The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them as he heaves his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him.

A group of people have little in common except that they are all hopelessly lonely. A young girl, a drunken socialist and a black doctor are drawn to a gentle, sympathetic deaf mute, whose presence changes their lives.

Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's family saga is populated by an often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature and of history, converge in a brlliantly realised novel.

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and found himself handcuffed to history by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent. This is a family saga set against the background of the India of the 20th century.

Including all of Hemingway's shorter fiction, this collection is introduced by the poet James Fenton. The stories touch on the same themes as his novels: war, love, the nature of heroism, renunciation and the writer's life. They are arranged chronologically.

Exiled in Richmond in the 1920s, Virginia Woolf struggles to tame her rebellious mind and make a start on her new novel. In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan goes shopping for flowers for a party for her AIDS-suffering poet-friend. This novel meditates on artistic behaviour, love and madness.

During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for.

A novel constructed around the last great poem of a fictional American poet, John Shade, and an account of his death.

Annie Proulx's highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Two minor characters from Hamlet offer a novel view of the melancholy Dane.

From Work Suspended, where Plant, a writer of detective fiction, puts his incomplete novel in a drawer until such time as he can finish it, to Basil Seal Rides Again, in which the hero of Black Mischief defeats the children of the Sixties, this volume includes stories that encompass much of the social milieu of the 20th century.

Cassandra Mortmain records the characters of her unconventional family and the transformation of all their lives when a handsome American landlord arrives. This comedy romance was the first novel of the author who became best known for A Hundred and One Dalmatians .

Tells the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world - and did. This title presents the mystery about the murder - and rebirth - of man's spirit.

The extraordinary story of a boy called Wart -- ignored by everyone except his tutor, Merlin -- who goes on to become King Arthur.

Antoine Roquentin, an introspective historian, records the disturbing shifts in his perceptions and his struggle to restore meaning to life in a continuing present and without lies.

On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games.

This, the author's first novel, tells the story of a spoilt child in search of happiness. Wealthy, pampered and brilliant at school, Amory Blaine looks for the love of others, but finds only himself.