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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'The rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open...'Victor Frankenstein's monster is stitched together from the limbs of the dead, taken from 'the dissecting room and the slaughter-house'. The result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker and starved of human companionship, sets out on a journeyto seek his revenge. In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness.Begun when Mary Shelley was only eighteen years old and published two years later, this chilling tale of a young scientist's desire to create life - and the consequences of that creation - still resonate today.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.'Set in the agricultural town of Raveloe in the English countryside, Silas Marner is a tragic figure. Exiled from a religious community because of a wrongful accusation of theft, he works from day to day as a weaver, saving his money and living a lonelylife as a recluse.It is only when his money is stolen and a small orphan girl, Eppie appears in his life that Silas's fortunes begin to change and he truly begins to learn what it means to regain his faith in life.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.'Huck Finn escapes from his alcoholic father by faking his own death and so begins his journey through the Deep South, seeking independence and freedom. On his travels, Huck meets an escaped slave, Jim, who is a wanted man, and together they journey downthe Mississippi River. Raising the timeless and universal l issues of prejudice, bravery and hope, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was and still is considered the great American novel.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both

Two rollickling tales of scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells from the Sketches by Boz that launched Dickens's career.

'He was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest...'Wilde's supremely witty tale of dandies, anarchists and a murderous prophecy in London high society.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride overVictorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. '.we call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.' When his beloved owners areforced to sell him, Black Beauty leaves his life as a young, care-free colt behind him and embarks on a working life of misery. Cruelly treated by his new masters, Anna Sewell rails against animal mistreatment in this poignant tale of a horse whosespirit can not be broken.

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.'Death and honour are thought to be the same, but today I have learned that sometimes they are not.'Set in frontier America in the midst of the French-Indian war, as the French are attempting to overthrow an English fort, Cooper's story follows Alice and Cora Munro, pioneer sisters who are trying to find their way back to their father, an Englishcommander. Guided by an army major and Magua, an Indian from the Huron tribe, they soon meet Hawk-eye, a frontier scout and his Mohican Indian companions Chingachgook and Uncas.Magua is not all that he seems and the sisters are kidnapped. In The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper sets Indian tribe against Indian tribe and lays bare the brutality of the white man against the Mohicans.

Four hilarious and provocative stories from Boccaccio's Decameron, featuring cuckolded husbands, cross-dressing wives and very bad priests.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride overVictorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage

'Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror ... the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul.'Stories about murder, mystery and madness, portraying the author's feverish imagination at its creative height.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride overVictorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage

Oh, good God, he kept saying with great relish. Good God...'Gooseberries' is accompanied here by 'The Kiss' and 'The Two Volodyas' - three exquisite depictions of love and loss in nineteenth-century Russia by Chekhov, the great master of the short story form.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride overVictorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage

The intense and unbreakable bond between the fiery Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff has startled and fascinated readers since its first publication in 1847. Of uncertain parentage and ethnicity, Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as achild when Catherine's father finds him wandering alone through the slave-trading port of Liverpool. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff and Catherine find refuge in each other when the household falls into the hands of Catherine's dissolute olderbrother. Their bond deepens as they escape together from the violence and stern religion of their home to the Yorkshire moors.But the story of Catherine and Heathcliff's attachment transforms from intimacy to strife when Catherine marries the refinedEdgar Linton. The ensuing story of violence and thwarted passion is one of the most powerful tales of the gothic tradition, a literary mode from which Emily Bront‰ wrings all of its terrifying potential. A regional novel with a global reach, a work ofsensational effects with a startling ethical core, Wuthering Heights is both a romantic melodrama and wrenching study of the difficulty of escaping from the legacies of violence.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Oliver Twist has asked for more!'Fleeing the workhouse, Oliver finds himself taken under the wing of the Artful Dodger and caught up with a group of pickpockets in London. As he tries to free himself from their clutches he becomes immersed in the seedy underbelly of the Capital, amongstcriminals, prostitutes and the homeless. Dickens scathing attack on the cruelness of Victorian Society features some of his most memorable and enduring characters, including innocent Oliver himself, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy.

This is the only critical edition of this perennially popular story. Sally Shuttleworth's introduction finds, beneath the idyllic evocation of rural bliss and a tale of love and high adventure, a startling sub-text which rigidly defends Victorian values,and portrays a `manly' hero constantly having to prove his masculinity to himself.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'The wolf thought to himself, What a tender young creature! what a nice plump mouthful - she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both.'Collected by the German Grimm brothers, these folk tales have captured the imaginations of children and adults alike since they were first published in 1812. The best-known stories such as The Golden Goose, Hansel and Gretel, The Frog Prince, andSnow-White and Rose-Red remain as popular today as when first told, although there is an underlying darkness and violence to the original stories that has softened over time.

Three extraordinary characters caught in a web of fatal obsession are at the centre of Hugo's novel. The grotesque hunchback Quasimodo, bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, owes his life to the austere archdeacon, Claude Frollo, who in turn is bound by a hopelesspassion to the gypsy dancer Esmeralda. She, meanwhile, is bewitched by a handsome, empty-headed officer, but by an unthinking act of kindness wins Quasimodo's selfless devotion. Behind the central figures moves a pageant of picturesque characters,ranging from the cruel, superstitious king, Louis XI, to the underworld of beggars and petty criminals. These disreputable truands' night-time assault on the cathedral is one of the most spectacular set-pieces of Romantic literature.Hugo vividly depicts medieval Paris, where all life is dominated by the massive cathedral. His passionate enthusiasm for Gothic architecture is set within the context of an epic view of mankind's history, to which he attaches even more importance than tothe novel's compelling story. Alban Krailsheimer's new translation is a fresh approach to this monumental classic by France's most celebrated Romantic.

Peer Gynt was Ibsen's last work to use poetry as a medium of dramatic expression, and the poetry is brilliantly appropriate to the imaginative swings between Scandinavian oral folk traditions, the Morrocan coast, the Sahara Desert, and the absurdistimages of the Cairo madhouse. This translation is taken from the acclaimed Oxford Ibsen.John McFarlane is Emeritus Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, and General Editor of the Oxford Ibsen.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Adventures of shipwreck, colossal beats and fantastical island from One Thousand and One Nights.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Clarissa Dalloway is a woman of high-society - vivacious, hospitable and sociable on the surface, yet underneath troubled and dissatisfied with her life in post-war Britain. This disillusionment is an emotion that bubbles under the surface of all ofWoolf's characters in Mrs Dalloway.Centred around one day in June where Clarissa is preparing for and holding a party, her interior monologue mingles with those of the other central characters in a stream of consciousness, entwining, yet never actually overriding the pervading sense ofisolation that haunts each person.One of Virginia Woolf's most accomplished novels, Mrs Dalloway is widely regarded as one of the most revolutionary works of the 20th century in its style and the themes that it tackles. The sense that Clarissa has married the wrong person, her past lovefor another female friend and the death of an intended party guest all serve to amplify this stultifying existence.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.'Arguably the greatest love story ever told, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet continues to touch modern audiences with its passionate depiction of the tragic romance between two young lovers. With a bitter feud between their respective families, Romeo andJuliet's love is troubled from the start, and through their relationship, Shakespeare shows the fine line between love, hatred, comedy and tragedy.