ALMA BOOKS

(P/B) THE PRELUDE
William Wordsworth's verse was the embodiment of the Romantic age, with its evocation of a unifying spirit running through all things. This collection brings together a rich and diverse selection of his works, from the epic autobiographical masterpiece The Prelude to much-loved shorter poems such as 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' and 'She Was a Phantom of Delight'. Alongside his more personal and introspective compositions, poems such as 'Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey', 'She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways' and 'The Idiot Bo...
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(P/B) CARMEN
When the Basque dragoon Don Jose meets a Gypsy woman at the factory he is guarding, he is immediately ensnared by her wiles. After she is arrested for injuring a co-worker and he helps her to flee, he is imprisoned and demoted, but she repays him at their next meeting with a day of excess and a night of love. As Carmen continues to exert her spell, Jose is dragged further and further into a seedy world of smugglers, robbers, fiery passions and uncontrollable jealousy - one that he will find difficult to escape alive. Carmen, the archetype ...
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(P/B) EMMA
Emma is considered by many readers to be Jane Austen's crowning achievement, a timeless comedy of manners that lays bare the limits on women's autonomy in Regency England. The disparity between Emma Woodhouse's self-confidence and self-knowledge, and her determination to arrange marriages for her friends while avoiding one for herself, leads to a painful series of misunderstandings for everyone who suffers from her well-meaning altruism - and with Mr Knightley being the only person of her acquaintance who has the good sense to challenge he...
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(P/B) THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
When Richard Hannay finds the corpse of freelance spy Franklin P. Scudder in his London flat, he goes on the run, fearing that his life is in danger. Scudder had previously revealed that he was investigating a ring of German spies, who were conspiring to sabotage Britain's war capability. Hannay becomes both hunter and hunted as he struggles to unravel the tangled threads of this plot while staying one step ahead of his pursuers, who will stop at nothing to keep their nefarious secrets. First published in 1915, John Buchan's definitive spy...
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(P/B) THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME
One of Tsutsui's best-known and most popular works in his native Japan, The Girl Who Leapt through Time is the story of fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Kazuko, who accidentally discovers that she can leap back and forth in time. In her quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious figure that she believes to be responsible for her paranormal abilities, she'll constantly have to push the boundaries of space and time, and challenge the notions of dream and reality. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) AGNES GREY
The well-educated daughter of a penniless clergyman, Agnes Grey is treated like a child by her family and so sets out to prove herself by seeking employment as a governess. Soon, however, her idealistic notions regarding the education and care of her wards are dashed as she battles to control the wild Bloomfield children in her first situation, and is then held in low regard by the superior Murray household. Drawing on Anne Bront?'s own experiences, and dealing with themes such as the nature of childhood, the rise of the middle classes and...
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(P/B) THE GOOD SOLDIER
The Good Soldier tells the stories of two outwardly happy couples who meet at a health spa in Germany just before the start of the First World War, and whose loveless, adultery-ridden relationships are strained and gradually disintegrate, with tragic consequences. Drawing inspiration from his personal life, Ford Madox Ford innovatively used non-chronological flashbacks as well as an unreliable narrator to reveal the scandalous affairs, lies and betrayals behind the facade of respectability, and craft a masterly work of fiction and a subtle...
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(P/B) THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
"Holmes!" I cried. "Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?" London's criminal underworld has risen once again, and a dangerous individual with an air gun is prowling the streets. The capital is in greater need of its protector, Sherlock Holmes, than ever. Three years have passed since Holmes and the evil mastermind Professor Moriarty fell, locked in combat, into the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, and when Doctor Watson collides with an odd-looking ol...
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(P/B) LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
These inventive and entertaining pieces display the early sparkles of wit and imagination of Jane Austen's mature fiction. Written when she was only in her teens, they are by turns amusing, acerbic and occasionally downright silly. 'Love and Friendship' and 'Lesley Castle' provide parodies of the gentry and the fashionable idea of sensibility of the time. 'A History of England' supplies us with a lively chronicle of English monarchic history. Also included in this collection are 'The Three Sisters', 'Catharine', the series of vignettes kno...
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(P/B) HIS LAST BOW (ANNOTATED EDITION)
A mysterious murder near Esher, a gruesome delivery of two human ears packed in coarse salt, the disappearance of secret submarine plans, the sudden descent into madness of two brothers - these are only some of the apparently unsolvable cases contained in this volume, which the great sleuth, assisted by his trusted friend Doctor Watson, is challenged to clear up with the aid of his sagacity and unrivalled analytical skills. Published a quarter of a century after the first book of Holmes adventures, and including the famous titular story Hi...
