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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Edgar Allan Poe

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARL 
 
Edgar Allan Poe invented detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin: 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Rogêt' and 'The Purloined Letter'. Dorothy L. Sayers would later describe these tales as 'almost a complete manual of detective theory and practice'. Indeed, Poe's short mysteries inspired the creation of countless literary sleuths, among them Sherlock Holmes. Today the unique Dupin stories still stand out as utterly engrossing page-turners. 
 
This edition includes the definitive text of these stories and an introduction and appendix on 'The Earliest Detectives' by Matthew Pearl.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Graham Greene

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX 
 
Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...

The Comedians

John Bowen

In summer, and particularly when the wind blows south-west across the lawn, the sceptic tank gives out a strong stench… ‘Oh, it is a body,’ the girls say. ‘We have a body in there. No one you know. It decomposes, of course, but so slowly one quite despairs.’ 
 
In their lovely, quiet Cotswolds village, Janet and Susan are known to the villagers simply as ‘the girls’. Partners in love and work, co-proprietors of a picturesque shop, they lead an enviable, enviably settled life. 
 
But when a moment of small, surprising passion intrudes into the equilibrium of their world, the girls’ lives take a deeply unsettling turn. First comes motherhood. Then comes murder. 
 
Part-macabre comedy, part-crime thriller, part-cosy romance, John Bowen’s The Girls is a novel like none other. Told with warmth, affection and fun, yet laced with darkness and unease, 'the girls' will ensure you never look on Middle England quite so quaintly again. 
 
‘Absolutely wicked’ Armistead Maupin 
 
‘Startlingly offbeat’ Gore Vidal 
 
‘[For] people who like Myra Breckinridge as well as Miss Marple; fans of Beryl Bainbridge, Russell Greenan and Patricia Highsmith; those who feel Barbara Pym-ish on some days and Stephen King-ish on others . . . The Girls charms us as only certain tales ‘of village life’ can’ Washington Post

The Girls

José Saramago

Watching a rented video, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is shocked to notice that one of the actors is identical to him in every physical detail. He embarks on a secret quest to find his double and sets in motion a train of events that he cannot control. Saramago's novel explores the nature of individuality and examines the fear and insecurity that arise when our singularity comes under threat, when even a wife cannot tell the original from the imposter...

The Double

(Enemy)

Georges Perec

Anton Vowl is missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any hint as to his location and, insidiously, a ghost, from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow. This virtuoso story, chock-full of plots and subplots, shows the skill of both author and translator who impart all the action without a crucial grammatical prop: the letter 'e'.

A Void

Nevil Shute

After Philip Stenning is involved in a near-fatal plane crash, he feels he owes a debt of gratitude to the man who rescued him. However, his mysterious saviour is an escaped convict, and his determination to help him leads Stenning into a tense and dramatic adventure of intrigue, drug-running and murder.

Marazan

When Peter Moran picks up a man on the roadside while driving through a bitter rainy night on the South Downs, he embarks upon an adventure that will lead him into treasonous international plots, flying adventures and tests of both his bravery and his loyalty.

So Disdained

Roberto Bolaño

Dropped from the Olympic figure skating team, Nuria Martí&rsquo;s fate pivots her into a world of corruption, jealousy &ndash; and revenge. 
 
Cushioning her fall from grace, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old masion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn&rsquo;t tell her is he paid for it using public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene. 
 
Narrated by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous civil servant, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives. 
 
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 
 
'A work of intense and unrealized longing' The New York Times 
 
&lsquo;Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world&rsquo; Guardian

The Skating Rink

John Hartley Williams

Alongside the names of James Hadley Chase and Erle Stanley Gardner we must now add that of John Hartley Williams - though Mystery in Spiderville is no run-of-the-mill hard-boiled thriller. The décor is by Dali, the plot is a mixture of Breton and Burroughs, and the main character - the protean and unkillable Spider Rembrandt - has six toes, sleeps in a grave and dreams of congress with the pert and playful Reedy Buttons. 
 
Sucked into the vortex of Spider's philandering mind is a narrator - sometimes Spider's adversary, sometimes his victim - who lies upon a bed brooding on the absence of a nameless, brown-haired woman. He, too, is protean: full of passionate longings and homicidal tendencies. 
 
A surrealist film-noir that blends the forensic with the erotic, the seedy penny-dreadful and the lyric prose-poem, Mystery in Spiderville is one of the strangest, strongest and most arresting fictional debuts in years.

