Absent in the Spring

Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year. Belinda, meanwhile, has harboured sober feelings of devotion towards Archdeacon Hoccleve for thirty years. Then into their quiet, comfortable lives comes a famous librarian, Nathaniel Mold, and a bishop from Africa, Theodore Grote - who each takes to calling on the sisters for rather more unsettling reasons.

The definitive edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's most beloved book, sporting a facsimile of his original cover design and complete with colour plates of his own paintings, brand new reproductions of all his drawings, and colour versions of both maps. Bilbo Baggins enjoys a quiet and contented life, with no desire to travel far from the comforts of home; then one day the wizard Gandalf and a band of dwarves arrive unexpectedly and enlist his services - as a burglar - on a dangerous expedition to raid the treasure-hoard of Smaug the dragon. Bilbo's life is never to be the same again. Seldom has any book been so widely read and loved as JRR Tolkien's classic tale, The Hobbit. Since its first publication in 1937 it has remained in print to delight each new generation of readers all over the world, and its hero, Bilbo Baggins, has taken his place among the ranks of the immortals: Alice, Pooh, Toad...

Controversial, scandalous, erudite and funny, Ulysses is undisputedly a landmark of twentieth-century modernism. It charts one day - 16th June 1904 - in the lives of three inhabitants of Dublin: the advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, the artist Stephen Dedalus and Bloom's wife Molly. Their peregrinations, thoughts and encounters form the basis of the narrative, which becomes a celebration of all human experience through the lives of specific individuals in a specific place at a specific time. Ulysses is both an experimental novel and a book intimately concerned with the events of modern life. A lively repository of literary allusion and colloquial realism, this dazzlingly innovative, ambitious novel is here presented in its 1939 Odyssey Press version, which is regarded as the most accurate text published in Joyce's lifetime. This edition also includes over 9,000 notes by Joyce scholars Sam Slote, Marc A. Mamigonian and John Turner.

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was an English novelist of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. "The Way We Live Now" is a satirical novel, published in London in 1875 after first appearing in serialised form. The main character of the story, Augustus Melmotte, is a financier with a mysterious past. He is rumoured to have Jewish origins, and to be connected to some failed businesses in Vienna. When he moves his business and his family to London, the city's upper crust begins buzzing with rumours about him.

A funny, poignant snapshot of young adulthood from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the Rye Franny Glass and Lane Coutell are the perfect campus couple: beautiful, intelligent, their whole lives ahead of them. But one weekend when Franny is visiting, amid the excitement of the big Yale game, something goes wrong and tensions begin to surface. Are they really such a perfect match after all? Franny's older brother is Zooey. They come from a sophisticated yet highly eccentric family: all seven Glass siblings are former child stars, all strange and enchanting and damaged in their own way. And when Franny's anxiety spirals into a full-blown breakdown, Zooey is the only one who might be able to save her. A novel in two intertwining stories, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood. It is a gleaming example of the wit, precision and poignancy that have made J.D. Salinger one of the most beloved American novelists of the twentieth century.