Forster's renowned guide to writing sparkles with wit and insight for contemporary writers and readers. With lively language and excerpts from well-known classics, Forster takes on the seven elements vital to a novel: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm. He not only defines and explains such terms as "round" characters versus "flat" characters (and why both are needed for an effective novel), but also provides examples of writing...

Professor Spurgin, of Lawrence University, traces the novel from its beginnings in the 18th century, when Samuel Richardson penned Pamela, to its culmination in the work of the 20th century Modernists, including Lawrence, Joyce, and Woolf. He also relates plots and characters of particular novels to larger movements in English history. By placing more than two centuries of great English novelists in the context of British history, Professor Spurgin...

Abandoned at birth and threatened with a life in service, Defoe's young rebel sets her heart on independence. One fatal seduction and five husbands later, she resorts to a life of self-supporting crime.

"Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were...

As the youngest of their three sons marries and Anthony and Rachel Brinkley welcome their third daughter-in-law to the family, no one quite realizes the profound shift about to take place. For their different reasons, the two previous daughters-in-law hadn't been able to resist Rachel's maternal clout and Anthony's gentle charms, and had settled into Brinkley family life without rocking the boat. But Charlotte - very young, very beautiful and semi-spoiled...

"In the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and with Britain on the brink of economic ruin, a young English couple takes a tennis vacation in Antigua. There they meet Dima, a Russian who styles himself the world's number one money launderer. Dima wants, among other things, a game of tennis. Back in London, the couple is subjected to an all-night interrogation by the British Secret Service, which also needs their help. Their acquiescence will lead...

One of the most enduring popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell's work is as relevant today as it was in his own lifetime. Possibly, in the age of Brexit, Trump, and populism, even more so. Aside from his importance as a political theorist and novelist, Orwell's life is fascinating in its own right. Caught between uncertainty and his family's upper middle-class complacency, Orwell grew to despise the class system...