When people use the adjective 'Kafkaesque', it is 'The Trial' they have in mind - the nightmarish world of Joseph K., where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials and any help there may be comes from unexpected sources. K. is never told what he is on trial for, and when he says he is innocent, he is immediately asked 'innocent of what?' Is he perhaps on trial for his innocence? Could he have freed himself from the proceedings by confessing his guilt as a human being? Has the trial been set up because he is incapable of admitting his guilt, and hence his humanity? 'The Trial' is a chilling and at the same time blackly amusing tale that maintains, to the very end, a constant, relentless atmosphere of disorientation. 172pp. Paperback.

A tale of desire and possession, of love and death. An unspeakable subtext lies beneath the silence. It centres on 'the dying girl who wants to live - to live and love.' But those closest to her are in competition for what she can leave behind. Milly Theale, 'the heiress of all the ages', is imaged as a dove, a princess, a Renaissance beauty, but these symbols come at a dreadful cost. By the end of the novel we know, 'We shall never be again as we were!' With an introduction by Nicola Bradbury and Notes. 431pp in paperback.

In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerlad, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. What are the definitive forms of our relationships - love, marriage, family, friendship - really worth? And how might they be otherwise? Without directly referring to the war, 'Women in Love' explores these questions with restless energy. The novel develops experimental techniques which made Lawrence one of the most important writers of the Modernist movement. 464pp. Paperback.

Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the "roaring twenties", and a devastating expose of the "Jazz Age". Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick's cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him. With an Introduction and Notes by Guy Reynolds, University of Kent at Canterbury. 144pp. Paperback.

The young Thomas Hardy, working as an architect, but fired with literary ambition, tried for years to get into print. He finally succeeded with 'Desperate Remedies', a 'sensation novel' in the mode of Wilkie Collins. Here was a racy specimen of the genre, replete with sudden death, dark mysteries, intriguing clues, fire and storm, flight and pursuit. Anyone who enjoys 'The Woman in White' is likely to enjoy 'Desperate Remedies'. But that is only half the story. Hardy contrived also, in this unlikely context, to give a first airing to various of the ideas and technical experiments which were to characterise his later fiction. The result is an exhilaratingly uneven work: at any point in the narrative some brilliant passage of description or metaphor may burst out like a firework. Desperate Remedies can be relished both for what it is and for what it promises. 368 page Wordsworth paperback.

The plays of Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) are critically acclaimed throughout the world. The father of modern drama, Ibsen broke with theatrical conventions and created a more realistic form of drama that used the stage as a forum for debating social problems, notably the rights of the individual, and the damaging effects of orthodoxy. This collection of four plays contains, A Doll's House (1879) and Hedda Gabler (1890), his most striking depictions of the struggle by individuals - especially women - to realize their full potential; it also presents Peer Gynt (1867), an early verse tour-de-force, not originally intended for the stage, on the nature of the self, and The Master Builder (1892), a play that explores the clash between the old and the new in richly metaphorical language. This collection returns to the acclaimed translations of William Archer (1856-1924), who through these renditions played a major role in promoting Ibsen's reputation outside Norway. Archer was also a critic, who with actress Elizabeth Robbins and dramatist George Bernard Shaw was central in the modernisation of English theatre. 389 page paperback.

In this famous story of seduction, two highly intelligent but amoral French aristocrats plot the downfall of a respectable young married woman and a 15 year old girl who has only just emerged from the convent. The letters these two conspirators exchange are remarkably frank in describing how they manage to achieve their ends and, at the same time, reveal nuances of character which make it impossible to dismiss either of them as simply evil. Those written by their victims are equally revelatory in a quite different and subtle way, while the manner in which Laclos handles the epistolary form in order to ensure that his two protagonists are finally defeated, not by outside forces, but the fissures in their own relationship, is a triumph of narrative skill. This novel poses shrewd questions about the relation between love and sex, and suggests that, in certain sections of eighteenth century French high society, idleness, boredom and wealth had created individuals whose misfortunes it would be hard to regret when, only seven years after Dangerous Liaisons was published, the Revolution broke out. 397 page paperback.

With an introduction by Dr Richard Serjeantson. Since its first publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan has been recognised as one of the most compelling, and most controversial, works of political philosophy written in English. Forged in the crucible of the civil and religious warfare of the mid-17th century, it proposes a political theory that combines an unequivocal commitment to natural human liberty with the conviction that the sovereign power of government must be exercised absolutely. Leviathan begins from some shockingly naturalistic starting-points: an analysis of human nature as being motivated by vain-glory and pride, and a vision of religion as simply the fear of invisible powers made up by the mind. Yet from these deliberately unpromising elements, Hobbes constructs with unparalleled forcefulness an elaborate, systematic, and comprehensive account of how political society ought to be: ordered, law-bound, peaceful. In Leviathan, Hobbes presents us with a portrait of politics which depicts how a state that is made up of the unified body of all its citizens will be powerful, fruitful, protective of each of its members, and - above all - free from internal violence. Paperback, 535pp.

Featuring the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, in his most challenging case. The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast "with blazing eyes and dripping jaws" which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around isolated Baskerville Hall on Dartmoor. Now the hound seems to be stalking young Sir Henry, the new master of the Baskerville estate. Is this fiendish spectre the manifestation of the family curse? Or is Sir Henry the victim of a vile and scheming murderer? Only Sherlock Holmes can solve this devilish affair. 232pp. Paperback.

Translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. With an Introduction by Henry and Olga Claridge, University of Kent at Canterbury.War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon’s war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy’s view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy’s philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. This translation is one which received Tolstoy’s approval. 1024pp Wordsworth paperback.