Books in Complete Classics series

In The Three Musketeers, one of the greatest adventure stories ever written, we follow the fortunes of the dashing young swordsman D'Artagnan and his daredevil companions Athos, Aramis and Porthos. As the thrilling story unfolds, 'The Four' find themselves embroiled in duels, love-tangles and sinister intrigues which threaten the future King, Queen and France herself.

The Way We Live Now is a complex and compulsive tale that traces the career of Augustus Melmotte, a strange and mysterious financier who bursts into London society like a guided missile. In setting up a dubious scheme based on speculative money and stock market gambles, Melmotte manages to lure in several members of the English aristocracy, for whom money is the summum bonum. The world is at his feet, until the corruption catches up with him. Considered one of Trollope's greatest works, The Way We Live Now leaves the listener questioning whether much has changed in the last century, or if this, after all, is the way we live now.

We have met the intrepid hunter-tracker Allan Quatermain before, in H. Rider Haggards marvellous King Solomons Mines. This time, grieving from the tragic loss of his son, Quatermain longs to return to his beloved Africa. He sets out in search of a lost white tribe, the Zu-Vendis, ruled by two beautiful sister Queens. Once again, Quatermains companions are the indefatigable Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and the magnificent Zulu warrior Umslopogaas. The journey is incredibly dangerous, and thrillingly told. After a fantastic underground journey by canoe, our heroes are embroiled in a bloody civil war when both queens fall in love with the irresistibly handsome Curtis.

Father Brown is an eccentric priest with his own particular ways of dealing with crime. Narrator David Timson, having completed the whole of Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes canon a remarkable achievement turns his hand to the genial but certainly not innocent priest! This collection contains a group of stories from The Innocence of Father Brown, told unabridged.Included here are The Blue Cross, The Secret Garden, The Queer Feet, The Flying Stars, The Invisible Man, and The Honor of Israel Gow.

Left unfinished after Dickens died in 1870, The Mystery of Edwin Drood centres on Edwin Drood's uncle, John Jasper, and his love for Rosa Bud, Edwin's fiancee. Set in the dark, fictional cathedral city of Cloisterham, the novel is awash with guilt, disguise and mystery. It contains some fine writing, and just before his death, Dickens left an indication of where the plot was going, which will be included.

In Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens created one of his most penetrating satires on the weaknesses of government in the Victorian era. He chose Marshalsea debtors' prison as the setting, where his own father had been imprisoned. The story revolves around a complex mystery involving conspiracy, debt and a disputed will that results in unexpected consequences for the main characters.

Thomas Hardys novels about the cruel twists of fate that blight our lives have a timeless power to move us. In The Mayor Casterbridge, a young Michael Henchard makes a rash, alcohol-fuelled decision to sell his wife. Despite abstaining from alcohol from this point forward and living an upstanding life, this lapse is a revenant that returns to plague him at the peak of his career. In his struggles to overcome his hot-headed, belligerent nature, Henchard is very recognisably human and sympathetic hero.

We add to our acclaimed, unabridged Dickens collection with Martin Chuzzlewit Dickenspersonal favourite from among his own novels. Greed, suspicion and hypocrisy flourish as family and other hangers-on compete to be shown preference in the inheritance of the aging Martin Chuzzlewit. Dickens explores the theme of selfishness, but also its converse generosity, friendship and loyalty in this funny and richly-plotted novel. It features some of the most notorious Dickens villains, Seth Pecksniff and Jonas Chuzzlewit, as well as one of his most endearing characters, Tom Pinch. This captivating reading is by Sean Barrett, who was last heard in Bleak House.

Anna Karenina is beautiful, married to a successful man, and has a son whom she adores. But a chance meeting at a train station in Moscow sets her passionate heart alight, and she is defenseless in the face of Count Vronsky’s adoration. Having defied the rules of nineteenth-century Russian society, Anna is forced to pay a heavy price. Human nature, with all its failings, is the fabric of which this great and intense work is composed. Anna Karenina has been described as the perfect Russian novel.