Romeo and Juliet is the world’s most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suicidal deaths.This play offers a rich mixture of romantic lyricism, bawdy comedy, intimate harmony and sudden violence. Long successful in the theatre, it has also generated numerous operas, ballets and films; and these have helped to make Romeo and Juliet perennially topical.

Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim — that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband.With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.

‘Doctor Watson, Mr Sherlock Holmes’ — The most famous introduction in the history of crime fiction takes place in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, bringing together Sherlock Holmes, the master of science detection, and John H. Watson, the great detective’s faithful chronicler. This novel not only establishes the magic of the Holmes myth but also provides the reader with a dramatic adventure yarn which ranges from the foggy, gas-lit streets of London to the burning plains of Utah.The Sign of the Four, the second Holmes novel, presents the detective with one of his greatest challenges. The theft of the Agna treasure in India forms a catalyst for treachery, deceit and murder.With these two classic novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, you have the brilliant foundation of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Reading pleasure rarely comes any finer.