Classic Fiction

A brand new anthology of previously unpublished and uncollected supernatural mysteries by some of the masters of the Golden Age – thrills, spills and chills perfect for Halloween. It is said that books are written to bring sunshine into our dull, grey lives – to show us places we want to escape to, lives we want to live, people we...

A captivating picture book retelling by Shakespeare’s Globe for very young readers.William Shakespeare’s comedy about mistaken identities and unrequited love in the far-off kingdom of Illyria is unforgettably re-imagined by Shakespeare’s Globe as a picture book for very young readers. With exquisite and detailed illustrations from the acclaimed artist Jane Ray, who has previously been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway...

The Turn of the Screw, a novella written by Henry James in 1898, is perhaps one of the most widely read ghost stories in classrooms across the country. The story's ambiguity and characters' unreliability also mark the book as a work of impressionism, an important literary movement that's often left out of the children's literary 'canon.'While best-known for The Turn...

A masquerade ball in a secluded abbey; a vendetta settled in the wine cellars of an Italian palazzo; a gloomy castle in a desolated landscape; the beating of a heart beneath the floorboards: the plots and settings of Poe's dark, mysterious tales continue to haunt the popular imagination. This new selection introduces the greatest Gothic fiction from one of the...

A special reissue from Head of Zeus's bestselling anthology collection of the best 100 short stories written by women, selected by Victoria Hislop, one of the nation's favourite novelists. Witty, heartbreaking, shocking, satirical: the short story can excite or sadden, entice or repulse. The one thing it can never be is dull. Now Victoria Hislop has collected 100 stories from...

Deep in the woods, a young boy is kept prisoner by his uncle. He sees no other children, and has no friends. But he does hold the key to a secret.Meanwhile, in a nearby village, schoolteacher Frans invents stories of perilous deeds, shipwrecks, and haunted castles to entertain his pupils. Then one stormy evening, he is summoned to a clandestine...

A beautiful paperback edition of The Silver Chair, book six in the classic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. This edition is complete with cover and interior art by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, a noble band of friends is sent to rescue a prince held captive. But their mission to Underland...

In a dusty library, in the quietest corner of a house in Tokyo, live the Little People: Fern, Balbo, Robin and Iris. Just a few inches high, sleeping in cigarette boxes and crafting shoes from old book jackets, they need only one thing from their Humans - a nightly glass of milk, served in a sparkling blue glass goblet.But when...

Edinburgh, 1930, and the world is on the brink of change. Leading the charge is the glamorous, free-spirited Miss Jean Brodie, schoolteacher at the Marcia Blaine Academy, whose guiding principle is 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she'll be mine for life. I am dedicated to you in my prime.' While Miss Brodie manipulates and charms 'her...

A window onto the past, full of fire and life- two immortal traditions as the English language has never seen them before SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD The poets in this book are philosophers and statesmen; priestesses and warriors; teenage girls, concerned for their birthday celebrations; drunkards and brawlers; grumpy old men...

Aeons in the future, Earth's surface faces perpetual night after the failing of the Sun. Humanity is entrenched within the Last Redoubt, a colossal metal pyramid. Beyond the safety of its structure lurk countless unknowable threats.William Hope Hodgson's strange, visionary novel of humanity's struggle for survival in the eternal darkness of the future was first published in 1912, and is...

Twenty of the finest science fiction short stories from one of the genre’s greatest writers, Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov was the Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America, the founder of robot ethics, and one of the world’s most prolific authors of fiction and non-fiction. Asimov’s short fiction has been enjoyed by millions for more than half a...

Now revised and expanded for its first paperback publication, The Life of Crime was the winner of four major prizes for the best critical/biographical book related to crime fiction: the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating Awards; and was shortlisted for both the Agatha and Gold Dagger Awards In this groundbreaking history of crime fiction, acclaimed expert Martin Edwards traces...

A gift edition of this classic tale of pups and villains, with vibrant illustrations by the award-winning Alex T Smith, creator of Claude.‘As comforting as hot buttered toast’ – Guardian THE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANSWhen dastardly Cruella De Vil steals a whole litter of Dalmatian puppies to make a new fur coat, the puppies’ parents, Pongo and Missus, lose no...

When Robert Spinrobin, drifting through life in a daydream, answers a newspaper ad asking for an imaginative tenor with a grasp of ancient languages, he soon finds himself travelling to rural Wales and the home of ex-clergyman, Philip Skale. Here Skale, the housekeeper Mrs. Mawle and her niece, Miriam, have been pursuing a new science, harnessing sound to discover the...

