71117 BIG BOOK OF HORROR: 21 Tales to
UK MAINLAND ORDERS RECEIVED BY DECEMBER 12TH 2012 WILL BE DESPATCHED IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS. 68844 RAGGED TROUSERED
Make You Tremble by Alissa Heyman The great masters of horror are all represented in these retellings of classic spine-chillers: Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu, H. P. Lovecraft, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens and nine others. Classic Poe tales include The Murders in the Rue Morgue with its shocking killings and surprise trap for the murderer, The Fall of the House of Usher with its spooky house, half-mad occupants and a resurrection from the dead - or is it? Finally the most terrifying Poe tale of them all, The Pit and the Pendulum in which the Inquisition seems destined to wreak its evil vengeance in the most horrible way possible. Dickens’s story The Signalman, by contrast, is effective because of its everyday setting and characters. Sir Dominick’s Bargain by le Fanu is a classic story in the Faust tradition, while monsters feature in several stories including Lovecraft’s The Outsider, Eugene Field’s The Werewolf and Gerard de Nerval’s Green Monster. Large print, spookily illustrated in colour on every page. 112 pp, biographies.
£7.99 NOW £4
71152 A GARDEN OF GREEK VERSE by Yvonne Whiteman
and Christopher Walker The poets of Ancient Greece from Homer, Sappho and Pindar to Sophocles and Euripides left behind them a wealth of lyrical verse which has endured for well over 2,000 years and continues to be imitated and studied. Love, heroes, gods and monsters, have inspired celebrated writers and poets like Pope, Byron, Shelley, Wilde and
Yeats. Each verse extract is illustrated with a detail from one of the frescoes or vase paintings excavated from the sites including Acroteri, Knossos, Lipari, Paestum and Tarquinia. The subtle colours and haunting quality of the paintings evoke the spirit of the time at the dawn of Western civilisation. Brief biographical information about each of the Greek poets plus a note on the art by Thomas H. Carpenter, Professor of Classics at Ohio University round off the book. Beautifully presented slim edition, 80pp, all in colour. £9.99 NOW £4
70783 BEST OF JOHN BUCHAN
by John Buchan
Three rip-roaring Richard Hannay thrillers The 39-Steps, Greenmantle and Mr Standfast here in a bumper large size well bound softback with satin bookmark. The most famous fictional creation of author, politician and statesman John Buchan, Richard Hannay averted disaster for king
and country on many occasions bringing evil international superspies to justice. The 39-Steps sees Hannay first involved in the despicable skulduggery of a German spy network battling to expose them while wanted by the police for a murder he didn’t commit. He is pursued by the enemy in one of the greatest manhunts of all time. Just as he finishes convalescing from wounds received on the battlefield in France, Hannay, now Major Hannay, is reunited with some old friends and sent to thwart German plans to investigate a holy war in the Middle East in the adventure story Greenmantle. In Mr Standfast, Hannay is drafted back into the Secret Service. Omnibus softback, 624pp with satin bookmark. £14.99 NOW £5
70923 KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by Manuel Puig
Valentin, a young socialist revolutionary, and Molina, a movie-obsessed middle-aged homosexual are locked up together in an Argentinean jail cell. Molina narrates with enthusiasm and detail scenes from his favourite films to his young cellmate whose cheeky interjections irritate the elder man. An international classic, this masterpiece comprises largely of sharp dialogue delivered between the two men. The fanciful Molina slowly works his way into Valentin’s good graces after nursing him back to health after he is repeatedly tortured. As their relationship becomes sexual, the story lunges towards its heart-breaking yet inevitable conclusion. 281pp. ONLY £4
70930 PUSHCART’S COMPLETE ROTTEN REVIEWS AND REJECTIONS
