Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics

This selection of stories by Katherine Mansfield has been chosen by Claire Tomalin and emphasize the stronger, feminist side of her writing rather than the popular, more sentimental view. The 21 stories are presented in chronological order and include "Prelude", "The Garden Party" and "At the Bay".

The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby is the bright star of the Jazz Age, but as writer Nick Carraway is drawn into the decadent orbit of his Long Island mansion, where the party never seems to end, he finds himself faced by the mystery of Gatsby's origins and desires.

In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.

W. Somerset Maugham is the Introducer to this beautiful Everyman's Library edition.

Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, and feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community. Determined to explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal.

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'.

Joyce expertly encapsulates the development of individual consciousness and the role of the artist in society in what is considered one of his greatest works.

Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It traces emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers, which exert complex influences on the development of his manhood.

Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse

Elizabeth Bowen is widely considered to be one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century. While her novels masquerade as witty comedies of manners, set in the lavish country houses of the Anglo-Irish or in elegant London homes, they mine the depths of private tragedy with a subtle ferocity and psychological complexity reminiscent of Henry James.

A grandson of Mark Antony, young Claudius is mistaken for a weakling and an idiot because of his stutter and his physical infirmities and grows up learning to use his reputation for harmlessness as a shield. Dismissed as insignificant by his powerful relatives as they compete with each other for power, he spends his time writing a secret history of the first three emperors of Rome as observed from his remarkable ringside vantage point—a dramatic tale that makes up the pages of I, Claudius.

Claudius’s impersonation of a fool enables him to escape the intrigues and poisonings that mark his predecessors’ reigns, including the machinations of his murderous grandmother Livia and his dangerously mad nephew, Caligula. After assassinating Caligula, the Praetorian Guard declare Claudius the next
emperor—over his protests. He accepts only to avoid civil war, and Claudius the God traces his attempts to strengthen Rome and restore the Republic. But his efforts are undermined by his corrupt wife, Messalina, and the ambitions of his own son, Britannicus, and he is unable to prevent the doom he foresees for Rome when his great-nephew Nero succeeds him as emperor.

With effortless grace, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates in her second novel a
seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to
establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s.
We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters:
Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor
full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has
abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm, and Richard, a
shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s wilful twin sister Kainene. These
characters are pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them imagined
possible. Half of a Yellow Sun is an electrifying modern masterpiece about the ways in
which love complicates everything.