Laurenzo and Jiacomo are identical twins, as alike as two drops of water. No one can tell them apart (which comes in very handy for playing tricks on their teachers). And no one can split them up.But when tragedy strikes their carefree young lives, they must make their own way in the world. As each brother chooses his own path...

In Call of the Wild, Buck lives as a pampered house dog in California. He eats well, sleeps when he wants, and is treated with affection by his owners that is, until he is abducted by thieves and pressed into service as a sled dog for the Klondike Gold Rush. Mistreated by a succession of abusive owners, Buck comes to...

Written in 1928, H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu defined the ancient gods as dark creatures who came from the stars and ruled the world before mankind. When these ancient ones awaken, humanity is plagued by a nightmare of terrors etched upon an epic backdrop. The author's concept deeply redefined the horror story with this thrilling, dense mystery that spawned...

I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence.Beyond the genre-defining influence of Dracula, Bram Stoker was also a master of the short story form. This new collection of the author's tales represents his diverse...

Now as sumptuously packaged as they are critically acclaimed—new deluxe trade paperback editions of the beloved stories. Husain Haddawy's rapturously received translation of The Arabian Nights is based on a landmark reconstruction of the earliest extant manuscript version. Readers of this classic will also want to own Sindbad, a collection of four later stories associated with the Arabian Nights tradition,...

Fresh from his escapades with Tom Sawyer, with six thousand dollars in the bank, Huck Finn faces a new challenge: his father, Pap, who wants Huck's fortune and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it. Escaping from Pap, Huck meets Miss Watson s slave, Jim, who has run away after learning that Miss Watson may sell him....

From the author of Some Girls Do comes a YA sapphic romance about two girls from different sides of the tracks. From the author of Some Girls Do comes a YA sapphic romance about two girls from different sides of the tracks. Casshas a rule about dating summer girls-just say no. Every year, her idyllic beach town is flooded with...

One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, including extracts from his masterpiece, The Prelude, and the best-loved of his shorter poems such as 'Composed Upon Westminster...

As war between Prussia and Denmark brews over the territory of Schleswig-Holstein, a German nobleman is called to serve as a gentleman-in-waiting at the Danish court. Count Holk's life so far has been happy and simple - he married for love, and his pious wife and canny brother have managed his estate so well that he's even been able to...

The stories in this collection are rich, tangled, and suffused with mystery and wonder. In the narrowing, winding city streets, strange figures roam. Great flocks of birds soar over rooftops, obscuring the sun. Cockroaches appear through cracks and scuttle across floorboards. Individuals careen from university buildings to dimly lit parlour rooms, through strange shops and endless storms.Crowded with moments of...

Music Stories is a beautiful hardback gift anthology of short stories about music by a remarkable array of literary greats, selected by Wesley Stace, who is both a musician and a writer. The book presents variations on a musical theme by a striking range of authors, among them Flaubert, Turgenev, Proust, Nabokov, Katherine Mansfield, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Amit Chaudhuri,...

Mr Bliss, a man notable for his immensely tall hats and for the girabbit in his garden, takes the whimsical decision to buy a motor car. But his first drive to visit friends quickly becomes a catalogue of disasters… J.R.R. Tolkien invented and illustrated the book of Mr Bliss’s adventures for his own children when they were very young. The...

Color the stuff of nightmares in Monsters of Myth and Legend Coloring Book.  Frankenstein, Dracula, and Medusa. Everyone knows the names of these terrifying figures from myth, legend, and media. In this spooky coloring book, you can make them vividly real! Fans of horror and mythology will love the unforgettable images of everyone's favorite monsters, waiting for an artistic, chilling...

What would you do if you found yourself in the world of the classic crime novel? How would you avoid being framed for murder or evade an untimely demise? Let classic crime expert Kate Jackson give you the tools to survive the golden age murder mystery.From dinner parties to detective interrogations, you'll need to know how to keep your wits...

The first volume of the enthralling, hallucinatory masterwork by one of Central Europe's most celebrated novelists. 'We exist between the past and future like the vermiform body of a butterfly, in between its two wings' Beneath the streets of communist Bucharest linger hidden passageways, lost to memory. Here, sprawling hospitals give way to travelling circuses and underground jazz clubs, and...

An exciting new collection of tales and whiskers from the world's best-loved storyteller. From the dog who found a lost teddy to the missing basket filled with kittens, this collection of Enid Blyton tales has all your favourite pets, whether they have fur, scales, feathers or shells. Would you like to meet them? These traditional tales are ideal for younger...

Layli and Majnun is the Persian epic that inspired Eric Clapton's unforgettable love song "Layla" and that Lord Byron called "the Romeo and Juliet of the East," presented here in a masterly new translation. A Penguin Classic This iconic love story of the Middle East, written by a twelfth-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety,...