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(P/B) PRAISE OF FOLLY
The goddess Folly gives a speech, praising herself and explaining how much humanity benefits from her services, from politicians to philosophers, aristocrats, schoolteachers, poets, lawyers, theologians, monarchs and the clergy. At the same time, her discourse provides a satire of Erasmus's world, poking fun at false pedantry and the aberrations of Christianity. Woven throughout her monologue, a thread of irony calls into question the goddess's own words, in which ambiguities, allusions and interpretations collide in a way that makes Prais...
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(P/B) GREAT EXPECTATIONS
One of Dickens's finest novels, Great Expectations chronicles the fortunes of its young protagonist Pip as he is unexpectedly endowed by a mysterious benefactor with the life of a gentleman, enabling him to escape to London from the prospect of a humble blacksmith's career in rural Kent. In the bustling, unforgiving capital he must learn for himself the pitfalls of love and wealth, and how to sort his friends from his enemies. Through the lives of its unforgettable and iconic characters - such as Magwitch, Miss Havisham and Estella - Great...
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(P/B) ANNA KARENINA
Leo Tolstoy's most personal novel, Anna Karenina scrutinizes fundamental ethical and theological questions through the tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, "moral" life, standing for honesty and sincerity. Passion drives her to adultery, and this flies in the face of the corrupt Russian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the aristocrat Konstantin Levin is struggling to reconcile reason with passion, espousing a Christian anarchism that Tolstoy himself believed in. Acclaimed by critics and readers alike, Anna Kar...
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(P/B) TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime. As each character tries to readjust their memories and emotions with the shifts of time and reality, this long-delayed excursion will also prove to be a journey of self-discovery and fulfilment for them. Rich in symbolism, daring in st...
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(P/B) EXERCISES IN STYLE
On a crowded bus at midday, the narrator observes one man accusing another of jostling him deliberately. When a seat is vacated, the first man takes it. Later, in another part of town, the man is spotted again, while being advised by a friend to have another button sewn onto his overcoat. Exercises in Style retells this apparently unremarkable tale ninety-nine times, employing a variety of styles, ranging from sonnet to cockney to mathematical formula. Too funny to be merely a pedantic thesis, this virtuoso set of themes and variations is ...
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(P/B) THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
After the Lady Vain is shipwrecked, Edward Prendick is plucked from the waves by a passing ship and deposited on a remote island. Here he is the guest of Dr Moreau, whose notorious scientific methods had caused an uproar that left him with no choice but to flee London. Disquieted and appalled by the pained cries of suffering animals, Edward soon realizes that the Doctor is continuing and developing his depraved experiments, and that he too is in great danger. Shocking and suffused with contemporary fears regarding the morality of the lates...
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(P/B) THE SCARLET LETTER
Having been found guilty of adultery, Hester Prynne is forced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter "A" as a punishment for her sin. While her vengeful husband embarks on a quest to discover the identity of her lover, she is left to face the consequences of her infidelity and find a place for herself and her illegitimate child in the hostile environment of seventeenth-century Puritan Boston. Nathaniel Hawthorne's tense narrative astonished readers with its unparalleled psychological depth when it first appeared, and the novel now stands as...
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(P/B) A GAME OF CHESS
When it is discovered that the reigning world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic, is on board a cruiser heading for Buenos Aires, a fellow passenger challenges him to a game. Czentovic easily defeats him, but during the rematch a mysterious Austrian, Dr B., intervenes and, to the surprise of everyone, helps the underdog obtain a draw. When, the next day, Dr B. confides in a compatriot travelling on the same ship and decides to reveal the harrowing secret behind his formidable chess knowledge, a chilling tale of imprisonment and psychological ...
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(P/B) PARASHA AND OTHER POEMS
Translated for the first time into English One of the pillars of nineteenth-century Russian prose fiction alongside towering figures such as Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev started his writing career as a poet, gaining much critical acclaim and renown in that field. The title piece of this collection, Parasha, which brought the young author to the attention of the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky and established his reputation, is a humorous narrative poem in the vein of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin or Lermontov's Sashka, tell...
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(P/B) FATHERS AND CHILDREN
"Fathers and Children", arguably the first modern novel in the history of Russian literature, shocked readers when it was first published in 1862 - the controversial character of Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist intent on rejecting all existing traditional values and institutions, providing a trenchant critique of the established order. Turgenev's masterpiece investigates the growing nihilist movement of mid-nineteenth-century Russia - a theme which was to influence Dostoevsky and many other European writers - in a universal, and often ...
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