ALMA BOOKS

(P/B) ORLANDO
Contains the original 1928 illustrations, notes and an updated extra material Orlando, a young nobleman and one of Queen Elizabeth I's court favourites, is the object of many ladies' attentions, but after suffering heartbreak he prefers literary pursuits to entertaining any thoughts of marriage. Having obtained an ambassadorial post in Constantinople, Orlando falls into a long sleep and wakes up suddenly transformed into a woman. Also blessed with the gift of never ageing, she embarks on adventurous travels throughout Europe and the follow...
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(P/B) THE IDIOT
After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital - from greed, murder and nihilism to passion, vanity and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet valued for his openness and understanding, Prince Myshkin finds himself entangled with two women in a position he cannot bring himself to resolve. Dostoevsky, who wrote that in the character of...
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(P/B) JANE EYRE
A novel of high romance and great intensity, Jane Eyre has enjoyed popular success and critical acclaim ever since its first publication in 1847. Jane's journey from a troubled childhood to independence - and her turbulent love affair with the enigmatic Mr Rochester - electrified Victorian readers with its narrative power. With characters that are as unforgettable as the story they enact, and a striking use of language that amazed the readers of the day, Jane Eyre ranks among the most influential English novels ever written. (From the publ...
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(P/B) THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
Russia's literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman - a professor of black magic - arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil's mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master - a man who has turned his back on his former life and taken refuge in a lunatic asylum - and his past lover, Margarita. Both a satirical romp and a daring analysis o...
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(P/B) ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Widely considered one of the greatest American novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck Finn and his companion, the slave Jim, as they journey down the Mississippi river after running away from Huck's alcoholic father and Jim's owners. As they travel, they encounter a floating house, feuding families and cunning grifters, but more importantly Huck gets to know Jim and regard him as a friend and equal, overcoming the racial prejudices of the time, in a landmark narrative which poignantly addresses the issues of growing...
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(P/B) JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Told in the first person by Celine's fictional alter ego Bardamu, the novel is loosely based on the author's own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA and, later, as a young doctor in a working-class suburb in Paris. Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness that distinguishes...
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(P/B) WUTHERING HEIGHTS
The tale of Heathcliff and Cathy's ungovernable love and suffering, and the havoc that their passion wreaks on the families of the Earnshaws and the Lintons, shocked the book's first readers, with even Emily's sister Charlotte wondering 'whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff'. Replete with unforgettable characters and situations that have seared themselves into our literary consciousness, Emily Bronte's intense masterpiece is one of the most haunting love stories in the canon of English literature. (From the pub...
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(P/B) A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Against the backdrop of growing discontent in Paris, Doctor Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years of unjust imprisonment and begins a new life in England with his devoted daughter Lucie. There, the gifted but dissolute lawyer Sydney Carton and the exiled French nobleman Charles Darnay find their lives increasingly intertwined with those of the Manettes. Yet soon both men are drawn ineluctably from the peaceful English capital to the horror and bloodshed of the Paris Terror and the looming threat of the guillotine. Repr...
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(P/B) BLACK SNOW
After being saved from a suicide attempt by a literary editor, the journalist and failed novelist Sergei Maxudov has a book suddenly accepted for stage adaptation at a prestigious venue and finds himself propelled into Moscow's theatrical world. In a cut-throat environment tainted by Soviet politics, censorship and egomania - epitomized by the arrogant and incompetent director Ivan Vasilyevich - absurdity gradually gives way to tragedy. Unpublished in Bulgakov's own lifetime, Black Snow (also known as A Theatrical Novel) - here presented i...
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(P/B) THE DEVIL'S ELIXIRS
The son of a heinous sinner, Medardus is brought up in a monastery to atone for his father's wicked ways. However, after succumbing to temptation, Medardus himself is lured into a life of sin. A labyrinthine plot sees him embarking on a fantastical journey into the world, meeting his doppelganger, involving himself in a game of double impersonation, and becoming embroiled in murderous intrigues at the Vatican, before the mysterious curse hanging over him and his family is finally explained. First published in 1815, The Devil's Elixirs is a...