edited by Bill Henderson and André Bernard A few years ago, Pushcart Press issued a series of three books - Rotten Reviews, Rotten Reviews II and Rotten Rejections. Here is the collected revised and expanded three highly entertaining volumes. It collects several new nasty reviews and ridiculous rejections of great authors and classic books. For example, Jane Austen was reviewed as a ‘Husband-hunting butterfly.’ Alice in Wonderland was reviewed as a ‘stiff overwrought story’ and of John Le Carré, ‘he hasn’t got any future.’ The cruel remarks of editors and publishers stack up and make hilarious reading - ‘D. H. Lawrence has a diseased mind’, ‘Mr Kipling doesn’t know how to use the English language’. Witty cartoons, 269pp in paperback. $15 NOW £4
68846 THE COMPLETE FOUR JUST MEN by Edgar Wallace
The complete adventures of Edgar Wallace’s daring and ingenious vigilantes. This fascinating bumper collection contains all six volumes of the Just Men saga: The Four Just Men, The Council of Justice, The Just Men of Cordova, The Law of The Four Just Men, The Three Just Men and Again the Three. In these thrilling yarns of daring do, mystery and international intrigue, the Just Men tackle wrongdoers of all kinds from criminal masterminds and desperate anarchists to cunning murderers and obsessive madmen. Where Scotland Yard fails - they succeed. Blends suspense, humour and action. 936 page paperback. ONLY £3
100587 BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers. 800 pp. Paperback. ONLY £2
69029 CHARCOAL SKETCHES AND OTHER TALES by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Sienkiewicz was once the most widely known of Polish writers and his novel Quo Vadis won him the Nobel Prize in 1905. Here is a headlong satire on village life in Russian-ruled Poland where Tsarist administration encourages corruption and promotes injustice with bureaucratic aplomb. He is at his best as an observer of character in the first two stories, Charcoal Sketches and Bartek the Conqueror. In the third story, On the Bright Shore, he tells the story of an affair between an artist and a beautiful widow of dubious reputation among the Polish community on the Riviera. 211pp, paperback. £6.95 NOW £1.75
69706 A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY
ACKNOWLEDGED edited by Susannah Carson Subtitled 33 Great Writers On Why We Read Jane Austen. Great authors and literary critics of the past offer insight into the timelessness of Jane Austen’s moral truths while highlighting the unique confines of the society in which she composed her novels. Virginia Woolf examines her maturity as an artist and speculates on how her writing would have changed if she had lived until she was 60. From Harold Bloom to Martin Amis, Somerset Maugham to Jane McInerney, each writer here reflects on Jane Austen’s place in both the literary canon and our cultural imagination. 296 pages. $25 NOW £4.50
23783 COMPLETE FATHER BROWN
by G.K. Chesterton Father Brown, one of the most quirkily genial and lovable characters to emerge from English detective fiction, first made his appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown in 1911. That first collection of stories established G.K. Chesterton’s kindly cleric in the front rank of eccentric sleuths. This complete collection contains all the
favourite Father Brown stories, showing a quiet wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, whilst solving his mysteries by a mixture of imagination and a sympathetic worldliness in a totally believable manner. The Complete compenduim is 800pp. Paperback. ONLY £2
28746 TREASURED WRITINGS OF KAHLIL GIBRAN
The immortal savant of Lebanon Kahlil Gibran created verses and lyric prose which impart to the reader a grand symphony of sparkling joys, indeed treasured writings of a now lost Persian age. This claims to be the most comprehensive volume of works of the Lebanese poet and philosopher ever published. It is an enriching collection of stories, prose, poems, verse, parables and autobiographical essays. Each of the ten books included in this nicely bound collectors’ volume has been hailed by critics as a literary masterpiece. His writings reflect the wistful beauty, fierce anger, lofty majesty and the abiding peace that Eastern wisdom achieves in its contemplation. Contents include Tears and Laughter, Secrets of the Heart, The Broken Wings, The Voice of the Master, Thoughts and Meditations, A Self Portrait and Mirrors of the Soul. Handsome reprint of the 1957 original. 902 pages. ONLY £10
56857 WIZARD OF OZ by L. Frank Baum
