Allan Corduner

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street as her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. By 1943, the Allied bombs are falling, and the sirens begin to wail. Liesel shares out her books in the air-raid shelters. But one day in the life of Himmel Street, the wail of the sirens comes too late.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'dead souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a aristocrat. In this ebullient picaresque masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls (1842), Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

With his notorious reputation for trickery and deception, Loki is a Norse god like no other. This is the story of Loki's recruitment from the underworld of Chaos, his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master, Odin, through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard itself.

'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love'

Fifty-one years nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza's impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. 

During that half-century Flornetino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women but has loved none but Fermina. When Fermina's husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?