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(P/B) THE FATAL EGGS
Professor Persikov, an eccentric zoologist, stumbles upon a new light ray that accelerates growth and reproduction rates in living organisms. In the wake of a plague that has decimated the country's poultry stocks, Persikov's discovery is exploited as a means to correct the problem. As foreign agents, the state and the Soviet media all seize upon the red ray, matters get out of hand. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) NOTES ON A CUFF
Written between 1920 and 1921 while Bugakov was working in a hospital in the remote Caucasian outpost of Vladikavkaz, Notes on a Cuff is a series of journalistic sketches which show the young doctor trying to embark on a literary career among the chaos of war, disease, politics and bureaucracy. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) DIARIES AND SELECTED LETTERS
The career of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of The Master and Margarita - now regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature - was characterized by a constant and largely unsuccessful struggle against state censorship. This suppression did not only apply to his art: in 1926 his personal diaries were seized by the authorities. From then on he confined his thoughts to letters to his friends and family, as well as to public figures such as Stalin and his fellow Soviet writer Gorky. This ample selection from the diaries and...
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GRAMMATICA PRATICA DELLA LINGUA ITALIANA A1/B2

(P/B) Apology for a Murder
Famed for having killed his cousin Alessandro, the Duke of Florence, in 1537, but also for writing accomplished literary works, including a comedy and several poems, Lorenzino de' Medici remains one of the most enigmatic figures of Italian literature. In his masterpiece, Apology for a Murder, he reveals the inner motives behind his act, portraying himself as a hero to be numbered alongside the great tyrannicides of ancient Rome and Greece. Lorenzino himself, in 1548, was murdered by two soldiers hired either by the emperor Charles V or by ...
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(P/B) JOHN KEATS ; COMPLETE POEMS
Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. Despite his tragically short life, John Keats, a self-confessed "rebel Angel", endures for many as a personifi cation of the Romantic age. While contemporary critics mocked him as a "Cockney poet" and an uneducated lower-class "apothecary" who aspired to poetry, subsequent generations began to ...
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(P/B) THE RATS IN THE WALLS
When the descendant of an ancient aristocratic family moves from Massachusetts to Exham Priory, his ancestral home in the south of England, he is plagued by the constant noise of rats scurrying within its walls. As the sound begins to haunt his dreams, he investigates the house and discovers a horrific secret underneath, which will bring him to the point of madness. Considered one of the most accomplished examples of the horror genre, 'The Rats in the Walls' is presented here along with other quintessentially Lovecraftian tales - such as '...
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(P/B) COMING UP FOR AIR
George Bowling, a forty-five-year-old insurance salesman with a wife and two children, is overweight, depressed and haunted by ever-present portents of imminent global conflict. Hoping to escape the staid suburban rut in which he has become embedded, he travels to Lower Binfield, the rural idyll of his childhood, in an effort to recapture his halcyon youth. But once there he discovers that the tranquil haven of his treasured memories has fallen victim to the rapaciousness of "progress", and is forced to reflect on the folly of nostalgia an...
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(P/B) The Single Hound
When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, having published only a tiny selection of her verse anonymously in journals and newspapers, she left behind a chest containing almost 1,800 poems written on notebooks and loose sheets. Her family members, starting with her sister Lavinia, began editing and compiling them for publication, and one of the most celebrated collections, The Single Hound, was prepared by her niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and published in 1914. This volume, containing some of Dickinson's most original and poignant pieces, helped...
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(P/B) THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
A celebrated journalist in his lifetime, Ambrose Bierce was the author of sardonic, mischievous definitions of words that appeared in various San Francisco newspapers. Over several years these were compiled for a mock dictionary, originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book and reissued in an expanded version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911. One of the most popular satirical works of world literature, The Devil's Dictionary - here enriched with over 800 definitions left out from the original publications - brilliantly lays bare ...
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