Broadly comedic and brilliantly postmodern in its lampooning of a genre, the Jane Austen classic Northanger Abbey tells the story of Catherine Morland, a naive young woman whose perceptions of the world around her are greatly influenced by the romantic gothic novels to which she is addicted. When she moves to Bath she sees mystery and intrigue all around her, not least of all in Northanger Abbey itself, the home of General Tilney and his handsome son Henry, where Catherine suspects a sinister crime has occurred. Gorgeously illustrated by the celebrated Hugh Thomson, this Macmillan Collector's Library edition also includes an afterword by David Pinching.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Oliver Twist is one of Charles Dickens's most popular novels, with many famous film, television and musical adaptations. It tells the story of the orphaned Oliver who is brought up in a harsh workhouse, then initiated into the criminal world of Fagin and his gang, before being eventually rescued by a loving family. This is a classic story of good against evil, packed with humour and pathos, drama and suspense, and peopled with some of Dickens' most memorable characters.

Orlando is a young Elizabethan nobleman whose wealth and status afford him an extravagant lifestyle. Appointed ambassador in Constantinople, he wakes one morning to find he is a woman. Unperturbed by such a dramatic transformation, and losing none of his flamboyance and ambition, the newly female Orlando charges through life and English history so that by the end of this extraordinary biography she is a modern, 1920s woman.

In its vivid rendering of the savagery lurking within civilization, Othello is arguably the most topical and accessible tragedy from Shakespeare's major phase as a dramatist. Othello is an intense drama of love, deception, jealousy and destruction. Desdemona's love for her husband Othello, the Moor, transcends racial prejudice; but his trusted ensign, the envious Iago, conspires to devastate their lives. The play raises uncomfortable and pertinent questions about both racial identity and sexuality, as Othello and Desdemona's relationship becomes the voyeuristic site of Iago's attempt to destroy them.

Jane Austen's final novel, her most mature and wickedly satirical, is the story of Anne Elliott, a woman who gets a second chance at love. To achieve happiness she must learn to trust her own feelings and resist the social pressures of family and friends.

Peter Pan is a thrilling adventure for all ages - the story of the boy who refuses to grow up is a tale that never gets old. It follows the Darling children, Wendy, John and Michael, who befriend the magical Peter and are whisked away to Neverland, where the villainous Captain Hook and the brave Lost Boys await

Geppetto, a poor woodcarver, crafts a marionette from a strange piece of talking wood and inadvertently brings the mischievous Pinocchio – a walking, talking, wooden boy - into the world. The naughty, selfish puppet heads off into the world and encounters all manner of unusual and dangerous characters on his adventures, undergoing a series of fiendishly imaginative trials - among them being swallowed by a giant dogfish and turned into a donkey - that will lead him to self-knowledge. Along the way he will be helped by a beautiful fairy, a talking cricket and his loving father as he learns how to become what he most longs to be - a real boy.

Through the generations, poets from William Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy and from John Donne to Christina Rossetti have been inspired to celebrate the Christmas season in verse. Just as we cherish our Christmas traditions now, so many of the great poets wrote beautifully about the Christmas story, magical wintry landscapes, festive traditions and making merry. And then, of course, there are the much-loved songs and carols from around the world that we still sing today, many of which are included in this enchanting anthology.

Thomas Hardy saw himself, first and foremost, as a poet, and he wrote poetry throughout his prolific and acclaimed novel-writing years before announcing in 1896 that he would no longer write novels, much to the astonishment of his worldwide readership. Instead he went on to publish eight masterful volumes of poetry - ranging from lyrics and ballads to dramatic monologues and satire - and is now regarded as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets. Choosing the best verse from each volume, the Poems of Thomas Hardy is the perfect introduction to Hardy's lyrical, soul-searching and profoundly sincere poetry, covering subjects ranging from his grief at the death of his first wife to his experiences of war.

When her beloved father dies, Pollyanna is sent to live with her strict Aunt Polly in the dour town of Beldingsville, Vermont. Luckily, Pollyanna has the Glad Game – a joyous, warm-hearted exercise where she finds the best in every situation. Whether delighting in the view from her bare attic room, or interpreting her punishment of a meagre supper as a wonderful treat, Pollyanna cannot help but see the best in the world, and inadvertently changes it for the better as she goes.

