Rumpole of the Bailey


John Mortimer - 1978
    It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients. The original show has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.Contents:“Rumpole and the Younger Generation”;“Rumpole and the Alternative Society”;“Rumpole and the Honourable Member”;“Rumpole and the Married Lady”;“Rumpole and the Learned Friends”;“Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade”

Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters


Mallory Ortberg - 2014
    Everyone knows that if Scarlett O’Hara had an unlimited text-and-data plan, she’d constantly try to tempt Ashley away from Melanie with suggestive messages. If Mr. Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ardent missives would obviously be in all-caps. And Daisy Buchanan would not only text while driving, she’d text you to pick her up after she totaled her car. Based on the popular web-feature, Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, irreverent mashup that brings the characters from your favorite books into the twenty-first century.

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes


J.D. Salinger - 1951
    

Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman


E.W. Hornung - 1898
    In these eight stories, the master burglar indulges his passion for cricket and crime: stealing jewels from a country house, outwitting the law, pilfering from the nouveau riche, and, of course, bowling like a demon-all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick, Bunny. Encouraged by his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, to write a series about a public school villain, and influenced by his own experiences at Uppingham, E. W. Hornung created a unique form of crime story, where, in stealing as in sport, it is playing the game that counts, and there is always honor among thieves.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty


James Thurber - 1939
    A henpecked husband copes with the frustrations of his dull life by imagining he is a fearless airplane pilot, a brilliant doctor, and other dashing figures.

Great Tales of Horror


H.P. Lovecraft - 1991
    Lovecraft's classic stories, among them some of the greatest works of horror fiction ever written, including:

The Pickwick Papers


Charles Dickens - 1837
    Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters & incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour & literary invention.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman


Laurence Sterne - 1767
    It is a fiction about fiction-writing in which the invented world is as much infused with wit and genius as the theme of inventing it. It is a joyful celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction, and a wry demonstration of its limitations. This Penguin Classic contains Christopher Ricks's introductory essay, itself a classic of English literary criticism, together with a new introduction on the recent critical history and influence of Tristram Shandy by Melvyn New. The text and notes are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, making the scholarship of the Florida editors readily available for the first time.

Porterhouse Blue


Tom Sharpe - 1974
    Sir Godber Evans, ex-Cabinet Minister and the new Master, is determined to change all this. Spurred on by his politically angular wife, Lady Mary, he challenges the established order and provokes the wrath of the Dean, the Senior Tutor, the Bursar and, most intransigent of all, Skullion the Head Porter - with hilarious and catastrophic results.

Pastoralia


George Saunders - 2000
    Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.

Tales of the City


Armistead Maupin - 1978
    A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous—unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.

Kornél Esti


Dezső Kosztolányi - 1934
    Here is a novel which inquires: What if your id (loyally keeping your name) decides to strike out on its own, cuts a disreputable swath through the world, and then sends home to you all its unpaid bills and ruined maidens? And then: What if you and your alter ego decide to write a book together?

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume II


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1986
    Watson has faithfully recorded Holmes’s feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the thrilling The Adventure of the Red Circle and the twelve baffling adventures from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.Conan Doyle’s incomparable tales bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where for more than forty years Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time.

Jeeves and the King of Clubs


Ben Schott - 2018
    Treason is afoot in the highest social circles. The very security of the nation is in peril. Jeeves, it transpires, has long been an agent of British Intelligence, but now His Majesty's Government must turn to the one man who can help . . . Bertie Wooster.In this magnificent new homage to P. G. Wodehouse, Ben Schott leads Jeeves and Wooster on an uproarious adventure of espionage through the secret corridors of Whitehall, the sunlit lawns of Brinkley Court, and the private clubs of St James's.We encounter an unforgettable cast of characters – old and new – including outraged chefs and exasperated aunts, disreputable politicians and gambling bankers, slushy debs and Cockney cabbies, sphinx-like tailors, and sylph-like spies.There is treachery to be foiled, naturally, but also horses to be backed, auctions to be fixed, engagements to be escaped, madmen to be blackballed, and a new variety of condiment to be cooked up.'Jeeves & the King of Clubs' is essential reading for aficionados of The Master, and a perfect introduction to the joys of Jeeves and Wooster for those who have never before dipped their toe.'Impossible to read without grinning idiotically.' - Mark Sanderson, Evening StandardBibliographical note: Although the cover reads 'Jeeves and the King of Clubs' , the half-title and tile page read 'Jeeves & the King of Clubs' and this is how it is catalogued above. In addition the title page does state, separate from the actual title, 'An homage to P.G. Wodehouse authorised by the Wodehouse Estate' and adds, 'With Authorial Endnotes'.

Lucky Jim


Kingsley Amis - 1954
    This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”