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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Shani Mootoo

EVERYONE THINKS MALA IS A MURDERER 
 
'A Caribbean classic' Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch 
 
------- 
 
Everyone in Paradise thinks Mala Ramchandin is a murderer. But with no body, no evidence and no witnesses, Mala is sent to an Alms House as a madwoman instead of prison. Here she meets Tyler, the only openly queer person on the island of Lantanacamara with whom she feels an affinity as an outsider. Despite Mala's muteness, she manages to communicate with Tyler about her missing sister, Asha. 
 
This is Mala's story, and an appeal to find Asha, told in Tyler's words. He dives deeply into Mala's family history, uncovering years of trauma passed down through generations and - staggeringly, beautifully - the love that has survived through it all. 
 
With an introduction by Ingrid Persaud. 
 
'Visceral, sensual and heartbreakingly tender' Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, author of When We Were Birds 
'A story of magical power' Alice Munro, author of Dear Life 
'Will remind many readers of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things' Kirkus 
'Clearly ahead of its time' Bookseller 
 
FINALIST FOR THE GILLER PRIZE 
FINALIST FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

Cereus Blooms at Night

The Booker-Longlisted Queer Classic

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)

Kurt Vonnegut

Manhattan has become the Island of Death. 
 
The former President of the United States stands barefoot in a purple toga around a cooking fire in the lobby of the Empire State Building. 
 
He is Dr Wilbur Daffodil-II Swain and Slapstick or Lonesome No More! is his story – one of monstrous twins, orgies, revenge, golf, utopian schemes, and very little tooth brushing. In this post-apocalyptic black comedy – dedicated to Laurel and Hardy – Vonnegut is at his most hilarious, grotesque, and personal.

Slapstick or Lonesome No More

Salman Rushdie

Discover Salman Rushdie’s critically acclaimed magical realist study of good and evil. 
 
'A masterpiece' Sunday Times 
 
Just before dawn one winter's morning, a plane blows apart high above the English Channel and two figures tumble, clutched in an embrace, towards the sea: Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices. 
 
Washed up, alive, on an English beach, their survival is a miracle. But there is a price to pay. Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen as opponents in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. But chosen by whom? And which is which? And what will be the outcome of their final confrontation? 
 
'A great novelist, a master of perpetual storytelling' V.S. Pritchett

The Satanic Verses

Isaac Marion

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is completely reimagined in this unforgettable zombie love story. 
 
‘R’ is a zombie. He has no name, no memories, and no pulse, but he has dreams. Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows – warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can’t understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins. 
 
This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won’t be changed without a fight... 
 
‘The zombie novel with a heart' 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.

Warm Bodies

(The Warm Bodies Series)

Haruki Murakami

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novel - here they are together in one edition. 
 
Now I think it’s time to tell my story. 
 
Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novels. Home from college on his summer break, the narrator spends his time drinking beer and smoking with his friend nicknamed the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers. Three years later he has moved to Tokyo to work as a translator and live with indistinguishable twin girls. But the Rat has remained behind. Haunted by memories of the past, the narrator embarks upon a quest to find the exact model of pinball machine he and the Rat had enjoyed playing years earlier: the three-flipper Spaceship. 
 
‘Quintessential Murakami…an excellent introduction to a writer who has since become one of the most influential novelists of his generation’ Guardian 
 
‘Murakami’s way of making emotionally resonant images and symbols bump around on the page, and in one’s mind, remains fresh’ Evening Standard 
 
'I was so taken with its atmosphere that I read and reread it' Patti Smith 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Wind/ Pinball

Two Novels

'Although it is set in the near future, Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date, and shows the struggle of an artist a little impatient with allegory and more than a little impatient with his own country' - New York Times Book Review 
 
Some get all the luck – but not Eugene Debs Hartke. Ex-Vietnam vet, ex-college professor, and now a TB-stricken inmate at Tarkington State Reformatory, his life has been warped by one ludicrous farce after another. Here, on scraps of paper pilfered from the prison library, he recounts his own story for posterity, revealing the hypocrisy and injustices of a world that just doesn’t want him to thrive.

Hocus Pocus

A nostalgic, jazz-soaked love-letter to a youth spent in pursuit of simple pleasures, from the Japan's most celebrated contemporary storyteller, Haruki Murakami 
 
Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, Pinball, 1973's narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J's Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier - the infamous three-flipper Spaceship. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Pinball, 1973

John Fowles

WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHOR 
 
'A major work of mounting tensions in which the human mind is the guinea-pig... Mr Fowles has taken a big swing at a difficult subject and his hits are on the bull's eye' Sunday Times 
 
On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games. John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding exploration of human complexities. By turns disturbing, thrilling and seductive, The Magus is a feast for the mind and the senses.

The Magus

Patrick White

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MALOUF 
 
Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu, Miss Hare wanders, half-mad. In the wilderness she stumbles upon an Aborigine artist and a Jewish refugee. They place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. In a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption.

Riders in the Chariot

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

Toni Morrison

Lured South by tales of buried treasure, Milkman embarks on an odyssey back home. 
 
As a boy, Milkman was raised beneath the shadow of a status-obsessed father. As a man, he trails in the fiery wake of a friend bent on racial revenge. Now comes Milkman&rsquo;s chance to uncover his own path. Along the way, he will lose more than he could have ever imagined. Yet in return, he will discover something far more valuable than gold: his past, his true self, his life-long dream of flight. 
 
