The Hogwarts Library Box Set

As one of the world’s most established industries, the hotel sector has remained relatively unchanged and unchallenged for decades. Yet traditional hotels have recently come under increasing pressure on two major fronts: from disruptors in the sharing economy such as Airbnb, and by a rising wave of modern consumers who have become re-educated by social media and hotel comparison websites. Can this traditionally slow-moving sector reinvent itself or will it become increasingly marginalized? Is it time for traditional hotels to check out? Increasing numbers of hoteliers believe that traditional hotels are on the brink of a resurgence in popularity. Global hotel chains are catching up to modern trends - adding technologized curation and personalisation to their offerings. In Checking Out, Katherine Doggrell interviews key figures in the hotel industry and draws upon various case studies to explore the ways in which this traditionalist industry can remain relevant in the 21st century. The hotel "experience" has been redefined, as guests now value fast Wi-Fi and mobile check-ins over room service and mini-fridges. Checking Out is an engaging investigation into the unprecedented challenges that face the hotel sector in the digital era and the strategies that are being employed by its leaders and innovators.

Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results. The diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her own feelings while enduring the cheerful amorality, old-fashioned indifference and priggish disapproval of those around her.

The shop owner Adolf Verloc, member of an anarchist group and secret agent for a foreign government, is summoned to meet Mr Vladimir, the country’s ambassador, who asks him to carry out a terrorist attack at a famous London landmark. Verloc has misgivings, but Mr Vladimir knows how to make people do what he wants, and when the plan goes wrong, it is Verloc - as well as his young wife, Winnie - who must deal with the consequences. A story of espionage, intrigue and corruption based on a real-life attempted terrorist attack in Victorian London, The Secret Agent was one of literature’s first political thrillers, and is widely considered to be among Conrad’s most compelling works.

On a visit to a provincial town to see his sister Nina who is suffering from cancer, Alexei Laptev, who works for his father’s Moscow haberdashery business, falls in love with Yulia, the daughter of her doctor, and proposes to her. Although she does not reciprocate his feelings, she agrees to marry him and live with him in the capital, where the couple’s relationship is marred by tensions: Yulia is filled with regrets about her choice and boredom with her new existence, while Alexei is nagged by the suspicion that she married him for his money alone. However, as time passes and misfortune strikes, they both learn to reassess all of their assumptions. Chekhov’s second longest prose work after The Steppe, Three Years is, in the author’s own words, "a novel of Moscow life" and an examination of its merchant classes. A powerful story of redemption and the nuances of human relationships, the novella helped cement Chekhov’s reputation as a major figure in Russian literature.

A journalist must follow the clues, no matter how far that takes her. Casey Benedict, star reporter at the Post, has infiltrated the lives and exposed the lies of countless politicians and power players. Using her network of contacts, Casey is always on the search for the next big story, no matter how much danger this might place her in, no matter what cost emotionally. Tipped off by an overheard conversation at an exclusive London nightclub, she begins to investigate the apparent suicide of a wealthy young British man, whose death has left his fiancee and family devastated. Casey’s determined hunt for the truth will take her from the glitz of St-Tropez to the deserts of Libya and on to the very darkest corners of the human mind.