The Complete Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1892
    New Hardcover with dust jacket

The Invisible Man


H.G. Wells - 1897
    This masterpiece of science fiction is the fascinating story of Griffin, a scientist who creates a serum to render himself invisible, and his descent into madness that follows.

Great Tales of Horror


H.P. Lovecraft - 1991
    Lovecraft's classic stories, among them some of the greatest works of horror fiction ever written, including:

To Be Read at Dusk


Charles Dickens - 1852
    Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

The Picture of Dorian Gray


Oscar Wilde - 1890
    The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.

The Woman in White


Wilkie Collins - 1859
    There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.Matthew Sweet's introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins's biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.

Dracula


Bram Stoker - 1897
    Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and "Dracula's Guest," the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. "Dramatic and Film Variations" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.

Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon


Jane Austen - 1818
    Their romantic excess and dark overstatement feed her imagination, as tyrannical fathers and diabolical villains work their evil on forlorn heroines in isolated settings. What could be more remote from the uneventful securities of life in the midland counties of England? Yet as Austen brilliantly contrasts fiction with reality, ordinary life takes a more sinister turn, and edginess and circumspection are reaffirmed alongside comedy and literary burlesque. Also including Austen's other short fictions, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, this valuable new edition shows her to be as innovative at the start of her career as at its close.

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - 1818
    This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.

The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll


Lewis Carroll - 1897
    Included are: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Sylvie and Bruno, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, "The Hunting of the Snark," and Lewis' poetry, phantasmagoria, stories, miscellany, and "acrostics, inscriptions, and other verse."The following have also never appeared in print except in their original editions: "Resident Women Students," "Some Popular Fallacies about Vivisection," "Lawn Tennis Tournaments," "Rules for Court Circular," "Croquet Castles," "Mischmasch," "Doublets," "A Postal Problem," "The Alphabet-Cipher," and "Introduction to The Lost Plum Cake."

The Birds and Other Stories


Daphne du Maurier - 1952
    The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's dominance over the natural world. The mountain paradise of 'Monte Verità' promises immortality, but at a terrible price; a neglected wife haunts her husband in the form of an apple tree; a professional photographer steps out from behind the camera and into his subject's life; a date with a cinema usherette leads to a walk in the cemetery; and a jealous father finds a remedy when three's a crowd . . .

The Aspern Papers


Henry James - 1888
    Attempting to gain access to the papers, the property of Aspern's former mistress, he rents a room in a decaying Venetian villa where the woman lives with her aging niece. Led by his zeal into increasingly unscrupulous behavior, the narrator is faced in the end with relinquishing his heart's desire or attaining it an an overwhelming price.Inspired by an actual incident involving Claire Clairmont, once the mistress of Lord Byron, this masterfully written tale incorporates all those elements expected from James: psychological subtlety, deft plotting, the clash of cultures, and profoundly nuanced representation of scene, mood, and character. This volume also contains James's celebrated Preface from the New York edition of his collected works.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street


Anonymous - 1846
    This edition offers the original story with all its atmospheric Victorian trimmings. The story of Todd's murderous partnership with pie-maker Margery Lovett--at once inconceivably unpalatable and undeniably compelling--has subsequently set the table for a seemingly endless series of successful dramatic adaptations, popular songs and ballads, novellas, radio plays, graphic novels, ballets, films, and musicals. Both gleeful and ghoulish, the original tale of Sweeney Todd, first published under the title The String of Pearls, combines the story of Todd's grisly method of robbing and dispatching his victims--by way of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies--with a romantic sub-plot involving deception, disguise, and detective work, set against the backdrop of London's dark and unsavory streets. Editor Robert Mack 'fleshes' out the story with a fascinating introduction touching on the origins of the tale, the growth of the legend, and a history of its many retellings. Mack also includes explanatory notes that point out interesting aspects, plus a full chronology of the many versions of Sweeney Todd.Since Sweeney Todd first entered the public imagination in the mid-nineteenth-century, his exploits have chilled and fascinated audiences around the world. This new edition allows modern readers to savor the ghastly original in all its gruesome glory.

The Beetle


Richard Marsh - 1897
    It is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used to create suspense in many of the "sensation novels" pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, as well as in many late nineteenth-century novels such as Dracula.Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author, Richard Bernard Heldmann.

Switch Bitch


Roald Dahl - 1974
    In the middle, meanwhile, are The Great Switcheroo and The Last Act, two stories exploring a darker side of desire and pleasure.In the black comedies of Switch Bitch Roald Dahl brilliantly captures the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex.'Dahl is too good a storyteller to become predictable' Daily TelegraphRoald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.