Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Angela Carter

Discover Angela Carter's classic feminist retelling of favourite fairy tales woven in seductive, luminous storytelling. 
 
Beauty is turned into a Beast, Little Red Riding’s grandmother is stoned to death as a witch and, in the title story, a beautiful young pianist is swept into the world of a rich and sinister aristocrat, a man whose previous three wives have all died in mysterious circumstances. 
 
From familiar fairy tales and legends – Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves – Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories. 
 
'Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality' Ian McEwan 
 
'A quirky, original, and baroque stylist' Margaret Atwood 
 
With an introduction from award-winning short story writer Helen Simpson

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

A special edition of the feminist cult classic

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin provides a fascinating background to indigenous Australian life. 
 
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines, Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account, Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories.

The Songlines

Mary Lavin

Mary Lavin is the great unsung voice of Irish fiction. Here are her very best, most electric stories: illuminating, moving, arrows in flight. 
 
‘This is a wonderful collection, and a reminder that Mary Lavin was – is – one of Ireland’s greatest writers’ Roddy Doyle 
 
Mary Lavin’s stories feature ordinary people in the tight confines of ordinary life. From rural Ireland and the streets of Dublin they charm, irritate and intrigue in complicated brilliance, appearing to us with unique freshness. Good friendships, bad deeds, frustrations, missteps, hope and laughter are all found in captivating stories where real and astonishing things happen. 
 
Few women were so consistently published in the New Yorker and yet today Lavin’s work is largely unpublished and overlooked. This collection re-establishes her as one of the most genius, irresistible and memorable voices of the last century. 
 
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TÓIBÍN 
 
‘She is, to come right out with it, magnificent’ New York Times 
 
‘A feast of quiet humour and heartbreak’ Emma Donoghue 
 
‘Mary Lavin's stories conjure sadness, profundity, hilarity and wildness out of thin air. They are simply masterful’ Colin Barrett 
 
‘Mary Lavin’s stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other’ Sunday Times

An Arrow in Flight

Oscar Wilde

A selection of Oscar Wilde's best and most important plays - sharp, relevant and brilliant to this day. 
 
 Who would have thought a comedy of manners written more than a hundred years ago would still be so apt and so funny? Oscar Wilde was a genius of play-writing, and his deftness, wit and sharp eye for social satire keep audiences in thrall to this day. Alongside Earnest, discover a biblical tragedy retold, Lady Windemere and her infamous fan and Wilde's take on an ideal husband, in this selection of Wilde's most important plays. 
 
 ‘[The Importance of Being Earnest] has a strong claim to being the most perfect comedy in the English language’ Daily Telegraph

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Ernest Hemingway

The Essential Hemingway brings together a wide selection of Hemingway's works, providing the perfect introduction to his extensive writing. The collection includes the full text of Fiesta, Hemingway's first major novel; long extracts from his three greatest works of fiction, A Farewell to Arms, To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls; twenty-five complete short stories; and the breathtaking epilogue to Death in the Afternoon.

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