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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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)

Nevil Shute

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

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

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

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

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

Jean-Patrick Manchette

Eugène Tarpon is back to sleeping in his office and waiting for a job that pays. Then he gets a call from an old contact in the police. A distant relative of his – a polite, persistent widow – wants someone to look into her daughter’s disappearance. The police have already given up. No leads, no hope, no point. Just take the case, take her money, and keep her busy. 
 
Tarpon’s too broke to refuse, and too much of a gentleman to brush her off. But the story doesn’t sit right. And when something smells off, he can’t help but start digging. 
 
With Skeletons in the Closet, Manchette sends his bruised, boozy detective stumbling deeper into the wreckage of modern France – exposing a world where justice is hollow, the missing stay missing, and decency is just another dead end.

Skeletons in the Closet

‘Graham Greene's beautiful and disturbing novel is filled with tenderness, humour, excitement and doubt’ The Times 
 
 A leak is traced to a small sub-section of the secret service, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere, perhaps, where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle, it is the end of the line anyway, and time for him to retire to live peacefully with his wife and child. But no-one escapes so easily from the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the SIS. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY COLM TÓIBÍN

The Human Factor

Robert Louis Stevenson

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's dark, suspenseful work of genius about the good and bad within us all, complete with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Dr Jekyll has been experimenting with his identity. He has developed a drug which separates the two sides of his nature and allows him occasionally to abandon himself to his most corrupt inclinations as the monstrous Mr Hyde. But gradually he begins to find that the journey back to goodness becomes more and more difficult, and the risk that Mr Hyde will break free entirely from Dr Jekyll's control puts all of London in grave peril. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories

Driven away from his parish by a censorious bishop, Monsignor Quixote sets off across Spain accompanied by a deposed renegade mayor as his own Sancho Panza, and his noble steed Rocinante – a faithful but antiquated SEAT 600. Like Cervantes’s classic, this comic, picaresque fable offers enduring insights into our life and times.

Monsignor Quixote

NOW A MAJOR NEW NETFLIX SERIES 
 
Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it. 
 
Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors (and the law), Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking. 
 
Now a major new Netflix series, The Talented Mr Ripley is the first in Highsmith’s classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley – fiction’s most terrifying con-man. 
 
'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 
 
'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation' Daily Telegraph

Ripley

Jo Nesbo

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is transformed into a page-turning Jo Nesbo crime thriller, the story of the ex-addict cop Inspector Macbeth. 
 
He's the best cop they've got. 
When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it's up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess. 
 
He's also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past. 
He's rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They're all within reach. 
 
But a man like him won't get to the top. 
Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He's convinced he won't get what is rightfully his. 
 
Unless he kills for it. 
 
‘Shakespeare's darkest tale – reimagined by the king of Nordic noir’ Mail on Sunday 
 
'A deliciously oppressive page-turner' Guardian 
 
SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

Macbeth

‘Shakespeare's darkest tale reimagined by the king of Nordic noir’ Mail on Sunday

**AS SEEN ON WRITE AROUND THE WORLD WITH RICHARD E GRANT** 
 
'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 
 
'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation' Daily Telegraph 
 
'He is using you for what you are worth' 
 
Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it. Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law, Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking. 
 
This is the first in Highsmith's classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley. The Talented Mr Ripley also inspired the Academy Award-winning film starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. 
 
One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World.

The Talented Mr Ripley

Raven is a ruthless assassin, a hired killer, whose cold-blooded murder of the Minister for War will have violent repercussions across Europe. As the nation prepares for battle, Raven goes on the run, hunted by the police and in search of the man who paid him in stolen banknotes, eventually unearthing the terrible truth behind his deadly assignment.

A Gun for Sale

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's adventure novel set on the verge of the tropics. 
 
'Listen,' I told him. 'Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.' 
 
Harry Morgan is a tough guy making his living during the Depression from his motor boat in Key West, Florida. Although he normally takes out fishing parties, sometimes his boat can be put to other uses. If the money offered is worth his while, Harry will run guns, rum and men to and from Cuba. But he is playing a dicey game. Hemingway's hardest hero risks not just his living, but his life. 
 
'Absorbing and moving. It opens with a fusillade of bullets, reaches its climax with another, and sustains a high pitch of excitement throughout' Times Literary Supplement

To Have and Have Not

Ex-cop, ex-idealist, and man in free fall, Eugène Tarpon has been kicked off the force for killing a protester. Now he’s holed up in a dingy Les Halles office, drinking too much and waiting for something to happen. 
 
Then it does. Memphis Charles, wild-eyed and bloodstained, bursts in claiming her roommate’s been brutally murdered – but she can’t go to the police. She wants Tarpon. And for reasons even he can’t explain, he takes the case. As the bodies mount, Tarpon is dragged into a Parisian underworld of politics, sleaze, and paranoia – with nothing to guide him but instinct, stubbornness, and a battered sense of justice. 
 
With No Room at the Morgue, Manchette rewrote the American hardboiled detective novel into a bleak, boozy, and brilliantly French bruising meditation on guilt, truth, and the art of going down swinging.

No Room at the Morgue

Discover Graham Greene’s blackly comic and timely espionage thriller, set amid the vice and squalor of pre-revolutionary Havana. 
 
‘British Intelligence being sent up something rotten’ Daily Telegraph 
 
 Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of power cuts. His adolescent daughter spends his money with a skill that amazes him, so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he's tempted. In return all he has to do is carry out a little espionage and file a few reports. But when his fake reports start coming true, things suddenly get more complicated and Havana becomes a threatening place. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Our Man In Havana

'Marvellously, insanely readable... Highsmith has done it again' The Times 
 
"There's no such thing as a perfect murder... That's just a parlor game, trying to dream one up." 
 
Tom Ripley is enjoying his wealthy lifestyle in France, until an associate asks him to kill someone again. But Ripley detests murder, unless it is absolutely necessary. Someone else should do the dirty work for them - yes, someone with no criminal record could earn a very generous fee for doing a couple of simple murders. 
 
Ripley's Game is the third book in Highsmith's Ripley series, and was made into a film starring John Malkovich.

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