Written and privately published in Florence in 1928, 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' was denied unexpurgated publication in England until 1960. D.H Lawrence’s uncompromisingly candid novel deals in poetic and sexually explicit language with the passionate relationship between Lady Constance Chatterley and her husband’s powerfully masculine gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. Trapped in a marriage, which has become sterile and joyless since her husband’s return from the trenches partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair, Connie seizes the chance of sexual fulfilment she had thought lost forever. 276 page paperback woth new Intro and notes.

Jane Austen constructed 'Pride & Prejudice', with wit, social precision and an irresistible heroine. 'Persuasion' - Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest yet strongest heroines, is also open to change. 'Jane Eyre', Charlotte Bronte's poor, plain, but plucky heroine, possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. 'Wuthering Heights', Emily Bronte's tale is a wild, passionate story of intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and the adopted foundling Heathcliff. Set in Hardy's Wessex, 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. 1308 pages. Paperback.

A tale of desire and possession, of love and death. An unspeakable subtext lies beneath the silence. It centres on 'the dying girl who wants to live - to live and love.' But those closest to her are in competition for what she can leave behind. Milly Theale, 'the heiress of all the ages', is imaged as a dove, a princess, a Renaissance beauty, but these symbols come at a dreadful cost. By the end of the novel we know, 'We shall never be again as we were!' With an introduction by Nicola Bradbury and Notes. 431pp in paperback.

In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerlad, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. What are the definitive forms of our relationships - love, marriage, family, friendship - really worth? And how might they be otherwise? Without directly referring to the war, 'Women in Love' explores these questions with restless energy. The novel develops experimental techniques which made Lawrence one of the most important writers of the Modernist movement. 464pp. Paperback.

Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the "roaring twenties", and a devastating expose of the "Jazz Age". Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick's cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him. With an Introduction and Notes by Guy Reynolds, University of Kent at Canterbury. 144pp. Paperback.

Featuring the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, in his most challenging case. The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast "with blazing eyes and dripping jaws" which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around isolated Baskerville Hall on Dartmoor. Now the hound seems to be stalking young Sir Henry, the new master of the Baskerville estate. Is this fiendish spectre the manifestation of the family curse? Or is Sir Henry the victim of a vile and scheming murderer? Only Sherlock Holmes can solve this devilish affair. 232pp. Paperback.

Translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. With an Introduction by Henry and Olga Claridge, University of Kent at Canterbury.War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon’s war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy’s view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy’s philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. This translation is one which received Tolstoy’s approval. 1024pp Wordsworth paperback.

Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870s, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper; a celebrated physician, his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression. 176pp. Paperback.

This novel, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. As the headstrong Maggie Tulliver grows into womanhood, the deep love which she has for her brother Tom turns into conflict, because she cannot reconcile his bourgeois standards with her own lively intelligence. Maggie is unable to adapt to her community or break free from it, and the result, on more than one level, is tragedy. Introduction by and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. 496pp. Paperback.

Woolf's Orlando, 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries of boisterous, fantastic adventure, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women, Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women. 176pp, paperback.