Mystery In Spiderville

Andrey Kurkov

All that stands between one man and murder by the mafia is a penguin.Viktor writes obituaries for a newspaper in Kyiv; the only creature he trusts is his pet penguin, Misha. But when his ‘subjects’ start dying while their tributes sit in his drawer, Viktor realises he’s writing death notices to order.Bleakly funny and quietly tragic, Death and the Penguin captures life in a collapsing world where conscience and corruption blur. Kurkov’s understated prose turns absurdity into menace - a masterpiece of Eastern European noir with feathers and frostbite.‘A tragicomic masterpiece’ Daily Telegraph‘A black comedy of rare distinction’ Spectator

Death and the Penguin

A BBC Two Between the Covers Pick

Hammond Innes

When Jim Pryce, a deserter from the army, returns secretly to his native Cornwall, he finds the coast cold and unfriendly. He is soon plunged into a hazardous world of crooks,contraband, madness and mysteries underneath the rocky cliffs.

Killer Mine

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDY MCNAB 
 
He was a man without hope, until a lawyer and a crazy inheritance spurred him to one last desperate roll of the dice. 
 
The old man was convinced, against all evidence, that there was oil in the Rocky mountains. So his grandson sets off to a godforsaken town of shattered hopes and bitter old men, and plunges into a perilous battle against hostile country, powerful enemies and a ticking clock.

Campbell's Kingdom

Junichiro Tanizaki

A seductive psychological thriller about obsession, jealousy and deceit - and a Japanese queer classic. Sonoko must tell her story. Listen and decide for yourself. 
 
Sonoko Kakiuchi is a cultured Osaka lady in an uninspiring marriage. When she decides to take an art class in town she meets the extraordinary Mitsuko, a woman as beautiful and charismatic as she is cunning. They begin a passionate affair but as Sonoko’s infatuation with Mitsuko deepens, she finds herself sinking ever-further into a quicksand of sex, humiliation and deceit. 
 
‘A riveting tale of malevolent corruption fatally masked by a terrible and deceptive beauty’ Kirkus Reviews 
 
‘Classic Tanizaki…exuberant storytelling within a multi-layered narrative of sexual obsession’ Japan Times 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KRISTEN ROUPENIAN

Quicksand

Joan Lindsay

Read this fantastic, atmospheric Australian thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a group of young girls. 
 
It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. 
 
Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared. 
 
They never returned. 
 
Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves. 
 
NOW A MAJOR BBC TV SERIES - STARRING NATALIE DORMER

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Karen and Trevor have seen too many oil tankers run aground near Land's End, their poisonous cargo turning the waters black and suffocating all natural life for miles around. The Petros Jupiter is the latest devastating wreck, and tired of local committees that have no effect, Karen resolves on more drastic measures. It is left to her husband to unravel the tragedy and mystery that follow.

The Black Tide

Iris Murdoch

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. 
 
Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing, and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher. And so, dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries that will end in his doom. 
 
‘A source of wonder and delight’ 
Spectator 
 
‘Her humour is all the more achingly funny because she keeps it on the edge of our vision’ 
Daily Mail 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE HANNAH

The Black Prince

Mark Haddon

Fifteen year old Christopher is about to embark on an investigation... 
 
Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. 
 
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. 
 
This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are also no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christopher decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery story becomes more complicated than he could have ever predicted. 
 
'Outstanding... a stunningly good read' Observer 
 
'A superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy' Ian McEwan 
 
**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Vintage Children's Classics

Michael Ondaatje

Booker prize winning author Michael Ondaatje invites you on a brutal, beautiful journey into the American West. . . 
 
At twenty-one years old, Billy the Kid has killed a man for each year he’s been alive. 
 
Roaming the blasted planes of the Wild West, he moves between friends, foes and lovers, fighting to keep just one step ahead of the law. Yet in this twisted wasteland – a country of mad dogs, of sweat and gore and blinding heat – the sheriffs play dirty too.Melding prose, poetry, imagined interviews and ephemeral photography, Ondaatje weaves together a lyrical reinterpretation of Billy’s short, infamous existence, forming a portrait of a young man, and a young country, borne out of violence, threaded through with disaster, yet rich in wonder. 
 
‘Ondaatje’s language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art.’ Annie Dillard 
 
'Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint' Larry McMurtry

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

William Faulkner

An elderly, proud black farmer, Lucas Beauchamp, is wrongfully arrested for the murder of a white man. The lynch mob are baying for his blood. His sole hope lies with a young white boy, bent on repaying an old favour, who with the help of Lucas's cynical lawyer will work to find the truth and hatch a risky plot to prove his innocence.