A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and Prejudice shows how the headstrong Elizabeth Bennet and the aristocratic Mr Darcy must have their pride humbled and their prejudices dissolved before they can acknowledge their love for each other. Jane Austen's best-loved novel is an unforgettable story about the inaccuracy of first impressions, the power of reason, and above all the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.

Shipwrecked off the coast of Trinidad, Robinson Crusoe – a young man with a thirst for adventure – finds himself washed up on a remote tropical island with nothing but a few tools and animals for company. Castaway for thirty years, he must battle cannibals, mutineers and the elements in a tale so convincing that many readers at the time believed it to be non-fiction.

Undoubtedly the greatest love story ever written, Romeo and Juliet has spawned a host of imitators on stage and screen and been adapted countless times. A young man and woman meet by chance and instantly fall in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together the two lovers must be prepared to risk everything. Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Romeo and Juliet is a dazzling combination of passion and hatred, bawdy comedy and high tragedy.

Sanditon, Lady Susan, & The History of England: The Juvenilia and Shorter Works of Jane Austen is a rare collection is a must for all Jane-ites, representing what Richard Church regarded as Jane Austen's literary work-basket. It contains not only her hilarious History of England, illustrated by her favourite sister Cassandra, but the unfinished Sanditon, the novel of her maturity on which she was working at her death, aged forty-two.

Also included are the two epistolary novels, Lady Susan and Love and Freindship , and other, shorter works: The Watsons, Catharine, Lesley Castle, Evelyn, Frederic and Elfrida, Jack and Alice, Edgar and Emma, Henry and Eliza and The Three Sisters.

John Keats is regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Romantic movement. But when he died at the age of only twenty-five, his writing had been attacked by critics and his talent remained largely unrecognized.

This volume, Selected Poems, reflects his extraordinary creativity and versatility, drawing on the collections published during his lifetime as well as posthumously. He wrote in many different forms – from his famous Odes to ballads such as ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, and the epic Hyperion. Together, they celebrate a poet who wrote with unsurpassed insight and emotion about art and beauty, love and loss, suffering and nature.

With subjects as broad as militarism, the British Empire, childhood and death, the Selected Verse of Rudyard Kipling is a treasure trove of the Nobel Prize winner's most striking and moving poetry, dramatic monologues and ballads.

Two sisters of opposing temperament but who share the pangs of tragic love provide the subjects for Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Elinor, practical and conventional, the epitome of sense, desires a man who is promised to another woman. Marianne, emotional and sentimental, the epitome of sensibility, loses her heart to a scoundrel who jilts her. A powerful drama of family life and growing up, the novel is at once a subtle comedy of manners and a striking critique of early nineteenth-century society.Gorgeously illustrated by the celebrated Hugh Thomson, this Macmillan Collector's Library edition also includes an afterword by author and critic Henry Hitchings.

In Sherlock Holmes: The Dark Mysteries, Sherlock Holmes expert David Stuart Davies has selected the cases of the great detective that best reflect Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's deep interest in the supernatural. The first is the terrifying novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, followed by nine Gothic adventures: 'The Sussex Vampire', 'The Creeping Man', 'Shoscombe Old Place', 'The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax', 'The Veiled Lodger', 'The Devil's Foot', 'The Blanched Soldier' and 'The Cardboard Box'. All of the stories are accompanied by their original illustrations.

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience includes some of the visionary poet’s finest and best-loved poems such as 'The Lamb', 'The Chimney-Sweeper' and 'The Tiger'. Blake’s work is instantly recognisable from its flamboyance and inventiveness. This gorgeous edition contains stunning reproductions of the fifty-four plates of the poems and illustrations together which Blake etched himself and coloured by hand. Each has the poem printed on the facing page. Whilst Songs of Innocencecaptures the innocence of childhood, Songs of Experience is its contrary sequel.

This mesmerising, macabre collection contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, including 'The Raven', 'Annabel Lee' and 'Lenore', and a selection of his very best stories, along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems explore the familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love, but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes, such as 'The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall', 'Mesmeric Revolution', 'Hop-Frog', and 'The Imp of the Perverse'.

This collection of Poe's work contains some of the most exciting and haunting stories ever written. They range from the poetic to the mysterious to the darkly comic, yet all possess the genius for the grotesque that defines Poe's writing. They are peopled with neurotics and social outcasts, obsessed with nameless terrors or preoccupied with seemingly unsolvable mysteries. 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'The Fall of the House of Usher' are key works in the horror canon, while in the 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' we find the origins of modern detective fiction. Collectively, these tales represent the best of Edgar Allan Poe's prose work before his premature death in 1849.

