The Hogwarts Library is an essential collection for any wizard or Muggle home. Eager seekers of wizard learning will find within a treasure trove of magical facts, additional notes from the esteemed Professor Albus Dumbledore, and illustrations from J.K. Rowling. Purchasers can be reassured that two charities important to J.K. Rowling - Comic Relief and Lumos - will benefit from the sale of each set. These editions are exclusively available in this boxed set for the first time.

    Users of magic are in conflict with proponents of science. The dwindling Druid order is threatened with extinction. A sinister politician has used treachery and murder to rise as prime minister of the mighty Federation. Meanwhile, poring through a long-forgotten diary, the young Druid Aphenglow Elessedil has stumbled upon the secret account of an Elven girl’s heartbreak and the shocking truth about the vanished Elfstones, which once warded the lands and kept evil at bay. But never has a little knowledge been so very dangerous—as Aphenglow quickly learns when she’s set upon by assassins. Yet there can be no turning back from the road to which fate has steered her. Whoever captures the Elfstones and their untold powers will surely hold the advantage in the devastating clash to come.

    Readers the world over know his poignant tale of "The Little Mermaid," who sacrifices everything for love, and "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," whose affection for a paper ballerina is symbolized by his transformation into a small tin heart. Several of Andersen's stories are so well known—among them "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling"—that their titles alone have become meaningful figures of speech. Hans Christian Andersen: Classic Fairy Tales collects 100 of Andersen's incomparable fairy tales and stories, among them "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," "The Princess and the Pea," "The Red Shoes," "The Wild Swans," and his fantasy masterpiece, "The Snow-Queen." The book is abundantly illustrated with more than 100 hundred drawings and color plates by Dugald Stewart Walker and Hans Tegner, two of Andersen's best-known illustrators.

    Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story 'Sardonicus', considered by Stephen King to be 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written', to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. These stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.Haunted CastlesHaunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell's masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of 'Sardonicus', 'Sanguinarius', and 'Sagittarius'. The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile. Engrossing, grotesque, perverted, and completely entrancing, Russell's Gothic tales are the best kind of dreadful.RAY RUSSELL was born in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, and served in the United States Air Force during World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music and eventually joined the editorial staff at Playboy, where he published such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Robert Bloch, and Charles Beaumont. His best-known work, 'Sardonicus', was called by Stephen King 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written'. He died in Los Angeles in 1999.GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer, most famous for his Academy Award-winning film,Pan's Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received the Nebula, Hugo, and Bram Stoker awards and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction.

    Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), a literary hero of his native land, turned to writing only when his law practice and printing business foundered. Among his most beloved works are Rob Roy (1818), and Ivanhoe (1820). American writer William Vaughn Moody (1869 - 1910) served as co-editor of the Harvard Monthly and assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He authored several verse plays, books of poetry, and histories and criticisms of English literature.

    The stories include:� REINCARNAL by Max Allan Collins: A young woman may be the reincarnated victim of a serial killer on the loose.� THE LATE SHIFT by Dennis Etchison: A company takes flesh-peddling to a whole new level.� A FUNGUS AMONG US by Steve Nubie: A mysterious fungus is causing people to act like zombies before their heads explode and spore�like snakes ooze out of their brains!� WOLF by Max Allan Collins: A modern�day werewolf whose appetite for beautiful young women vacationing at a lodge retreat has guests and workers panic�stricken.� LIVING SPACE by M. J. Elliott: A young couple can't believe how "lucky" they are when they find a luxury high�rise apartment in Manhattan for rent at a "slashed" price.

    The well-loved verses that fill these pages cover such universal topics as Aging, Beauty, Bereavement, Brotherhood, Celebration, Courage, Greed, Faith, Farewells, Friendship, Fun, and of course, Love. Here are such favorites as Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” with its haunting verbal images, captures the emptiness of disillusionment, while Alexander Pope’s “Epigram” (“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come: / Knock as you please, there’s nobody at home”) offers pure, wry amusement. Everyone who appreciates the power of words to reaffirm the soul and express the deepest and most intimate of feelings will treasure these masterpieces.

    Here, ordinary immigrants are also strange, and 'America' is never quite as real as it should be. Kafka, a Czech writing in German, never acutally visited America; so, as Max Brod commented, 'the innocence of his fantasy gives this book if advanture its peculiar colour.'Both Joseph K in The Trial and K in The Castle are victims of anonymous governing forces beyond their control. Both are atomised, estranged and rootless citizens decieved by authoritarian power. Whereas Joseph K is relentlessly hunted down for a crime that remains nameless, K ceaselessly attempts to enter the castle and so belong somewhere. Together these novels may be read as powerful allegories of totalitarian government in whatever guise it appears today.

    A revised and expanded edition of the classic volume of Yeats' work, including the play The Death of Cuchulain.

    He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later. Ambrose Gwinett Bierce was born in a log cabin on 21st June 1842, in Horse Creek, Meigs County, Ohio, USA. He was the tenth of thirteen children, ten of whom survived infancy. His father, an unsuccessful farmer with an unseemly love of literature, had given all the Bierce children names beginning with 'A'. There was Abigail, the eldest; then Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius etc. So oddness was a part of Bierce's life from the beginning. Poverty and religion of the extreme variety were the two chief influences on young Ambrose's childhood. He not only hated this period of his life, he also developed a deep hatred for his family and this is reflected in some of his stories which depict families preying on and murdering one another. For example the unforgettable opening sentence of 'An Imperfect Conflagration' seems to sum up his bitter attitude: 'Early in 1872 I murdered my father - an act that made a deep impression on me at the time'.

    Here the father—a former high school teacher—is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, redemption, and peace—on the road to a bittersweet and distinctly “American” triumph.

    This volume includes the titles Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.

    Included are The Gorgon’s Head, The Golden Touch, The Paradise of Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher, and The Chimaera. In 1838, Hawthorne suggested to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that they collaborate on a story for children based on the legend of the Pandora’s Box, but this never materialized. He wrote A Wonder Book between April and July 1851, adapting six legends most freely from Charles Anton’s A Classical Dictionary (1842). He set out deliberately to “modernize” the stories, freeing them from what he called “cold moonshine” and using a romantic, readable style that was criticized by adults but proved universally popular with children. With full-color illustrations throughout by Arthur Rackham.

    Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. If 'The Iliad' is the world's greatest war story, then 'The Odyssey' is literature's greatest evocation of every man's journey through life. Here again, Fagles has performed the translator's task magnificently, giving us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Each volume contains a superb introduction with textual and critical commentary by renowned classicist Bernard Knox.

    He delves into his youth to analyze its repercussions.