At the Hotel Swiss-Touring, both the guests and the staff get tangled in intrigues and veiled confessions "If you knew what happens in the hotel every day!" Madame Bonnard, the eccentric and inquisitive owner of the Hotel Swiss-Touring-a third-rate Swiss hotel-knows her guests' many secrets, things they wouldn't tell their friends, family, or lawyers. They come from all over Europe in the wake of World War II, seeking refuge from their countries or...

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing." The Republic, a pioneering work of political philosophy, is a dialogue that does not feature Plato directly as at the heart is Socrates - his teacher. Even though the conversations between Socrates and Athenians as well as foreigners take place thousands of years ago, the questions Plato addresses in the volume are far from archaic. Should men and women have equal...

"In honor of the bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau's birth, this edition of Walden features an introduction and annotations by renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben. 'We need to understand that when Thoreau sat in the dooryard of his cabin 'from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house,' he was offering counsel and example exactly suited for our...

"Daphnis and Chloe" is the timeless story of young love by Greek writer Longus. Written sometimes during the 2nd century AD in the Roman Empire and the only work by Longus to have survived the passage of time, "Daphnis and Chloe" is one of the most enduringly popular works of Greek literature and has inspired countless adaptations. Deeply thoughtful and emotional, it is the story of two young orphans who are abandoned at birth and grow up as neighbors....

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him; of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances....

It is 1934. Elvira Western has left London and her dull marriage to Paul, a doctor, for Paris and her waiting lover, Oliver, a student radical. But drab hotels and interminable discussions of politics are not her idea of romance, and soon Elvira is longing to escape.

'I hate and despise business and anything to do with making money.' 'Do you think it's wrong?' 'It is the enemy of art.' Eighteen-year-old Honor Lawrence is out of place at the bank where she works. When she refuses to accept a promotion, despite her obvious poverty, her mentor, Augustus Debrett, doesn't quite know what to make of it, or of her. Honor is an enigma-and she leaves confusion and uneasiness in her wake. In The Puzzleheaded Girl, made...

Laura Rambotham, clever, precocious but naive, leaves her home in the country for boarding school in turn-of-the-century Melbourne. She wants to fit in, but her artistic spirit chafes against the stuffy confines and minds of the ladies school. This is the quintessential girl's coming-of-age novel, by one of Australia's finest writers.

Moving from Sydney to chilly London to study for the bar by correspondence, Clemency falls for failed actor Christian, a relationship that sheds light on the madness that can infect couples.