Tales of the Jazz Age features eleven of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-loved short stories and 'novelettes' including 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' and 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz'. Set in the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald's own term for the Roaring Twenties of newly confident, post-war America, this collection shows a comic genius at work, fashioning every genre from low farce to shrewd social insight, along with fantasy of extraordinary invention. These stories illuminate the unique talent who went on to write The Great Gatsby, and to become one of the enduring icons of American literature.This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition features an afterword by Ned Halley.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Set in the South of France in the decade after the First World War, Tender is the Night explores the new world of moneyed leisure found by the first generation of idle-rich Americans to take refuge in the French Riviera, bracketed between the horrors of the Great War and the Great Depression to come. It is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing ten-year pas de deux they act out along the border between sanity and madness. F. Scott Fitzgerald deliberately set out to write the most ambitious and far-reaching novel of his career, experimenting radically with narrative conventions of chronology and point of view and drawing on early breakthroughs in psychiatry to enrich his account of the makeup and breakdown of character and culture.This stunning Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Tender is the Night features an afterword by Ned Halley.

Tess Durbeyfield’s father forcibly sends her off to work for the wealthy D’Urberville family, hoping to alleviate their poverty and perhaps secure her a marriage to the cruel and manipulative Alec D’Urberville. His terrible assault upon her, and the subsequent child, form the terrible heart of Tess’s tragic life – as family, love and future are taken away from her by the repressive mores of Victorian society.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is the ultimate novel of retribution. Based on a true story, it recounts the story of Edouard Dantes, his betrayal and imprisonment in the sinister Chateau d'If. Years later, Paris is intrigued by the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo,who bursts onto the Paris social scene with his millions. He encounters the three principal betrayers of Dantes who have prospered in the post-Napoleonic boom and, one by one, their lives fall apart. The book was a huge, popular success when it was first serialized in 1844, and remains the greatest tale of revenge.This beautiful, abridged Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The Count of Monte Cristo features an afterword by Marcus Clapham.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Rather than be 'sivilized' by the Widow Douglas, Huckleberry Finn - the grubby but good-natured son of a local drunk - sets off with Jim, an escaped slave, to find freedom on the Mississippi river. With the law on their tail, they navigate a world of robbers, slave hunters and con men, and Huck must choose between what society says is 'right' and his own burgeoning understanding of Jim's friendship and humanity. Nostalgic and melancholy in equal measure, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a razor-sharp satire of the antebellum South that, despite beginning life as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is now seen in its own right as one of the most important of all American novels.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the greatest collection of detective stories ever written. From his residence at 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes solves a series of baffling and bizarre cases, including those of a man terrified by the arrival of an envelope containing orange pips, and a woman whose fiancé disappeared on his way to their wedding. Each story showcases the great detective's inimitable and extraordinary deductive powers, recounted to us by his faithful friend and colleague, Dr Watson.

Central Africa, 1914; Rose Sayer, a thirty-three year-old English woman, is left alone when her missionary brother dies. Her only route out is aboard The African Queen, a steam-powered launch captained by Cockney mechanic, Charlie Alnutt. Determined to do her bit for the war effort and to avenge her brother, Rose persuades Charlie that they should attack the German gunboat, the Königin Luise. And so begins a most unlikely alliance and love affair, as Charlie and Rose venture down the treacherous Ulanga river encountering danger and adventure at every turn.

This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The African Queen by C. S. Forester features an introduction by the award-winning author and journalist, Giles Foden.

Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is both a poignant story of frustrated love and an extraordinarily vivid, delightfully satirical record of a vanished world. As the scion of one of New York’s leading families, Newland Archer has been born into a life of sumptuous privilege and strict duty. But the arrival of the Countess Olenska, a free spirit who breathes clouds of European sophistication, makes him question the path on which his upbringing has set him. As his fascination with her grows, he discovers just how hard it is to escape the bonds of the society that has shaped him.

