New This Month

Ric Jerrom narrates On the Happy Life – The Complete Dialogues by Seneca, a timely collection of practical and accessible thoughts on how to live in a troubled world. Covering a wide range of subjects, including the shortness of life, tranquillity of mind, anger, mercy, happiness and grief, Seneca’s Stoic exercises still have much relevance today. Meanwhile, Rachel Atkins brings us East Lynne, Ellen Wood’s gripping sensation novel of 1861; Leighton Pugh revisits the Rougon-Macquart family with Émile Zola’s La Bête Humaine, a shocking account of brutal violence, greed, revenge and repression; and Georgina Sutton transports us to 1920s and ’30s rural England for the concluding three novels of The Complete Mapp and Lucia.

In his dialogues the Stoic philosopher Seneca outlines his thoughts on how to live in a troubled world. Tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote practical philosophical exercises…

Ellen Wood’s sensation novel of 1861 found immediate popularity on its first publication. Its themes of infidelity and double identity attracted a wide range of readers, from the Prince of Wales to Joseph Conrad.

Against the backdrop of political and legal corruption in Second Empire France, La Bête Humaine (1890) contrasts the technological advancements of the Machine Age with the primitive and timeless human impulse to possess through killing…

Sharply observant and wickedly funny, E.F. Benson’s ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels satirise the upper-middle-class social climbers in 1920s and ’30s rural England. Games of bridge and cups of tea fuel hilarious gossip and vindictive plots a-plenty.

The NAB Blog: Dr Moreau – Madman or Visionary?

H.G. Wells was certainly not an opponent of scientific progress. He had a background of training in biology and as a science journalist. However, he was all too aware that progress brings with it ethical questions. At the heart of …

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