Pride and Prejudice, Austen's most well-loved story, tells of Lizzy Bennet and her five sisters as they search for true love-a love Lizzy nearly loses because of pride. Fanny, of Mansfield Park, comes to live with her aunt and uncle in their elegant mansion. But she finds herself both out of place and in love with her handsome cousin Edmund. Can shy Fanny win him from the outgoing and charming Miss Crawford? Persuasion, Austen's last final novel, explores the consequences of giving in to the opinions of others, rather than following one's own heart. Delightfully illustrated with delicate line drawings.

    The good wit of bad manners, elegantly spiced with irony and deftly controlled malice, has made Saki stories small, perfect gems of the English language. Here for the first time, are the collected writings of Saki--including all of his short stories ("Reginald", "Reginald in Russia", "The Chronicles of Clovis", "Beasts and Super-Beasts" "The Toys of Peace", and "The Square Egg"), his three novels (THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON, WHEN WILLIAM CAME and THE WESTMINSTER ALICE), and three plays (THE DEATHTRAP, KARL-LUDWIG'S WINDOW and THE WATCHED POT. You are invited to meet once again Clovis, Reginald, the Unbearable Bassington, and the other memorable characters etched so superbly by the pen of H.H. Munro. "In all literature, he was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around."--Roald Dahl. Introduction by Noel Coward.(less)

    Here is a set of the 4 novels which comprise The Raj Quartet, all of which are set in India between 1942 and 1947.1) The Jewel in the Crown2) The Day of the Scorpion3) The Towers of Silence4) A Division of the Spoils

    This, the first of four volumes, contains his first five plays, including The Birthday Party (1958), his first full-length drama; as well as two short stories—The Black and White and The Examination—both written before Pinter turned to the theatre. Pinter's exacting and complex use of language and the features that mark his "comedies of menace" are clearly realized in these plays and stories. His speech Writing for the Theatre introduces the volume and establishes the context for these early years.

    Inside, behind an electronic screen that hides him from each visitor, is the unknown one who sits. . .and listens.

    Showalter is one of the few scholars who can make her readers rush to their bookshelves to refute her point, or simply to experience again Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, or the bitterly illuminating stories of Katherine Mansfield. Her chief innovation is to place the works of famous women writers beside those of the minor or forgotten, building a continuity of influence and inspiration as well as a more complete picture of the social conditions in which women's books have been produced. She has added a new introduction recounting, with justifiable pleasure, how daring and controversial her study seemed when it first appeared in 1977 (and how many enemies it made her). In an afterword, she touches on more recent developments in the women's novel in Britain, including the influence of the dazzling Angela Carter. --Regina Marler

    Roger Dean, a well-known artist with a fairly similar style, was collaborating at the time with Hubert Schaafsma, their first aim being to set themselves up as a publishing company and to produce Roger's first book "Visions". Roger telephoned Patrick shortly after that, suggesting the production of a similar book. The title attempts to join together the two words "mythopoeic" and "ikon". There was no agreement on the pronunciation, so you can say it however you like!

    His prurient interest, oddly motivated, leaves few people unaffected - and the consequences cannot be ignored. Timothy, an "aimless, sadistic" 15-year-old boy, wanders about the seaside town of Dynmouth "trying to connect himself with other people."

    Summoned by Bells

    When his latest case leads him to the unsolved murder of 17-year-old Celia Norris, this is Davies's chance to prove his mettle.

    An invalid teenage girl and her eleven-year-old brother uncover secrets of past generations who lived in their family's house in Edinburgh.

    Macmillan hardcover with dust jacket. 252 pages. Twelve pages of color and 100 black-and-white illustrations. 7.5 x 10 x 1 inches. Biography.

    

    

    Pepys diary complete for the year 1668

    Those were ugly, eerie places that no sensible person would want to visit. But when they told her about Sandy the Kelpie who lived in the well, ready to drag people in with his slimy fingers, Janet began to doubt. The Reachfar well was a good place that sent sweet fresh water down to the house and the farm yard. "There is not any Sandy in the well!" said Janet angrily to her dog, Fly. "It is just a pack of lies. I am going up to that well to see for myself if there is any kelpie in it." What Janet saw in the well brought nightmares later, a confrontation under the stern eye of 'Herself', Janet's grandmother, and a neat moral in which George and Tom were as discomforted as Janet.

    For many years he taught English at Tonbridge School and one day the young Anthony Seldon (now the Master of Wellington and the biographer of Tony Blair) told him the story of his grandparents Wilfred and Eileen Willett. Jonathan Smith’s first novel a few years later was based on their lives.Wilfred Willett was 22 in 1912 when, at a May Ball at Trinity College, Cambridge, he met Eileen Stenhouse. The couple fell in love but because of parental opposition on both sides they married in secret. Eileen continued to live at home in Kensington and Wilfred continued his medical studies at the London Hospital. The scenes before the outbreak of war are beautifully described with a Forsterian touch (reminding the reader that Forster too was at Tonbridge and Cambridge). The approach of war is evoked with great simplicity, eschewing all clichés: ‘It would not be quite true to say that the war rumours had not filtered into Wilfred’s mind but he had certainly not been infected by the mounting hysteria of late July.’Wilfred joins up, is shot in the head, and rescued, indeed brought back to life, through the efforts of his wife and his colleagues at the hospital. The nature of his wounds meant that he could not return to the army or to medicine, so he and Eileen went to live in a cottage in Kent and started a family. This ‘delightful novel’ (Margaret Drabble) focuses on the years 1913–15 – the happy love affair, the outbreak of war, the coming back from France, the brush with death, the beginning of a new life in deepest Kent. It is a charming, poignant book which manages to write about harrowing matters without being in itself harrowing. The 1976 Financial Times said that it recaptured the spirit of WW1 ‘with such curious conviction that I almost felt I had come across some lost document of the time.’