Clothbound with marbled endpapers,satin bookmark, gold blocking and a tipped-in illustration on the front cover, each volume in this illustrated classic series is a beautiful facsimile edition with original pen and ink and woodcut illustrations together with a number of full page colour plates. Individually shrinkwrapped. With facsimile of original dedication page ‘To my good friend and comrade. My Wife’ - L. F. B. Should only be used as shelf decoration as text is imperfect! NB there are many duplicated pages (printing error). 184pp. ONLY £1
62725 A TO Z OF ENGLISH LITERATURE by David Rothwell
David Rothwell’s book is an idiosyncratic and light- hearted review of all that is great (and not so great) about the major figures of English Literature, and provides lucid and entertaining explanations of every literary form and technique. Free of pointless biographical detail, it concentrates on providing examples of prose and poetry that help to understand the essence of the work. With their total lack of any pretence of neutrality, you may not always agree with David Rothwell’s views, but you can hardly fail to be informed and entertained by them. 384pp in Wordsworth paperback. ONLY £4
65535 PRISONER OF ZENDA and RUPERT OF HENTZAU by Anthony Hope
In The Prisoner of Zenda, Rudolf Rassendyll’s close resemblance to the King of Ruritania leads him into intrigue, romance and perilous escapades. Enmeshed in a plot by the villainous Duke of Strelsau to depose the King, Rudolf finds that both his life and his honour are imperilled. The sequel, Rupert of Hentzau, tells how Rupert (‘who feared neither man nor devil’) seeks to ruin his former love Flavia’s reputation and wreak vengeance on Rudolf. Events accelerate to a dramatically violent climax. 363 page paperback. ONLY £2
68077 SHAKESPEARE ON FAIRIES AND
MAGIC compiled by Benjamin Darling Most of Shakespeare’s plays involve fairies or magic, or both. Perhaps his most popular play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, brings fairies and the charming consequences of their magic to vivid life. And who can forget the famous incantation ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’ from another favourite Macbeth, which, for many people, epitomises the magic spell. Imaginative paintings by masters from Edmund Dulac to Arthur Rackham, William Heath Robinson to George Cruikshank, William Blake, Edwin Landseer and a host of other artists, combine with the brilliant words to evoke the supernatural world. 88 pages illus in beautiful colour. $18 NOW £3
PHILANTHROPISTS by Robert Tressell A classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the institutionalized corruption of their employers and the civic and religious authorities. Epic in scale, the novel charts the ruinous effects of the laissez-faire mercantilist ethics on the men, women, and children of the working classes, and through its emblematic characters, argues for a socialist politicsas the only hope for a civilized and humane life for all. It is a timeless work whose political message is as relevant today as it was in Tressell’s time. For this it has long been honoured by the Trade Union movement and thinkers across the political spectrum. With a Foreword by Tony Benn. Paperback, 619pp. ONLY £2
68852 MARY BARTON by Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel (1848) depicts nothing less than the great clashes between capital and labour, which arose from rapid industrialisation and problems of trade in the mid-19th century. But these clashes are dramatised through personal struggles. John Barton has to reconcile his personal conscience with his socialist duty, risking his life and liberty in the process. His daughter Mary is caught between two lovers, from opposing classes - worker and manufacturer. And at the heart of the narrative lies a murder which implicates them all. Paperback, 414pp. ONLY £2
69729 LITERARY HOAXES: An Eye-Opening
History of Famous Frauds by Melissa Katsoulis The ultimate exposé of literary hoaxes that have fooled publishers, readers and critics all over the world. Way back in 400 BC, Dionysus famously faked a text by Sophocles and the process has been going on ever since. The history of The Hitler Diaries, The JFK Letters and The Abraham Lincoln Letters will keep you on the edge of your seat as will the many other hoaxes detailed here. For fame, money, political reasons or even simple amusement, whatever the motive, the hoaxes revealed here will amaze and intrigue. 328 pages. $22.95 NOW £3.50
69750 THE ANNOTATED SECRET GARDEN
by Frances Hodgson Burnett !
