After losing her parents, young Mary Lennox is sent from India to live in her uncle's gloomy mansion on the wild English moors. She is lonely and has no one to play with, but one day she learns of a secret garden somewhere in the grounds that no one is allowed to enter. Then Mary uncovers an old key in a flowerbed.

Combining a historical setting, a supernatural theme and a compelling and likeable heroine, this is a novel for teen girls.

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. When the Crawfords arrive in the neighbourhood, they bring the glamour of London life with them.

During her first season at Bath, a young girl experiences the joys of fashionable society. When her sophisticated new aquaintances invite her to their father's mysterious house, she fabricates her own Gothic romance, imagining the crimes that have been committed there.

Imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. This is the story of love, friendship and memory, with a sense of the fragility of life.

A compelling mystery of family secrets...

Bridget Jones wants to have it all - and once she's given up smoking and got down to 8st 7 she will. Based on Helen Fielding's diary in the Independent newspaper, this is a novel about a year in the life of a single girl on an optimistic but doomed quest for self-improvement and Inner Poise. First published in 1996.

In The Canterbury Tales , Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. This version of the text has been translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill.

This text is a revised edition of Dickens' classic tale. After 18 years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. Two very different men become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette.

This text is an updated edition of George Eliot's classic tale. The novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community.

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 .

A stunning novel set in the Tudor court, as the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth is played out against a background of betrayal, conflict and passion.

The first volume of the classic adventures and misadventures involving the young vet, James Herriot, in the Yorkshire Dales from 1937 onwards.

Splendid and sumptuous historical novel from this internationally bestselling author, telling of the early life of Katherine of Aragon. We think of her as the barren wife of a notorious king; but behind this legacy lies a fascinating story.

This is the novel Dickens regarded as his favourite child and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experience from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life.

Scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery, this novel is peopled with some of memorable characters (the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy). It combines the elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama.

In the year 1327, four children slip away from the cathedral city of Kingsbridge. In the forest they see two men killed. As adults, their lives will be braided together by love, greed and revenge. They will see prosperity and famine, plague and war. And they will live under the shadow of the unexplained killing they had witnessed.

Tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.