Alma Books: 225 books

The well-educated daughter of a penniless clergyman, Agnes Grey is treated like a child by her own 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 Mudfog Papers, a collection of sketches by Dickens published in Bentley's Miscellany between 1837 and 1838, describes the local politics of the fictional town of Mudfog - such as the delusions of grandeur of its mayor Nicholas Tulrumble and his disastrous attempts at putting on a public show - and...

Based on Jane Hawking's best-selling memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen Hawking, Anthony McCarten's screen adaptation for the hit movie The Theory of of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, is one of the most talked about and award-worthy scripts of the film season....

As a Fabian and lifelong socialist, Shaw believed that economic inequality was a poison destroying every aspect of our lives. Family affections and relations between the sexes were perverted by it. From Parliament to eduction our institutions were "corrupted at the root by pecuniary interest". Idealism,...

On a boat in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells his travelling companions of his reconnaissance expedition for a Belgian trading company to its most remote outpost in central Africa, which brought him on the trail of the elusive Kurtz, a brilliant idealist gone rogue. His account relates not only the perils...

Originally conceived as a series of newspaper articles and later published in volume form, De Amicis's Memories of London brings back to life all the bygone charm of the capital of the British Empire. De Amicis's impressions are paired here with a piece written by one of his contemporaries, the French...

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...

One of Flaubert's earliest writings, but published only after his death, Memoirs of a Madman presents us with a young man as he reflects - alternating between musings on the present and memories of the past - on the years that have brought him to "madness", recalling the innocence of his boyhood, the...

First biography to reveal the details of Mussolinis private life with a particular focus on his renowned appetite for women, and no scabrous or intimate detail spared. Out of the ruins and savagery of Second World War, the figure of Benito Mussolini looms large as one of the most influential during the...

Le nozze di Figaro is one of Mozart’s best-loved and most enduring works. The first of the three operas he wrote with Lorenzo da Ponte and based on Beaumarchais’s play, it established the thirty-year-old Mozart as an opera composer of the very first rank. Its combination of wit, acute psychological...

Charles Dickens wrote a number of supernatural and horror stories, some of which were included in his longer works, while others were published in magazines. This collection gathers them together in one volume, providing an invaluable insight into the author's storytelling apprenticeship and his steady...

The Beatles' hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol of the Sixties' psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. In the midst of this epochal change was Leslie...

This volume contains two adventures which pit the gentleman thief Arsene Lupin against Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous detective. In 'The Blonde Lady', Holmes must discover the identity of a mysterious female thief who is linked to Lupin, while in 'The Jewish Lamp' he finds out that the theft...

Drove House has always loomed large over village life. Boarded-up for years, it is reputed to be brimming with ghosts, and is shunned by the locals all except Billy, for whom it has been the site of childhood dens and secret adolescent adventures. When the captivating Muriel moves in with her bohemian...