Gift edition of the early classic work of Epic Literature, written in the same era as Divine Comedy. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales between 1387 and 1400, as a series of stories told by a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury. The pilgrims come from every part of society, telling each other tales to pass the...

A stand-alone novella from Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time highlighting love's transformative force and the trap lying beneath: the insidious reach of jealousy. Charles Swann is a man about town with friends in high places. At Parisian society gatherings hosted by the wealthy Verdurin couple, he meets the intriguing Odette de Crécy. Though struck by how different they...

The Moomins are going to the theatre! In this brand new story based on Tove Jansson's magical world of Moominvalley, you can lift the flaps and spot your favourite characters. This beautiful shaped board book is perfect for young Moomin fans. The Moomins are putting on a show... but the theatre has been burgled! Can they catch the culprit? Join...

The price of genius is one hell of a hangover. When Henry Lawson—New South Wales' most promising young writer and a budding alcoholic—is banished from Sydney to "find the real bush," he hopes for fresh material and a new start. Instead, he stumbles into a mind-bending collision of myth, politics, and madness on the edge of the Darling River. Henry...

An atmospheric story of obsession and inner conflict set in the oppressive heat of a Venetian summer, Death in Venice is considered to be one of Thomas Mann's greatest works. Death in Venice is part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics bound in cloth with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make...

A glamorous 1920s romance for classic fiction lovers, It by Elinor Glyn delivers wit, passion, and the original "It" factor that defined an era. It by Elinor Glyn: The Original Romance That Defined an Era A timeless tale of passion, secrets, and desire. Dive into It, the classic novel by Elinor Glyn that captivated readers in the Roaring Twenties and...

1937. Having lost the Civil War in Spain, four republican soldiers lead a fugitive existence deep in the Cantabrian mountains. They are on the run, skirmishing with Franco's soldiers, knowing that surrender means execution. Wounded and hungry, the hold-outs are drawn to the villages they once inhabited, not only risking their lives but also the lives of anyone caught helping...

The vampire is one of the great enemies of humanity, a nightmarish figure who feeds on the living in order to sustain themselves. Born from ancient folklore, writers in the nineteenth century gave form to the vampire as we know it today. Still haunting our subconscious in the twentieth century, a new wave of writers continued to develop the imagery...

Suddenly the upper rim of the clear setting sun disappeared behind the hill of Knockdoula, and it was twilight. Each child felt the transition like a shock... and the rounded summit of Lisnavoura, now closely overhanging them, struck them with a new fear. Uncanny Ireland delves into Ireland's rich literary history, uncovering a vein of potent fantastic fiction. This collection...

An explosive love triangle, a formidable matriarch, and a house party of enemies. All drawn inexorably … Towards Zero. Now Anjelica Huston and a star-studded cast feature in a brand new BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie's tense, ingenious novel. Read it before you see it! After a scandalous celebrity divorce, British tennis star Nevile Strange and his ex-wife Audrey make...

“A reminder that age is no barrier to the unconventional and daring…An extraordinary story about an extraordinary woman.” New York Times bestseller Hazel Gaynor “Told with warmth and grace, this novel is a rallying cry for all who dare regardless of age and gender.” Toronto Star Teacher. Widow. Legend. It’s 1901 and the mists of change are swirling. Queen Victoria’s...

A splash of something huge resounds through the sea-fog. In the stillness of a dark room, some unspeakable evil is making its approach. This new selection offers the most chilling and unsettling of Hodgson's short fiction, from encounters with abominations at sea to fireside tales of otherworldly forces from his inventive occult detective character Carnacki, the ghost finder. A master...

The fabric of Dorothy K. Haynes' weird fiction is truly the stuff of nightmares, where horrors cruel and mundane are interwoven with threads of dark fairy folklore and twisted witchcraft to deliver heady supernatural thrills. In this new collection, Haynes expert Craig Lamont presents the essential classics of her strange storytelling alongside rarities from obscure anthologies and magazines, and several...

"Where grow pines and firs amain, Under Stars, sans heat or rain, Chief of Hammand, 'ware thy Bane!" So goes the ancient rhyme of the Hammands, a family hounded for centuries by a ferocious beast whose visitations wreak death and disorder. Now, in the wake of the First World War, siblings Oliver and Swanhild are the last of the Hammands,...

The Platform Edge howls down the tunnels with a new collection showcasing the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks, many of which are republished here for the first time since their original departure. Waiting beyond the barrier are ghostly travelling companions bent on disturbing the commutes of the living. Experience a subway car disappearing into a different dimension...

