Who owns the Eustace Diamonds? Lizzie Eustace claims that Sir Florian Eustace, her late husband, gave them to her. But Mr Camperdown, the family solicitor, insists that they are an heirloom, to be passed down from generation to generation. Lizzie is both beautiful and clever, yet Mr Camperdown believes her to be a scheming liar. And Mr Camperdown is right! The battle for the diamonds rages until a robbery intervenes and they disappear. Or do they...?

In the last and most complex of the Barsetshire novels, many of Trollope's best-loved characters appear, but the mood of the novel is darker and more uneasy than in earlier volumes. At the heart of the novel is the penniless Reverend Josiah Crawley, first encountered in Framley Parsonage, who in the opening of the book is accused of theft, creating a public scandal that threatens to tear the community apart.

Dr Wortle's School introduces the unassuming Mr. Peacocke and his polite, newly-wed bride, as they join the teaching staff of an elite and exclusive Christian boys' school. Dr. Wortle, a devoted English scholar and the headmaster of the seminary academy, welcomes his two new teachers, confident that they will uphold the high standards of education at the school.

In this world of bribes, vendettas, and swindling, in which heiresses are gambled and won, Trollope's characters embody all the vices: Lady Carbury is 'false from head to foot'; her son Felix has 'the instincts of a horse, not approaching the higher sympathies of a dog'; and Melmotte - the colossal figure who dominates the book - is a 'horrid, big, rich scoundrel...a bloated swindler...a vile city ruffian'. But as vile as he is, he is considered one of Trollope's greatest creations.

This comprehensive novel consists of three subplots which interlink to form the whole and supply a trio of targets at which Trollope aims his proselytising pen. The first treats on the courtship of a woman by a man whom she does not love and with whom she is not compatible. Mary Lowther will not accept such a marriage of dishonesty. The second deals with the plight of a young woman who has fallen prey to the wiles of an evil seducer and subsequently adopts a life of prostitution.

Lord Rufford has kissed Arabella twice but she realises that much more needs to be done to win him and his estate. It is now time to tell John Morton she no longer wants to marry him? Starring Robert Glenister, Anna Maxwell Martin, Barbara Flynn, Blake Ritson, Stuart Milligan, Joanna David, Daniel Rabin, Penelope Rawlins, Carl Prekopp, Henry Devas, Elaine Claxton, Joanathan Forbes, Jane Whittenshaw, and Sean Baker. Directed by Tracey Neal. Dramatised by Martyn Wade.

At the opening of The Claverings (1866) the beautiful Julia Brabazon jilts her lover Harry Clavering in order to make a marriage of convenience with a wealthy but dissolute earl. Harry licks his wounds, leaves London to train as a civil engineer, and falls in love with his employer's daughter, to whom he soon becomes engaged. But when Julia returns unexpectedly as a wealthy widow, the flame of Harry's old love is rekindled.    

William Whittlestaff, an aging bachelor, becomes a guardian to the much younger Mary Lawrie. Having lost the woman he loved to a richer rival many years ago, he now finds himself falling in love with Mary despite knowing that her love belongs to another man, John Gordon. John left three years previously in search of his fortune in order to make himself worthy of Mary. Not knowing if she will ever see him again, Mary accepts Whittlestaff's proposal only for her true love to return.

Originally published in 1878, Is He Popenjoy? is a delightful comic novel written late in the career of author Anthony Trollope. The plot revolves around the themes of property and inheritance, as the relatives of the Marquis of Brotherton question the legitimacy of a foreign-born heir to the family estate. Lord George Germain, as the younger brother of the marquis, can neither inherit the family title nor enjoy the income from the estate. He occupies the ancestral home, Manor Cross, only by grudging permission of his elder brother, who lives abroad. 

Orley Farm, described as a “[B]rilliantly choreographed legal thriller” ( Mail on Sunday), centres on the pathos of the main character, Lady Mason. Youthful marriage choices, middle-aged marital crisis, love and loss revolve around the legal action and the complex portrayal of Lady Mason, who is both sympathetic and wily.

Elizabeth Gaskell's remarkable first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life portrays a love that defies the rigid boundaries of class with tragic consequences.

Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal which takes place in the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, and questions the morals and assumptions of the elite New York society set in the 1870s when "scandal was more dreaded than disease."

Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford, lost her mother when she was a child. Her father remarries wanting to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks. To Molly, any stepmother would have been a shock, but the new Mrs. Gibson is a self-absorbed, petty widow, and Molly's unhappiness is compounded by the realisation that her father has come to regret his second marriage.

First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.