Mark Hodkinson grew up among the terrace houses of Rochdale in a house with just one book. Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher. He still lives in Rochdale but is now surrounded by 3,500 titles, at the last count. No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. It’s about the schools, the music, the people – but pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors that led the way and shaped his life. It’s about a family who didn’t see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories. It’s also a story of how writing and reading has changed over the last five decades.

Robert Tressell's spirited attack on selfish capitalism is a masterpiece of wit and political passion and one of the most authentic novels of English working class life ever written. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists tells the story of a group of working men who are joined one day by Frank Owen, a journeyman-prophet with a vision of a just society. Indicting the 'philanthropy' of the working class, who toil solely for the benefit of their masters, and initiating them into the secrets of the 'Great Money Trick' which alienates them from their labour, Owen's attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system rouse his fellow men from their political quietism.

Scottish Stories is a treasury of great writing from a richly literary land, where the short story has flourished for over two centuries. Here are chilling supernatural stories from Robert Louis Stevenson, Eric Linklater and Dorothy K. Haynes; side-splittingly funny stories from Alasdair Gray and Irvine Welsh; a stylish offering from urban realist William McIlvanney. Iain Crichton Smith evokes the Gaelic-speaking highlands, George Mackay-Brown the Orkney islands, Andrew O'Hagan working-class Glasgow; while Leila Aboulela, originally from Sudan, ponders the relations between colonizers and colonized from her home in Aberdeen. Though there is no one 'Scottishness' that binds the authors together, writes editor Gerard Carruthers, each has a Scottish footprint or accent. And perhaps more importantly, all are masters of their form.

As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst (Lady Trent, of the riveting and daring Draconic adventure memoirs) Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study.When Lord Gleinleigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war. Alongside dearest childhood friend and fellow archeologist Kudshayn, she must find proof of the conspiracy before it’s too late.

As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst (Lady Trent, of the riveting and daring Draconic adventure memoirs) Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study.When Lord Gleinleigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war. Alongside dearest childhood friend and fellow archeologist Kudshayn, she must find proof of the conspiracy before it’s too late.

As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst (Lady Trent, of the riveting and daring Draconic adventure memoirs) Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study.When Lord Gleinleigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war. Alongside dearest childhood friend and fellow archeologist Kudshayn, she must find proof of the conspiracy before it’s too late.

"The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!" When The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 by two little-known German philosophers, no one could have expected the explosive effect it would have on world history. In it, Marx and Engels condemned the bourgeoisie's exploitation of the working class and predicted a revolution that would abolish private property, overthrow the bourgeoisie, and end with the collapse of capitalism. This edition is the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto overseen by Friedrich Engels himself.

One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. While weathering the storm that is his marriage of one-way love to his no-good wife Petal, disaster strikes and Petal is killed in a spectacular road accident. Set adrift on an aimless quest, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers – to the remote corners of far-flung Newfoundland. With his delinquent daughters Bunny and Sunshine in tow, Quoyle takes up the post of shipping news reporter, and finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. The Shipping News is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. While weathering the storm that is his marriage of one-way love to his no-good wife Petal, disaster strikes and Petal is killed in a spectacular road accident. Set adrift on an aimless quest, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers – to the remote corners of far-flung Newfoundland. With his delinquent daughters Bunny and Sunshine in tow, Quoyle takes up the post of shipping news reporter, and finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. The Shipping News is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

'He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others'. So Virginia Woolf described the 'common reader' for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others. This is an informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage by a writer of genius.

Kamal lives a life of cosmopolitan glamour, exploring the restaurants and boutiques of Istanbul with his friends and fiancй. In the newly modern city, they pride themselves on their liberal attitudes and Western style. A chance encounter with Fusun, a working-class shop-girl, begins a long, obsessive love affair, one that draws him deep into Istanbul’s complex history, and uncovers the forces of class and gender that still control its inhabitants’ lives.

Devastating, tough and tender, a portrait of modern masculinity as shaped by violence and poverty but also by the courage to love and to survive Anthony grew up brawling with the headcases round the estate, torching stolen cars, beaking school. His little brother Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Finished with university, he finds Anthony's drinking spiralling out of control as the dark shadow of his childhood catches up on him. Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished and no one will give Sean the time of day. One night he loses it and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos. Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of this mistake, as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to find a way through the rubble. And it maps, with great compassion, the forces which keep young working class men in harm's way, the silences that exist in the gaps between what is sayable, and the formidable courage required to survive.

Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, two young Americans, Mark and Delia Owens, caught a plane to Africa, bought a thirdhand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses began their zoology research, working along animals that had never before been exposed to humans. An international bestseller on original release, Cry of the Kalahari is the story of the Owenses's life with lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes, and the many other creatures they came to know. It is also a gripping account of how they survived the dangers of living in one of the last and largest pristine areas on Earth.

He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. So Virginia Woolf described the common reader for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others. This is an informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage by a writer of genius.

He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. So Virginia Woolf described the common reader for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others. This is an informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage by a writer of genius.

People ask me how come I m still alive, and I don t know what to say. When I was growing up, if you d have put me up against a wall with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and California, I wouldn t have put money on me, no f**king way. But here I am: ready to tell my story, in my own words, for the first time. A lot of it ain t gonna be pretty. I ve done some bad things in my time. But I ain t the devil. I m just John Osbourne: a working class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time.