A powerful new anthology that redefines our understanding of existentialism and argues for its contemporary relevance. Superb ... I can't imagine a better way of meeting the existentialists in all their variety - Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Cafe 'We are thrown into the world at every moment, and committed within it' In the aftermath of the Second...

The terrifying presence of a restless spirit on the top deck of a London bus; a possession at the bridge table on a cruise up the Nile; a nightmare encounter with druidic sacrifice in the innocuous setting of a terraced back garden... E. F. Benson's The Outcast pushes the boundaries of the ghost story tradition by exploring new, previously 'out...

There was not a soul to be seen, up or down; and the trees stood like ghosts, and the silence was terrible, and everything clear as day. You don't know what silence is until you find it in the light like that... Margaret Oliphant's superbly strange tales have been long overdue their rediscovery as classics of the Victorian ghost story...

The supernatural tales of A. M. Burrage were recognised by contemporaries such as M. R. James and the critic E. F. Bleiler as some of the most imaginative and cleverly told ghost stories in the English language, and yet today his name haunts the fringes of the genre. Burrage was unafraid to position his ghosts among the trappings of modernity,...

I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly toward the House. Amidst the din of roaring water, in a chasm where a house once stood in an isolated corner of Ireland, a manuscript is discovered entitled...

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." So begins one of the most beloved and delightful tales in the English language. Set in the imaginary world of Middle-earth, at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is one of literature's most enduring and well-loved novels. The text in this 372-page paperback...

The wine looked a thick amber colour, powdered with gold. Lally thought of the doctor's story of the two men who had followed this woman to the forest and afterwards died miserably. Perhaps it was here that she had brought them. Following a scandal in the Duke's court, roguish officer Lally Duchene is dismissed to a new post at a...

Vengeful spirits, mysterious revenants and haunted objects stalk the pages of Wilkie Collins' short fiction, and yet his reputation as a sensation and detective novelist has long overshadowed his inventive contributions to the ghost story genre. Drawing from across the writer's career, Xavier Aldana Reyes presents eight stories of the strange and uncanny to celebrate this lesser-known side of Collins'...

'Walter Trier's deceptively innocent drawings are as classic as Kästner's words; I never tire of them' Quentin Blake 'Atmospheric... bittersweet... a memorable exploration of bravery, boyhood and friendships' Wall Street Journal Martin's school is not the ordinary kind. There are snowball fights, kidnappings, cakes, a parachute jump, a mysterious man who lives in a railway carriage, and a play about...

At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the world she looked at suffered a change... It was the same world, flat field for flat field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, infinitely transparent. Tales of eternal damnation, love, sexuality, death, and supernatural talents form the core of May...

A young girl whose love for her fiancé continues even after her death; a sinister old lady with claw-like hands who cares little for the qualities of her companions provided they are young and full of life; and a haunted mirror that foretells of approaching death for those who gaze into its depths. These are just some of the haunting...

A nameless writer has come to Dunnet Landing, a small town on the coast of Maine, for the summer in order to finish her manuscript. Compared to the hectic pace of the city she's left behind, she finds herself absorbed in the slow rhythms of her new daily life. Her observations of the residents of Dunnet Landing— their loves, their...

You will hear loud raps, you will have your faces touched by cold, damp, unseen fingers. THINGS will be all around you, and a frightful white face will come out of nowhere and peer into yours! Through the electric silence of the séance, a terrible, hurtling force draws near. A play with the planchette invites a diabolical visitor to Radley...

Christianna Brand is not merely a purveyor of thrills or a maker of puzzles. She is a novelist. - The Daily Telegraph While the Blitz bombards London, the boisterous grandchildren of Sir Richard March have descended upon Swanswater Manor in Kent for a family gathering and the finalising of the patriarch's will. Disgruntled by the behaviour and life choices of...

Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered. The disquieting tales of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman explore a world of contrast, where the supernatural erupts out of authentically drawn portraits of...

Kipling's reputation as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire has obscured the true nature and scope of his poetic achievement. His poems range from exhilarating celebrations of British expansion overseas, through vivid character sketches of soldiers and seamen, to enchanting poems for children, political invective, and artistic manifestos. Here, Kipling's poems are presented in chronological order to reveal the...

These stories have all had their origins in dreams... Terrifying enough to the dreamer... I hope that some readers will experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them. A malignant entity answers the call of an ancient curse on the coast of Brittany; a traveller's curiosity delivers him to an abominable Hallowe'en ritual; the curious new owner...

It is too often accepted that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake - but this is far from the truth. This new anthology, Queens of the Abyss, follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the...

