Books

 

In the cold and foggy Christmas holidays, it doesn't seem as though the Five Find-Outers and Dog will have anything exciting to investigate. Fatty's got some wonderful new disguises, but there doesn't seem to be any mystery for them at all this time. Then Pip stumbles on a single furnished room in an otherwise deserted house. They try to find out whom the house belongs to, but they're not making much progress - until Fatty decides to go to the house to see what he can uncover. Suddenly trapped by the men inside, he writes a note to his friends, apparently innocuous enough, but with another secret message hidden beneath it. Mr Goon has tried investigating the house too, but only ends up locked in the coal cellar and covered in dust. The rest of the Find-Outers call Inspector Jenks to help Fatty, and find the house has been a place for storing stolen goods and the men inside are wanted criminals. Another mystery safely solved!

---

Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady – the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the maid Sofia Andreyevna – as he struggles to find his place in society and “become a Rothschild” against the background of 1870s Russia, a nation still tethered to its old systems and values but shaken up by the new ideological currents of socialism and nihilism.

Both a Bildungsroman and a novel of ideas, dealing with themes such as the relationship between fathers and sons and the role of money in modern society, The Adolescent – here presented in a brand-new translation by Dora O'Brien – shows Dostoevsky at his finest as a social commentator and observer of the workings of a young man's mind.

Having travelled from her native New York to London to meet her relatives, Isabel Archer, a young, independently minded young woman, rejects the marriage proposals of two suitors in her determination to stay in control of her destiny. When she suddenly comes into a large legacy, Isabel believes that this windfall will finally ensure the freedom that she yearns for and embarks on an exhilarating journey through France and Italy, only to find her endeavours thwarted by the sinister plotting of some of her acquaintances. Considered by many to be Henry James's finest novel, The Portrait of a Lady is a subtle examination of Victorian society and power relations, providing a groundbreaking psychological study of its protagonist. This volume is based on the authoritative New York Edition, and includes the author's seminal preface.

In this dark and compelling short novel, Fyodor Dostoevsky tells the story of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young tutor working in the household of an imperious Russian general. Alexey tries to break through the wall of the established order in Russia, but instead becomes mired in the endless downward spiral of betting and loss. His intense and inescapable addiction is accentuated by his affair with the General’s cruel yet seductively adept niece, Polina. In The Gambler, Dostoevsky reaches the heights of drama with this stunning psychological portrait.