"A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best loved of Shakespeare's plays. It brings together aristocrats, workers, and fairies in a wood outside Athens, and from there the magic begins. A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and by her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites soon take an interest in human affairs, dispensing magical love potions...

Featuring the images of some of the world's most famous stage and film actors, these additions to the all-new Oxford School Shakespeare introduce--and enthrall--young people to one of the greatest writers of all time. This season brings revised editions of five of the Bard's most famous plays--As You Like It, Othello, Hamlet, Love's Labour Lost and The Taming of the Shrew. Designed specifically for students unfamiliar with Shakespeare's rich literary...

A complex and profound book, The Tale of Two Cities explores the consequences of tyranny, fate and self-sacrifice. With much of the narrative played out in Paris, during the French Revolution Dickens examines the interplay between personal action, and the flow of history. Dr Manette, having travelled to Paris finds himself imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 brutal years, unable to see his kind and loving daughter Lucy. On his eventual return to London...

The famous Orient Express, thundering along on its three days' journey across Europe, came to a sudden stop in the night. Snowdrifts blocked the line at a desolate spot somewhere in the Balkans. Everything was deathly quiet. "Decidedly I suffer from the nerves, " murmured Hercule Poirot, and fell asleep again. He awoke to find himself very much wanted. For in the night murder had been committed. Mr. Ratchett, an American millionaire, was found lying...

"After Mary Lennox's parents pass away, she is sent to a large, isolated house in Yorkshire to live with an uncle she has never met. Ill-tempered, obstinate Mary dislikes her new home, but when she finds the key to a locked garden she realises there are fascinating secrets waiting to be uncovered at Misselthwaite Manor. With the help of new friends, Mary resolves to bring the neglected garden back to life - and her own transformation begins. This...

"Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters...

"This is the third New Cambridge edition of The Taming of the Shrew, one of Shakespeare's most popular yet controversial plays. Ann Thompson considers its reception in the light of the hostility and embarrassment that the play often arouses, taking account of both scholarly defences and modern feminist criticism. For this version the editor pays lively attention to the problematic nature of debates about the play and its reception in the twenty-first...

A young man's quest for eternal youth and beauty ends in scandal, depravity and death. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The picture of Dorian Gray was a...

This look at the near future presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, an oppressive world where women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction. In this Orwellian dramatization, religion becomes a tool of repression and social control to force women into the roles of stay-at-home wives, domestic staff, prostitutes, or surrogate mothers. They have...

It's all about love and holiday cheer in London. The Prime Minister is smitten with an office aide; a widower's young son nurses the ultimate schoolboy crush; a writer falls for his Portuguese housekeeper; a devoted wife and mother copes with her potentially unfaithful husband; and a lovelorn American is desperately attracted to a colleague.