Pomegranate Seed and Other Ghostly Tales by Edith Wharton is part of the Penguin Horror series, a celebration of the very best literary horror. This series features terrifying novels and tales that have, for generations, thrilled, captivated, and kept readers wide awake at night. Known for writing some of the most incisive and elegant novels of the early twentieth century,...

Tales of weird and supernatural suspense from Arthur Conan Doyle, the author best known for the creation of the illustrious detective Sherlock Holmes. The next addition to the Hardback Classics series, with previous titles collecting the works of Sheridan le Fanu, Margaret Oliphant and M.R. James. The luminous fog drifted slowly off the table and wavered and flickered across the...

Out of the Past "Come inside, my bonny witch-finder. Here is shelter for thee..." A tale of callous murder and deranged revenge rings out from fifteenth-century Italy. A witch-finder's great triumph is also the herald of his own doom in Civil War Britain. A prisoner's fate at the hands of the Inquisition in sixteenth-century Mexico leads to an encounter with...

Three bestselling Ezra Jack Keats board books packed in a winter holiday-themed box—an exquisite gift! This collection features the Caldecott-winning The Snowy Day, along with two other Keats bestsellers: Peter's Chair and Whistle For Willie. All three books revolve around the main character, Peter, in this timeless collection of classic board books.

Family is everything... I always knew my father was a cold, heartless bastard. But the moment he took Elle Castlemaine and her pathetic daughter into our home, barely a month after our mum died, he unleashed something savage inside me. I didn't care they lost their home. Didn't care their father was behind bars. Didn't care he betrayed the notorious...

Something moved along upon the verge with a sliding, writhing motion, seeming like the body of a huge serpent...Drawn by horror's fearful traction, I moved to the verge of the parapet and looked down. Bristol, the early eighteenth century. On the run following a fatal accident at school, the orphan Will Harvell joins a voyage setting sail in search of...

This powerful play is a dramatized autobiography of the great American playwright, Eugene O'Neill, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Nobel Prize for Literature. Long Day's Journey Into Night was written in 1940 but not staged until 1956, after O'Neill's death. Unashamedly autobiographical, it is, as he puts it himself in the dedicatory note, 'a play of...

The first thing my dazed eyes fell upon was the mirror of black glass... She held it so that I might gaze into its depths. And there, with a cry of amazement and fear, I saw the shadow of the Basilisk. Through odysseys across dreamlike lands, Gothic love affairs haunted by the shadow of death, and uncanny episodes from the...

When the Sesemann family and their friend Doctor Classen, who were so kind to Heidi during her stay in Frankfurt, visit her and her grandfather at their home in the Swiss Alps, young Klara Sesemann, an invalid, chooses to stay on for a while alone in the hope that the healthy mountain lifestyle and the expert nursing of Heidi’s grandfather...

Heidi is the timeless tale of the orphan girl Heidi, who lives with her grandfather in the mountains of Switzerland and who brings cheer and comfort into the lives of all who know her. This edition of Johanna Spyri's classic novel features illustrations in full colour by Jessie Wilcox Smith. Heidi is one of Barnes & Noble's Collectible Editions classics....

From the once-popular yet unfairly neglected Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell comes a pair of novels which cleverly upholster the familiar furniture of the haunted house story. In An Uninhabited House, the hauntings are seen through the perspective of the solicitors who hold the deed of the property. Here we find a shrewd comedic skewering of this host of scriveners and...

For most children, reading the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm is an essential experience when growing up. Grimm's Fairy Tales collects fifty-five of the best-known fairy and folk tales set down by the Brothers Grimm, including "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Hansel and Gretel," "The Frog-Prince," and "Rumpelstiltskin." This edition features more...

Imagine a world where seductive male sirens lure brave heroines to their death, where Icara and her mother fly too close to the sun, and where beautiful men are forced to wed underworld queens... For thousands of years, Greek Myths have been told and retold. In these stories, brutality and bravery are reserved for men, while women are wicked witches...

Fire can't be malevolent... can it? A series of horrific fires has left top arson investigator Ruth Cutter baffled. The victims seem to have nothing in common except the unnatural intensity of the flames that engulfed them – and the child who haunts each crime scene. Ruth doesn't believe in the paranormal – in her job she needs to be...

Celebrating 90 Years of Penguin Michael Joseph publishing with the Mermaid collection - Lettice Cooper's Fenny with a foreword by Jennie Godfrey. Yorkshire teacher Ellen Fenwick has never been abroad. But when her mother dies, this young woman finds herself taking a position as governess to an English girl in Florence in the summer of 1933. Little does Ellen realise...