The much-loved tale read by generations is not only reproduced in full in this big lavish collectable volume but is accompanied by photos and pictures (many in colour) which tell a story of their own, depicting scenes from the novel. The thoroughly enchanting book has an expert commentary by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina which brings to light many ideas from the text we may have overlooked or been unaware of. There are pictures of the study at Long Island where Burnett wrote The Secret Garden, a picture of Burnett and her granddaughter in the garden, even a flyer for her mother Eliza Hodgson’s shop in Manchester and a first edition book jacket reproduced in colour. The Secret Garden is the story of an orphan girl who moved from India to the British countryside. Gerzina presents details of the Victorian England setting - the tasks of different servants, the role of education, the attitudes towards children, Burnett’s spiritual leanings which tended towards the mystical as she captures the timeless and magical nature of this beloved tale of three children who come together to restore a hidden garden. 288 large pages, 8½” x 10", colour illus. £22 NOW £9
69759 THE POETS’ CORNER: Book and CD by John Lithgow
We have all loved words since childhood, and poetry with its rhyming, meter and accent is in our blood whether we have enjoyed the doggerel poets such as Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll to Emily Dickinson or Dylan Thomas. Here we have a book and CD featuring readings by famous actors. Here is poetry from Matthew Arnold, W. H. Auden, John Berryman, William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The General Prologue, Kubla Kahn, There is No Frigate Like A Book, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, When I Was One-and-Twenty by A. E. Housman, Inviting a Friend to Supper by Ben Jonson, To Autumn, Days by Philip Larkin, The Owl and the Pussycat, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Christina Rossetti, Wordsworth and Shakespeare. 280pp. £16.99 NOW £6
69764 THE WORLD’S GREATEST LETTERS: From Ancient Greece to the 20th Century edited by Michelle Lovric
This fascinating collection of extracts starts with the theme of love in the letters of Sappho in ancient Greece, moving on to the 12th century nun Heloise and her former lover Peter Abelard, and then to extracts from the secret correspondence of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The section on family life and friends includes letters by Jane Austen, Mendelssohn, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Calamity Jane, while a chapter focusing on creativity includes Wilde, Tchaikovsky, Virginia Woolf and Kenneth Tynan. 192pp. £14.99 NOW £3
69817 BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone in harbouring an ill-defining longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress. Shocking, dazzling, stimulating and provoking. 229pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3
69822 CROME YELLOW by Aldous Huxley Denis Stone, a naïve young poet, is invited to stay at Crome, a country house renowned for its gatherings of ‘Bright Young Things’. His host Henry Wimbush and his exotic wife Priscilla are joined by a party of colourful guests whose intrigues and opinions ensure Denis’s stay is a memorable one. First published in 1921, the novel was Huxley’s acclaimed début work of fiction. Delightful, witty, worldly and poetic. Intro by Malcolm Bradbury. 170pp. £7.99 NOW £3
69830 DOORS OF PERCEPTION by Aldous Huxley
One spring morning in 1953, Aldous Huxley took four tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen, and when he opened his eyes he found everything, from flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers were completely transformed. He describes his experience with breathtaking immediacy in
Literatur 21e
this book, and its sequel ‘Heaven and Hell’ in which he goes on to explore the history and nature of mysticism. Still bristling with a sense of excitement and discovery. Paperback, 123pp. £7.99 NOW £2.50
70395 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS: The Voyages of
Sinbad the Sailor And Other Stories edited by Andrew Lang Also includes The Adventures of Sinbad and Aladdin, full of wonder and exotic charm. A Persian king Shahryar, begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonour him.
