young woman . . . Judy, a student at Kew Gardens . . . is engaged to a personable young man who does not have the ability to arouse her, though she likes him, and she is disturbed by the utilitarian, materialistic life-philosophy of her businessman brother. She becomes more and more sensitive to the hidden life of the plants at Kew, and comes to see them as personalities, with the giant orchid in the role of passionate lover. . . . Told with delicate imagery and fine perceptions, a minor rococoism of art deco literature." - E.F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983)

    H. Lawrence. The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne'er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn't earn as much as she'd like. The family's lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety; moreover, the kids even claim they can hear the house whispering "There must be more money." Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He's been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names. After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky." As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there," into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner's name. Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother: "I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!" "No, you never did," said his mother. The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.

    The inmates of Craven House have their foibles, but most are indulgently treated by an author whose world view has yet to harden from scepticism into cynicism.The generational conflicts of Hamilton's own youth thread throughout the narrative, with hair bobbing and dancing as the battle lines. That perennial of the 1920s bourgeoisie, the 'servant problem', is never far from the surface, and tensions crescendo gradually to a resolution one climactic dinnertime.

    Written in 1926, The Land is a nostalgic celebration of the Kentish countryside through the seasons. It won the Hawthornden Prize and sold over 100,000 copies.

    Jerome struggled against poverty and obscurity, not to mention his improbable name, for many years before “Three Men In A Boat” made him a celebrity, and the friend of other celebrities. A man of deep human sympathies and principles, he lived through, and engaged with, a time - like our own - of unprecedented changes and inventions, most of which are commonplace now. Much of his writing, especially for the theatre, has now been forgotten but a year before his death, in 1927, he published his autobiography, in the popular style he pioneered - still in daily use by journalists. Brian Wright was born in the East End and after Oxford went on to RADA. After several years in repertory, the RSC, and West End, he began writing as well as acting. His writing has won two Sony Awards, a BAFTA nomination and a fellowship at Bristol University. His books, The Canal Children and Penge Papers are published by Heinemann, Souvenir and Pan. His solo performance, Black Snow, was presented at the Edinburgh and Cheltenham Festivals and on BBC radio and his solo performance, Shaking Spears for Shakespeare is still touring.