Anton Lesser

Set before and during the French Revolution in the cities of Paris and London, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Dr Manette's release from imprisonment in the Bastille and his reunion with daughter, Lucie. A French aristocrat Darnay and English lawyer Carton compete in their love for Lucie and the ensuing tale plays out against the menacing backdrop of the French Revolution and the shadow of the guillotine.

The Iliad is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, for which Barry Powell, one of the twenty-first century's leading Homeric scholars, has given us a magnificent new translation. Graceful, lucid, and energetic, Powell's translation renders the Homeric Greek with a simplicity and dignity reminiscent of the original. The text immediately engrosses students with its tight and balanced rhythms, while the incantatory repetitions evoke a continuous...

Published in 1850, David Copperfield is Charles Dickens' eighth novel and the one that most closely follows the author's own life. A coming of age story, it describes David's life from childhood with a difficult stepfather, his schooling, his entry into the workforce, his courtship and marriage(s) and his eventual success as an author. Filled with colorful characters like Wilkins Micawber and Betsey Trotwood, and unforgettable villains like Uriah...

Set in 1967 and picking up from the dramatic second series finale that saw Endeavour Morse placed in police custody, framed for a murder he didn't commit and DI Fred Thursday's life hanging in the balance after being shot.

Michael Henchard sells his wife and child while intoxicated. Eighteen years later, when Henchard has become the mayor of Casterbridge, they reappear.

It's 1969, and things have taken a darker turn for the old Cowley team. With the gang now scattered across Oxfordshire, it takes a series of brutal crimes to reunite them. Now joined by former adversary DCI Ronnie Box and his sidekick DS Alan Jago, the gang must battle crime and corruption to finally solve their greatest challenge, which is to find the truth behind George Fancy's death.

After six months in wild Germania, imperial gumshoe Marcus Didius Falco is back in Rome sweet Rome - but his apartment has been ransacked. And although he desperately needs 400,000 sesterces in order to marry his aristocratic love, Helena, his only client is his mother, who insists that he find out whether the scandalous claims against his dead brother, Festus, are true. Then the chief tarnisher of Festus' good name is murdered, and Marcus becomes...

The story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness"; the mannish lawyer...

In the picaresque series of sketches in Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens wrote one of the masterpieces of comic fiction, and presented readers with some of the most colorful and beloved characters of all time. In Dickens' first novel, initially based on a series of illustrations, members of the eponymous club recount their various experiences and encounters as they travel around England. Without the dark themes that dominated so many of his novels,...

In an effort to give their younger brother, Norman a project to keep him busy now that he has joined the family publishing house, the older Warne brothers agree to publish Miss Beatrix Potter's first children's book. They don't expect the book to sell well, but they need to keep Norman busy. As a single woman living in Edwardian London, Beatrix suspects this endeavor may provide her with a small measure of freedom. But she also has very specific ideas...