This is a fresh, contemporary translation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War for the 21st century. As well as its historical importance, it is one of the most influential political and business books of our era. This edition rediscovers the essential clarity of the ancient masterpiece, cited by generals from a dozen Chinese dynasties, international business leaders, and modern military field manuals. It also contains a full commentary on Sun Tzu, the man and his ideas, contemporary of Confucius and Buddha; and a critical guide to further reading. This is the perfect introduction to one of the world's best-known classics.This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The Art of War is translated and edited by author and scriptwriter Jonathan Clements.Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is on holiday with her husband and two young children at a sleepy resort town on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. There, she is pursued by the charming and unmarried Robert Lebrun. Edna doesn’t play by the rules; flirtation turns into an affair that awakens in Edna her desire to break away from her passionless marriage, her children and the strict conventions of nineteenth-century society.

The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune. Anthony and his wife Gloria are young and gorgeous, rich and leisured, and dedicate their lives to the reckless pursuit of happiness. But this intimate story turns tragic, as their marriage disintegrates under the weight of their expectations, dissipation, jealousy and aimlessness. Fitzgerald skilfully portrays the east-coast elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what will soon be known as Cafe Society. As with all of Fitzgerald's novels, it is a brilliant character study written in breathtaking prose. It is also a gripping account of the complexities of marriage, largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship with his wife, Zelda.

Faithfully supported by his chronicler, Dr Watson, Sherlock Holmes pits his wits against 'Napoleon of Crime' Professor Moriarty, assists European royalty threatened by disgrace, helps to solve the mysterious death of a young woman due to be married, and investigates intrigues that have defeated the detectives of Scotland Yard. Packed with excitement and mystery, this collection showcases the legendary sleuth at his very best.

Extraordinary both for the vividness of their descriptions and the success with which they imagine life from a non-human perspective, these two classics of children’s literature are two of the greatest and most popular animal stories ever written. The Call of the Wild tells the story of Buck, a domestic dog who is kidnapped from his home in California and forced to pull sleds in the Arctic wasteland. White Fang, by contrast, is the tale of a crossbreed who is three-quarters wolf and a quarter dog, and who must endure considerable suffering in the wilderness before being tamed by an American and taken to live in California.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes contains Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's final twelve stories about his great fictional detective. Featuring crypts at midnight, strange bones in a furnace and a blood-sucking vampire, these tales explore the darker side of human nature and involve betrayal, violence and the terrible consequences of infidelity.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America's Jazz Age. The Great Gatsby lives mysteriously in a luxurious Long Island mansion, playing lavish host to hundreds of people.And yet no one seems to know him or how he became so rich. He is rumoured to be everything from a German spy to a war hero. People clamour for invitations to his wild parties.
But Jay Gatsby doesn't heed them. He cares for one person alone - Daisy Buchanan, the woman he has waited for all his life. Little does he know that his infatuation will lead to tragedy and end in murder.

The richness of Oscar Wilde's way with words and ideas is given full range in this sparkling collection of short stories written between 1887 and 1891. From the comic tales of The Canterville Ghost and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime to the marvelous fairy stories and fantasies of The Selfish Giant, The Happy Prince and The Star Child, we are treated to the extravagance and dexterity of Wilde's exceptional wit, in stories that will appeal to both adults and children.

Supernatural hounds, a family curse, a mysterious cipher and the return of a deadly enemy . . . Sherlock Holmes will have to utilize every skill he has to solve the two classic mysteries collected here. The Hound of the Baskervilles sees Holmes and Dr Watson travel to the misty wilds of Dartmoor to confront a devilish apparition, while in The Valley of Fear the pair investigate a gruesome murder that may be the work of the dastardly Professor Moriarty himself.

Rejected by fifteenth-century Parisian society, the hideously deformed bell-ringer Quasimodo believes he is safe under the watchful eye of his master, the Archdeacon Claude Frollo. But after Quasimodo saves the beautiful Romani girl Esmeralda from the gallows and brings her to sanctuary in the cathedral, he and Frollo's mutual desire for her puts them increasingly at odds, before compassion and cruelty clash with tragic results.

The four great comedies of Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, were all written at the height of the controversial Irish author's powers in his last, doomed decade, the 1890s. They remain among the most-loved, and most-quoted, of all drama in the English language. Along with Salome, his darkly decadent dramatization of the Bible story, these immortal plays continue to pack theatres, and have been adapted for every kind of media.