Eventually the vizier, whose duty it is provide them, cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade, the vizier’s daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. And so it goes on, for 1001 nights... 347 page paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
70150 HER HUSBAND: Hughes and Plath: A Marriage
by Diane Wood Middlebrook
Drawing on a trove of newly available papers, the biographer seeks to show how the whole body of work of Ted Hughes and his first wife, Sylvia Plath, needs to be considered together, as a whole, and not as two separate oeuvres of literature. She argues that Plath’s suicide, after little more than six years from their wedding day, changed not only the widower’s life and his closest relationships but also his standing in the literary world - bringing new significance to his poetry and to hers. In a biographical tour de force, she demonstrates that Hughes, as a man, a poet and a husband was, during his entire life, both haunted and nourished by the aftermath of his years with Plath. 361 paperback pages, illus. £9.99 NOW £3.50
70154 FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS by Rebecca West
Published in 1957, this novel stands on its own as West’s highly autobiographical account of her extraordinary childhood. Rose observed her musical, bohemian family with a child’s wisdom, sometimes with innocence and occasionally with cruelty. There is her twin sister Mary, whose nature chimes perfectly with her own; beautiful, obtuse, Cordelia, pitied for not being musically gifted; her adored little brother Richard Quin; and her charming, unprincipled father Piers, whose streak of folly ever threatened to bring his family to financial and social ruin. It is their mother Clare, beleaguered, kind and quixotically eccentric, who emerges as the family’s true strength. 432pp in paperback. £10.99 NOW £3.50
70263 GARDEN OF IMPRESSIONIST VERSE: Nineteenth-Century French Poetry selected by Michael Brunstrom
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This little gem of a book features verses by such highly esteemed poets as Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine and Victor Hugo, matched with the master works of Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro and Sisley to name but a few. Poets and painters worked side by side in an atmosphere of experimentation and political conviction. They attempted to be the visual recorders of modern life, and to paint or write directly from nature. Text in English and French. 77 pages with an impressionist painting illustrating each extract, brief biographies of the poets. £9.99 NOW £3
70399 THE BOOKSHOP, THE GATE OF ANGELS, THE BLUE FLOWER by Penelope Fitzgerald
Bound together in one elegant Everyman’s Library hardback volume, here is a trilogy of novels which all display Fitzgerald’s characteristic wit, intellectual breadth and brilliant narrative. Here are three - The Bookshop, a post war tragicomedy of manners set in an isolated seaside town. An enterprising woman opens a bookshop only to find it beset by poltergeists, weather and hostile townsfolk. The Gate of Angels is an Edwardian romance within a novel of ideas - a young doctor devoted to science and to his all-male Cambridge College finds his life and views disrupted by a nurse named Daisy. The Blue Flower revitalises historical drama through the story of Novalis, an 18th century German romantic poet and visionary genius, and his unlikely love affair with a simple child-woman. 472pp. $23 NOW £7
70737 NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA: Bram
Stoker edited by Leslie Klinger Every serious reader of the horror genre will be re- reading Dracula with new eyes in this fascinating compendium. Here are 1500 notes that provide information of virtually every aspect of the novel, hundreds of illustrations from Victorian maps to movie posters and peculiar historical oddities such as the science of blood transfusion. The novel treated as an historical document, with new revelations about Jonathan Harker, Van Helsing, Lucy Westenra and of course the Count himself. Klinger mines the 1897 classic novel and Leonard Wolf’s The Annotated Dracula 1975 for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans. With a classic introduction by Neal Gaiman, the notes in the margins will have you turning back to the book again and again to ask Why? Repeatedly and spotting small errors in times of meeting, whether it is a fictional notation, the origins of phrases like ‘To buy something unexamined’ first recorded in 1530 in Scotland and ‘Small talk’, which comes from the French for preliminary conversation. 613 fascinating pages. Large softback. Apologies if cover slightly scuffed.
ONLY £8
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