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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

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Dylan Thomas

For a boy growing up in an ordinary town in Wales, summer is 'always radiant, rainless, lazily rowdy and skyblue', and it always snows at Christmas. Weaving through the course of a year, this selection of Dylan Thomas's most evocative and bittersweet stories depicts silent winter mornings by the sea, glorious holidays in the countryside and lovelorn nights in the pub. It ends with 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', perhaps the most beautiful story of the festive season ever written.

A Child's Christmas in Wales

Hans Christian Andersen

Step into the enchanting world of Hans Christian Andersen with this collection of timeless Christmas tales, capturing both the magic and melancholy of the season. This selection brings together Andersen’s most beloved works, from the magical journey of ‘The Snow Queen’ to the heart-breaking ‘The Little Match Girl’, and the tender reflections on the passage of time in ‘The Fir Tree’. Together these stories show how Andersen transformed the traditional fairy tale with his unique ability to blend exuberant whimsy and profound insight.

The Snow Queen

Virginia Woolf

'The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful'. In such conditions, Virginia Woolf takes to London's streets in search of a pencil. The account of her journey - the people, the places, the pleasure - soon becomes one of the great paeans to city life. This collection also includes other wonderful essays, such as 'How Should One Read a Book?' and 'The Sun and the Fish'.

Street Haunting

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 
 
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. 
 
F. Scott Fitzgerald was the most celebrated chronicler of the Jazz Age. At the time of his death, he believed he was an alcoholic failure; but he received posthumous acclaim as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. This collection brings together some of his finest stories, including 'The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button'; 'Winter Dreams', a melancholy thwarted love story that anticipated The Great Gatsby, and 'Babylon Revisited', set the year after the 1929 stock market crash, when the Jazz Age sounded its last. 
 
'His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings' Ernest Hemingway

Babylon Revisited

Françoise Sagan

Published when she was only eighteen, Françoise Sagan's astonishing novella, Bonjour Tristesse, became an instant bestseller. It tells the story of Cécile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences.

Bonjour Tristesse

Sam Selvon

Sam Selvon is now widely considered to be one of the greatest chroniclers of the West Indian emigrant experience. His evocation of voice, of place, of longing, defined for many the experience of a generation. Describing life in the Caribbean and day-to-day adventures in London, this collection features many his most acclaimed stories, including 'The Village Washer', 'A Drink of Water' and 'The Cricket Match'.

Calypso in London

Vladimir Nabokov

Thirteen ingeniously crafted stories make up Vladimir Nabokov's baker's dozen. In some of these stories shadowy people pass through, cooped up by life, with nowhere to escape. In others, elusive glimpses of fleeting happiness, which flutter away before they can be snatched, waylay their victims. Like the shimmer of the sea, the gleam of a glass caught by the sun, these stories sparkle brilliantly only to dissolve again.

Nabokov's Dozen

Edith Wharton

A novella regarded by Edith Wharton as one of her very best, Summer tells the tale of forbidden sexual passion and thwarted dreams set against the backdrop of a lush summer in rural Massachusetts. A sensation on first publication, its honest depiction of a young woman attempting to live on her own terms remains as vital today as it was in 1917.

Summer

Kate Chopin

This candid portrayal of a woman who refuses to accept her allotted role as wife and mother caused an outcry when it was published in 1899. It is the story of Edna Pontellier, who spends the summer on the Gulf of Mexico with her businessman husband and her two sons. When an illicit romance awakens unfamiliar ideas and longings in Edna, she discovers a new identity for herself, but cannot hope for understanding in the stifling attitudes of Louisiana society.

The Awakening

Albert Camus

Jean-Baptiste Clamence - refined, handsome, forty, a former successful lawyer - is in turmoil. Over several drunken nights he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. He talks of parties and his debauchery, of Parisian nights and the Aegean sea, and, ultimately, of his self-loathing. One of Albert Camus' most famous works, The Fall is a brilliant, complex portrayal of lost innocence and the true face of man.

The Fall

Clarice Lispector

The small incidents of life become moments of inner revelation in the luminous writing of Clarice Lispector. A woman contemplating a vase of roses after a nervous breakdown; a tangled mother-daughter relationship; a man's abandonment of a dog; an animal in a zoo: each one leads to mystery and self-discovery, delight and devastation.

The Imitation of the Rose

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges remains one of the most influential short story writers of the twentieth century, whose spellbinding tales of magic, mystery and murder are shot through with deep philosophical paradoxes. This collection brings together many of his greatest stories, including 'The Garden of Forking Paths', 'The Book of Sand' and 'Shakespeare's Memory'.

The Library of Babel

Anaïs Nin

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for fleeting romance. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out...

A Spy In The House Of Love

Anton Chekhov

Widely considered to be one of greatest ever writers of the form, Anton Chekhov's short stories offer unforgettable character, crystalline expression, and a beautiful, quiet uncertainty. Collected here are five of his very best tales: 'The Lady with the Little Dog', 'The House with the Mezzanine', and the trilogy of stories, 'The Man in the Case', 'Gooseberries' and 'About Love'.

About Love

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield's perceptive and resonant writing helped to define the modern short story, observing apparently trivial incidents to create quietly devastating revelations of inner lives. Graceful, delicate and burning with emotion, Mansfield's stories were integral in shaping the Modernist movement and redefined a genre. This collection contains some of Mansfield's most celebrated stories, including 'Bliss', 'The Garden Party' and 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel'.