Meet the human boy Mowgli, the sleek panther Bagheera, the 'sleepy brown bear' Baloo, and the conniving tiger Shere Khan in one of the world's best-loved books. A collection of short stories and poems centred on the charming cast, The Jungle Book not only follows Mowgli's journey to learn the Law of the Jungle from his animal companions but also introduces some of its other wonderful inhabitants in stories such as 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi' and 'The White Seal'.This new edition includes the original illustrations of Rudyard's father J. Lockwood Kipling as well as an afterword by writer and editor David Stuart Davies.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

A baby is found by wood nymphs in the forest of Burzee. They raise him as their own and give him the name Neclaus. When he grows up, Neclaus has to leave the forest so he makes a home for himself in the laughing valley of Hohaha, where he lives amongst humans for the first time. He discovers there that many children are very poor and neglected so, to cheer them up, he whittles wooden toys as gifts. Eventually he makes presents for all the children and so the story of Santa Claus is born.

"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart." After crash-landing in the Sahara Desert, a pilot encounters a little prince who is visiting Earth from his own planet. Their strange and moving meeting illuminates for the aviator many of life's universal truths, as he comes to learn what it means to be human from a child who is not.

After crash-landing in the Sahara Desert, a pilot encounters a little prince who is visiting Earth from his own planet. Their strange and moving meeting illuminates for the aviator many of life's universal truths, as he comes to learn what it means to be human from a child who is not. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's delightful The Little Prince has been translated into over 180 languages and sold over 80 million copies.

Sherlock Holmes is back on the case in this collection of sparkling short stories, in which we learn about Holmes' early days as a sleuth, encounter a seemingly murderous widow, and meet the great detective's brother, Mycroft, for the first time. And, in 'The Final Problem', Holmes comes face-to-face with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, in a battle of wits that could kill them both.This Macmillan Collector's Library edition features an afterword by David Stuart Davies - a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and an authority on Sherlock Holmes. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Initially described as a comedy, Shakespeare's explorations of prejudice, duty and the nature of justice make The Merchant of Venice a far darker, more alluring play. The Merchant of Venice is most associated not with its titular hero, Antonio, but with the complex, unforgettable figure of the money-lender, Shylock. It is Shylock who finances Antonio's friend Bassanio in his pursuit of the beautiful Portia, and who demands a gruesome bond from the wealthy merchant.

With precise plotting underpinned by a wise understanding of human nature, George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel gives a wonderful evocation of rural life and the complicated relationship between siblings. Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom enjoy a rural childhood on the banks of the river Floss. But the approach of adulthood creates tension: intelligent and fiery Maggie tests the boundaries of nineteenth-century society in her search for love, while Tom embraces convention and accepts his father’s desire for him to become a businessman. Increasingly self-righteous, Tom disapproves of his sister’s suitors and when he discovers that she took a fateful boat trip with Stephen Guest, her cousin’s fiancé, he turns his back on her. Maggie is ostracized by her beloved brother and her own community, and only through tragic events are the siblings reunited . . .

It is 1941 and bombs have turned London into the front line of a world war. In the shadows of the Blitz, Hitler’s agents are running a blackmail operation to obtain documents that could bring the nation to instant defeat. Arthur Rowe, a man once convicted of a notorious mercy killing, stumbles onto a German spy operation in Bloomsbury and must be silenced. But even with his memory taken from him, he is still a very dangerous witness.

A taut thriller and a haunting exploration of pity, love, and guilt, The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest of all spy novels.

Lady Verinder’s uncle gives her the Moonstone – a magnificent diamond as large as an egg – for her eighteenth birthday, but it is not quite the generous gift it first seems. For he obtained it through bloody and nefarious means in India, and legend says the diamond’s guardians will stop at nothing to get it back. When the Moonstone is stolen, an innocent man is accused of the crime and from this simple beginning, Wilkie Collins creates a stunning, complex narrative of dark mystery, suspense and atmosphere – and one of the very first detective stories ever written.

Strange things are going on at the Paris Opera House; a mysterious phantom - a skeleton in dinner dress - is wreaking havoc amongst the singers and backstage staff. But when new managers take over and dismiss the rumours of the Opera Ghost, the terror really begins. Who is the curious figure stalking the stage at night? How can he be in so many places at once, entering and leaving locked rooms at will? And what is his connection to the beautiful and talented young soloist, Christine?The Phantom of the Opera is perhaps best known for its many stage and screen adaptations, but Gaston Leroux's original text surpasses them all for its Gothic tension and haunting horror.This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition features an afterword by dramatist Peter Harness.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.