The Way of the World


William Congreve - 1700
    With Mirabell? You call my blood into my face with mentioning that traitor. She durst not have the confidence. I sent her to negotiate an affair, in which if I'm detected I'm undone. If that wheedling villain has wrought upon Foible to detect me, I'm ruined. O my dear friend, I'm a wretch of wretches if I'm detected.

Robinson Crusoe


Daniel Defoe - 1719
    An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God. This edition features maps.

The Cripple of Inishmaan


Martin McDonagh - 1997
    No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been grazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples through his rumor-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order.

Journey's End


R.C. Sherriff - 1929
    Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This play deals with the horror and futility of trench warfare, as Captain Stanhope and his officers await attack in their dugout.

Atonement


Ian McEwan - 2001
    But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.

Miss Buncle's Book


D.E. Stevenson - 1934
    Times are harsh, and Barbara's bank account has seen better days. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from fellow residents of her quaint English village, writing a revealing novel that features the townsfolk as characters. The smashing bestseller is published under the pseudonym John Smith, which is a good thing because villagers recognize the truth. But what really turns her world around is when events in real life start mimicking events in the book. Funny, charming, and insightful, this novel reveals what happens when people see themselves through someone else's eyes.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1792
    Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 and featuring a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.It relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience, fear, and fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, the use of narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, or the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood each different part of the poem.

Animal Farm


George Orwell - 1945
    With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

Waterland


Graham Swift - 1983
    Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.

The Things They Carried


Tim O'Brien - 1990
    In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again clearly demonstrated. Neither a novel nor a short story collection, it is an arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam and back home in America two decades later.

The Revenger's Tragedy


Thomas Middleton - 1606
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?


Edward Albee - 1962
    A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening's end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With the play's razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "a brilliantly original work of art--an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come."

Something Fresh


P.G. Wodehouse - 1915
    Blandings has impostors like other houses have mice. Now there are two of them – both intent on a dangerous enterprise. Lord Emsworth’s secretary, the efficient Baxter, is on the alert and determined to discover what is afoot – despite the distractions caused by the Honorable Freddie Threepwood’s hapless affair of the heart.

'Art'


Yasmina Reza - 1994
    The Tony Award-winning play that focuses on the meaning of art (in the form of a solid white painting) as well as the meaning of friendship, to both the man who bought the painting and the two friends who come to see it."

The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)


Adam Long - 1994
    The playtext is reproduced here with footnotes which will be of no help to anyone and a letter from the authors to the Queen.