Intruder in the Dust

The Soviets have cut off food and fuel supplies to West Berlin in a final attempt to force a stranglehold over the city. The Allied response is the Berlin airlift: thousands of planes carrying supplies - a lifeline to the people of the city. 
A chance for heroism perhaps, but not for Neil Fraser or Bill Saeton. One is an ex-RAF pilot on the run from the law, the other will stop at nothing to build the perfect aircraft engine. In an abandoned hangar in the British countryside, tensions rise to boiling point.

Air Bridge

Patricia Highsmith

"You're always good on ideas, Tom..." 
 
An American art collector is claiming that the expensive masterpiece he bought is a fake. He wants to meet with the artist - but Tom Ripley knows that artist no longer exits. 
 
Ripley needs to hide his role in the fraud, and keep his colleague's mouth shut. But not everyone's nerves are as steady as his, especially when it comes to murder. 
 
The second in Highsmith's Ripley series, Ripley Under Ground is set six years after the events of The Talented Mr Ripley. 
 
'Patricia Highsmith is unrivalled' Daily Telegraph

Ripley Under Ground

It all begins with a lump of rock. To Bill Gansert, it seems a message from beyond the grave; the legacy of his one-time colleague George Farnell who disappeared in a storm of mystery and suspicion ten years ago. The rock, an enticing hint at a rich, hidden supply of mineral ore, leads Gansert and team of men to Norway and to a glacial labyrinth of mountains, following in Farnell's footsteps to the source of the ore. But others have heard of the rock, and the wealth it promises, and are also hot on the trail...

The Blue Ice

Ottessa Moshfegh

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES 
Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. 
 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE* 
**FROM THE AUTHOR OF TIKTOK SENSATION MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION** 
 
Trapped between caring for her alcoholic father and her job as a secretary at the boys' prison, Eileen Dunlop dreams of escaping to the big city. 
 
In the meantime, her nights and weekends are filled with shoplifting and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. 
 
When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted, unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. But soon, Eileen's affection for Rebecca pull her into a crime that far surpasses even her own wild imagination. 
 
'Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling' The Times 
 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NEW BLOOD DAGGER AWARD*

Eileen

When David Cunningham returns to the Cornish coast to mourn a wartime love affair, he little imagines the mysterious quest that awaits him: it will lead him to the Mediterranean, to danger and a life of adventure, to the dark world of racketeering in Naples, the bleak hills beyond Tivoli, and a woman with a tragic past.

Dead and Alive

Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami's third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase is the mystery hybrid which completes the odyssey begun in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. 
 
The man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big blank. 
 
His girlfriend has perfectly formed ears, ears with the power to bewitch, marvels of creation. The man receives a letter from a friend, enclosing a seemingly innocent photograph of sheep, and a request: place the photograph somewhere it will be seen. Then, one September afternoon, the phone rings, and the adventure begins. Welcome to the wild sheep chase. 
 
‘A science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas’ Independent 
 
‘A highly accomplished piece of craftsmanship’ New Yorker 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

A Wild Sheep Chase

the surreal, breakout detective novel, now in a deluxe gift edition

Special 3D Edition

Michael Randall flees to the wild seas around the Shetlands to escape an impossible dilemma. There he finds a North Sea oil rig and the unlikely possibility of a new life. But one stormy night this glimmer of hope for the future, and Randall's life itself, is thrown into jeopardy.

North Star

A young boy, Victor, is collected from school by a stranger in a bowler hat - the stranger says he has won Victor in a game of backgammon with Victor's father. The stranger, known as the Captain, takes Victor to live with the sweet but withdrawn Lisa, where he serves as her conduit to the outside world. From mysterious beginnings, Graham Greene's final novel becomes a twisting thriller of smuggling, jewel theft and international espionage which culminates in a dramatic showdown in Panama.

The Captain and the Enemy

For Arthur Rowe the charity fête was a trip back to childhood, to innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz, to forget twenty years of his past and a murder. Then he guesses the weight of the cake, and from that moment on he's a hunted man, the target of shadowy killers, on the run and struggling to remember and to find the truth.

The Ministry of Fear

John Fowles

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EVIE WYLD 
 
'There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller' New York Times 
 
Weird, withdrawn, and unloved, Fred is a young collector of butterflies. One day his eye alights on a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda, and an obsession starts to form. So when Fred wins some money he decides to use the money to compensate for his unfair start and to get what he really wants - Miranda. If she could only get to know him she might start to love him. And so with the meticulous attention to detail of an experienced collector he calmly plans her abduction.

The Collector

Read this classic uplifting, moving and heartwarming story about life in the face of the cold war. 
 
 Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicuous aircraft engineer whose eccentric interests in quantum mechanics and spiritualism are frowned upon in aviation circles. But when a passenger plane crashes in unexplained circumstances, Honey must convince his superiors that his unorthodox theories are correct before more lives are lost.

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