Flaubert's Parrot By Julian Barnes

A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's characters.

First Love, Last Rites: Stories By Ian Mcewan

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying, but they are crafted with a lyricism and intensity

Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe

To Porterhouse College, Cambridge, famous for rowing, low academic standards and a proud cuisine, comes a new Master, an ex-grammar-school boy, demanding Firsts, women students, a self-service canteen and a slot-machine for contraceptives, to challenge the established order with catastrophic results...

How I met Myself (Level 3)

One icy winter's evening in Budapest, John Taylor is on his way home from the office when a man runs into him and knocks him over. The man turns to say sorry and John is amazed at what he sees: the man is John's double. The double rushes away but leaves no footprints in the snow. Over the next year it becomes clear to John that the meeting was no accident and that his double has a very important message to give him.

Shakespeare's Sonnets - 3rd Edition

This Arden edition of Shakespeare's sonnets is closely based on the 1609 Quarto. As Katherine Duncan-Jones demonstrates, this text was authorized by Shakespeare himself, and may be based on an authorial manuscript. The whole carefully-ordered sequence, including "A Lover's Complaint", is read in the context of Shakespeare's career and of the poems' historical setting within early Jacobean culture. A clear-eyed analysis of homoerotic elements in the sonnets puts an end to the century of homophobic readings