Bliss

Arthur Schnitzler

Like his Viennese contemporary Sigmund Freud, the doctor and writer Arthur Schnitzler 
was a bold pioneer in exploring the dark tangled roots of human consciousness. His novella Dream Story tells the tale of a young married man who, after a discussion with his wife about their fantasises, embarks on a eery reverie through Vienna's underbelly.

Dream Story

Guy de Maupassant

Often described as the father of the modern short story, there is perhaps no other writer more closely associated with the form than Guy de Maupassant. Included here is his most famous story, 'Boule de Suif', as well as tales of love, such as the brilliant 'Happiness', and the supernatural, like the chilling 'The Horla'.

Moonlight

John Steinbeck

Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are dashed as Lennie becomes a victim of his own strength. Tackling universal themes of friendship and shared vision, and giving a voice to America's lonely and dispossessed, Of Mice and Men remains Steinbeck's most popular work, achieving success as a novel, Broadway play and three acclaimed films.

Of Mice and Men

Penguin Modern Classics

Yuko Tsushima

Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter, in her first year of separation from her husband. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time, and remains one of Yuko Tsushima's most beloved works.

Territory of Light

Elizabeth Von Arnim

The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim's brilliant, irrepressible novella, tells the tale of four very different women who, on answering an advertisement in The Times, find themselves far away from the drizzle of London and instead in the warmth of an Italian sun. There, alongside the lapping of the Mediterranean, the women's spirits begin to shift, and quite unexpected changes take place.

The Enchanted April

Joseph Conrad

On sea, on land, at the edges of the colonial experience, Joseph Conrad's short stories offer a glimpse of the violence, the kindness, and the mystery at humanity's heart. 'The Lagoon' tells of love and its shadow, 'The Typhoon' of the gap between man and nature, while 'The Secret Sharer' provides a brilliant exploration of truth and trust.

The Lagoon

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Regarded as one of world literature's foremost novelists, Fyodor Dostoevsky's short stories are also some of the best ever written. 'White Nights' tells of love and loss on the streets of St. Petersburg, 'A Nasty Business' presents the hilarious tale of a general dropping in on the wedding of a subordinate, while 'The Meek One' is an existentialist tale of marriage and tragedy.

White Nights

Isak Dinesen

Karen Blixen, author of the acclaimed memoir Out of Africa, was also a master of the short story form: her tales offer luminous meditations on rebirth and redemption, on the mystery and unexpectedness of human behaviour. Alongside 'Babette's Feast', this selection also includes 'Sorrow-Acre', often thought to be one of her finest stories.

Babette's Feast

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was the most talked-about woman of the decadent 1920s, notorious as a hard-drinking bad girl with a talent for endlessly quotable one-liners. In the stories collected here, she brilliantly captures the spirit of the decadent Jazz Age in New York, exposing both the dazzle and the darkness. This selection includes among others 'The Standard of Living', 'Mr Durant' and her masterpiece, 'Big Blonde'.

Big Blonde

Truman Capote

Holly Golightly is a glittering socialite mover and shaker: generally upwards, sometimes sideways and, every now and then, down. She's up all night drinking cocktails and breaking hearts. She's a shoplifter, a delight, a drifter, a tease. In short, she's an icon. Truman Capote's most famous work, Breakfast at Tiffany's is the ultimate ode to dreamers.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Saki

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 
 
With his signature flair and razor-sharp wit, Saki is an undisputed master of the short story. His tales are by turns hilarious, festive, supernatural and macabre, but all offer fabulous, bite-sized satires of a decadent upper-class Edwardian world. 
 
'Saki, like a chivalrous highwayman, only robs the rich: behind all these stories is an exacting sense of justice . . . they dazzle and delight' Graham Greene

Reginald's Christmas Revel

Yasunari Kawabata

Tired of the bustling city, a man takes the train through the snow to Japan's mountains, to meet with a geisha he believes he loves. Beautiful and innocent, she is tightly bound by the rules of a rural geisha, and lives a life of servitude and seclusion. Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata's masterpiece, is a delicate, subtle meditation on love and its limits.

Snow Country

Arthur Conan Doyle

Emerging from their smoke-filled rooms at 21B Baker Street, Holmes and Watson grapple with the forces of crime that stalk the streets of London. From the first story, 'A Scandal in Bohemia' where Holmes is foiled by the quick-thinking of 'the woman', Irene Adler, to what was presumed to be the last, 'The Final Problem' where Holmes at last comes face to face with the diabolical Professor Moriarty, this selection is presents the very best of Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

Leo Tolstoy

Dmitry Andreich Olenin, in the hope of escaping the hollowness of his privilege, joins the army and heads to the Caucasus. There among the foothills, he will meet the Cossacks: a people he considers to be at one with the land. In their company he will hunt, he will drink, he will fall in love and, slowly, he will begin to understand that between people, between cultures, there is often a space that cannot be traversed...

The Cossacks

O. Henry

O. Henry is one of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century and a true master of the short story. This selection of tales ranges from Christmas in New York to the cattle-lands of Texas, taking in con men, clerks, shop assistants, tramps and tricksters. They all highlight O. Henry's comic eye, his gift for evoking speech and setting, and his unique approach to life's quirks of fate.

The Gift of the Magi

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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