'Mesmerising from beginning to end.' Lizzie LaneYorkshire 1860 With the heat of their beloved India far behind them, Evie Davenport and her widowed British Army officer father, are starting a new life in England. But Evie is struggling. With her dearest mother gone, Yorkshire with its cold, damp countryside and strict societal rules makes Evie feel suffocated and alone. Her friendship with Sophie Bellingham, the gently reared daughter of a wealthy rail baron, is Evie's only comfort. Until the arrival of local cotton mill owner, Alexander Lucas. Newly returned from America, it is expected Alexander will marry and finally make England his home. And Sophie with her family connections and polite manners is the obvious choice. But when Alexander meets Evie, a simmering passion ignites between them. Evie, with her rebellious spirit is like no other woman Alex has ever met, but to reject Sophie for Evie would cause a scandal and devastate everyone Evie loves. Evie knows she must do her duty. But in doing so faces the unbearable future of being without the man she loves. Praise for AnneMarie Brear: 'AnneMarie Brear writes gritty, compelling sagas that grip from the first page.' Fenella J Miller 'Poignant, powerful and searingly emotional, AnneMarie Brear stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest works by some of the genre's greatest writers such as Catherine Cookson, Audrey Howard and Rosamunde Pilcher.'

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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.

The mysterious Jay Gatsby uses his fabulous wealth to create an enchanted world fit for his former love, Daisy Buchanan, now married to Tom. Daisy, though, is a romanticised figment of his own imagination, and the extraordinary world that he creates is equally illusory. He gives lavish, legendary, parties where the guests and gate-crashers enjoy free-flowing champagne and cocktails and carefree hospitality. It is easy for modern readers to forget that the story takes place in the time of Prohibition (1920 to 1933) something that would have been immediately apparent when the book was first published. It enforces the nature of the unreal world that Gatsby creates, beyond the reach of the law and the police. But a more sinister reality begins to break through, as idealised romantic figures prove to have human frailties and selfish motivations, and the grandiose world of Gatsby's creation crumbles and disillusion turns to tragedy. A new film, directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan will be released in 2012.

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury. Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder. From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime. The result is a tragic novel built out of a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world's harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality.