But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.'

    In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany.

    Wodehouse's most gloriously funny stories, this is the tale of bumbling Lord Emsworth, whose quiet life reading "The Care Of The Pig" and pottering among the flowers at Blandings Castle is shattered by an outbreak of lawlessness involving his niece Jane (the third prettiest girl in Shropshire), an airgun - and the trouser seat of the abominable Baxter.

    In these two stories, the pains of companionship, and of loneliness and of the human body are starkly explored.

    The writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything – from his meals to his bugged hotel room – is already paid for, and then to RumaniaThis book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.

    Includes such stories as: 'The Sexes', 'The Lovely Leave', 'The Little Hours', 'Glory in the Daytime' and 'Lolita'.

    but all of a sudden there are newer and better gadgets in the shops.More up-to-date models."William Trevor has been acclaimed as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language, likened to Chekhov for his insights into human nature. These three tales of obsession, heartbreak, silent sorrow and the small tragedies of ordinary lives are profound, immaculate and beautiful.This book includes The Mark-2 Wife, The Time of Year and Cheating at Canasta.

    Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has been acclaimed as one of Russia's greatest living writers. These five dreamlike and blackly comic stories, two of which are here in English for the first time, tell of lost children, midnight forests, strange transformations, cruel curses, grief and resilience, in the darkest of modern fairy tales. This book contains "Through the Wall" and "Anna and Maria".

    In these nine stories and essays, he considers holidaymakers and stone monuments, tales of war and blackbirds, and the great pathos of a tiny death: a fly's impossible fight against the grip of flypaper.

    Includes nine short stories: "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby", "The Glass Mountain", "I Bought a Little City", "The Palace at Four AM", "Chablis", "The School", "Margins", "Game", and "The Balloon".

    'If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand - the imagination'. Virginia Woolf's writing tested the boundaries of modern fiction, exploring the depths of human consciousness and creating a new language of sensation and thought. Sometimes impressionistic, sometimes experimental, sometimes brutally cruel, sometimes surprisingly warm and funny, these five stories describe love lost, friendships formed and lives questioned. This book includes "The Lady in the Looking Glass", "A Society", "The Mark on the Wall", "Solid Objects" and "Lappin and Lapinova".

    K. Chesterton's Father Brown is both a diminuitive, genial clergyman and a master sleuth. In these two stories involving the ingenious, unobtrusive priest, a murdered man denounces his killer with his dying breaths, and a brilliant French inspector follows a trail of carnage across London.

    It includes: 'The Magic Paint', 'The Death of Marinese', 'Censorship in Bitinia', and 'Knall'.

    Munro, better known by his pen name, Saki, wrote wickedly comic satires of upper-class Edwardian life. These seven short stories are macabre and extremely funny: they include a cat that is regrettably taught to speak, a vicious pet ferret worshipped as a god, a businessman triumphantly selling an unpalatable breakfast mush, and many dark twists and barbs.This book includes Filboid Studge, a Story of a Mouse That Helped, Todermory, Mrs Packletide's Tiger, Sredni Vashtar, The Music on the Hill, The Recessional and The Cobweb.

    This is one of 50 fascinating, disturbing, moving or funny short books published in an appealing new format to celebrate the 50th anniversary of 'Penguin Modern Classics'.