It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror—but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something ... divine to happen ... that she knew must happen ... infallibly.

    All the titles are extracts from "Penguin Classics" titles.

    . . . Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty. . . . his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart” (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World).From the eBook edition.

    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'.

    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".

    In these seven stories, bristling with frank, earthy humour and gothic imagination, nothing is as it seems.This book includes Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty of the Wood, Cinderella: or, The Glass Slipper, Ricky with the Tuft and The Foolish Wishes.

    . .Set in a desolate English port, Conrad’s spare, savage turn-of-the-century story of lives haunted by the sea. One of Conrad’s most powerful, gripping stories.[ Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) ]Little Black Classics celebrates Penguin’s 80th birthday, introducing 80 works from the classics.

    

    

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

    R. James is the master of the English ghost story, whose tales are inhabited not by ethereal spirits, but by terrifying, palpable forces of evil. In these four stories figures appear in paintings, demonic voices are heard, books awaken ancient horrors - and ordinary objects and situations are transformed into inescapable nightmares. This book includes:• Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book• The Mezzotint• The Rose Garden• The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral

    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.

    Shaw

    Scott's source, which he acknowledged in the 'Magnum Opus' edition of Chronicles of the Canongate (1831), was George Constable (1719 - 1803), a friend of his father and the model for Jonathan Oldbuck in The Antiquary. It has not been established to date whether Constable's anecdote refers to a historically verifiable case.