&lsquo;A complex, wonderfully alive and imaginative story&rsquo; Daily Telegraph 
 
&lsquo;Song of Solomon&hellip;profoundly changed my life&rsquo; Marlon James 
 
INTRODUCED BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR MARLON JAMES 
 
**Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction**

Song of Solomon

Mervyn Peake

'Gormenghast is, to my mind and to my taste, a perfect creation' Neil Gaiman 
 
Welcome to the world of Gormenghast, the classic fantasy series from the imagination of Mervyn Peake 
 
As the first novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born: he stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that stand for Gormenghast Castle. Inside, all events are predetermined by a complex ritual, lost in history, understood only by Sourdust, Lord of the Library. There are tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a labyrinth of stone. 
 
'A gorgeous volcanic eruption... A work of extraordinary imagination' New Yorker

Titus Groan

The extraordinary literary debut of Salman Rushdie: ‘A firework of a book, funny and endlessly surprising’ Ursula Le Guin 
 
Flapping Eagle is a young Axona Indian gifted with immortal life after drinking an elixir from his wayward sister. But after 777 years of sailing the world’s seas, he becomes weary of life, and sets out to find the mystical Calf Island, a place where his fellow immortals have gathered and created their own version of the human race. 
 
But Calf Island is a strange place – like its inhabitants, it is both blessed and cursed. Sensing a terrible darkness at the heart of the island, Flapping Eagle sets out to scale the island’s peak and confront its mysterious and potent creator, Grimus himself. 
 
'A mixture of science fiction and folktale, past and future, primitive and present day... Grimus is a parallel form of life, and conjuring of an alternative society' Financial Times

Grimus

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

THE FINAL PART OF THE MIGHTY GORMENGHAST TRILOGY 
 
'I would not for anything have missed Gormenghast' C S Lewis 
 
In this final part of the trilogy, we follow Titus, now almost twenty, as he escapes from the Castle, flees its oppressive Ritual, and becomes lost in a sandstorm. Helped by the owner of a travelling zoo, Muzzlehatch, and his ex-lover Juno, Titus ends up stranded in a big, bustling city. No one there having heard of Gormenghast, the general consensus is that the boy is deranged, and with no papers, he's soon arrested for vagrancy. 
 
But there are a few people who believe in his story, or at least who are intrigued by it, and they try to help him. And now Titus, the deserter, the traitor, longs for his home, and looks for it all the time to prove, if only to himself, that Gormenghast is truly real. 
 
'[The Gormenghast Trilogy] is one of the most important works of the imagination to come out of the age that also produced The Four Quartets, The Unquiet Grave, Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, Animal Farm and 1984.' Anthony Burgess

Titus Alone

The Estate of Richard Brautigan

'A charming and original work... The parable itself is extremely relevant' The Times 
 
iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different colour every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. 
In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of the counterculture generation. 
 
‘Delicate, fantastic and very funny... A highly individual style, a fertile, active inventiveness... It's cool, joyous, lucid and pleasant to read’ Malcolm Bradbury

In Watermelon Sugar

In early eighteenth-century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost his left hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where women are burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by love of an unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the Crown and the Church clash, they purse his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Baltasar & Blimunda

J. M. Barrie

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of the magical classic of the boy who never grew up with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Wendy, Michael and John are fast asleep when the window of their nursery blows open and lets in a very remarkable boy, Peter Pan, and his fairy, Tinker Bell. Peter entices the three children from their beds and out through the window to Neverland. There, they encounter mermaids, fairies, the Lost Boys, the Indian princess Tiger Lily and her tribe, and do battle with a villainous gang of pirates and their leader, the sinister Captain Hook. 
 
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.

Peter Pan

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. 
 
His wife is growing more distant every day. 
 
Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. 
 
As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell. 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'Visionary...a bold and generous book' New York Times 
 
'Murakami weaves textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty' Independent on Sunday 
 
'Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Informed by traditional African storytelling, discover Ngugi wa Thiong'o's masterpiece. 
 
 To honour the Ruler's birthday, the Free Republic of Aburiria set out to build a tower; a modern wonder of the world that will reach the gates of Heaven. But behind this pillar of unity a battle for control of the Aburirian people rages. Among the contenders: the eponymous Wizard, an avatar of folklore and wisdom; the corrupt Christian Ministry; and the nefarious Global Bank. 
 
'Mythological but also cheerfully disenchanted; political and playful; cartoonish but also epical... the African novel may well have delivered its greatest masterpiece' Sunday Herald

Wizard of the Crow

Lewis Carroll

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Carroll's magical classic, the fantastical adventures of one curious little girl, complete with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
JOIN THE OBSESSION 
'These might be the most beautiful books I've ever seen? Get them in an art gallery' 
'The marbled paper, I could cry' 
'Love love love this collection ' 
'I must have all of them' 
'Our beloved classics with sprayed edges too! They are absolutely STUNNING!' 
 
Bored on a hot afternoon, Alice, a bright and inquisitive child, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole, and finds herself in Wonderland, a very odd place indeed. This unique story mixes satire and puzzles, comedy and anxiety, Mock Turtles and Gryphos to provide an astute description of the experience of childhood. 
 
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.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

ENTER THE CRUMBLING WORLD OF GORMENGHAST... 
 
'A modern classic' Anthony Burgess 
 
'A gorgeous volcanic eruption... A work of extraordinary imagination' 
New Yorker 
 
'A perfect creation' Neil Gaiman 
 
Gormenghast is the vast, crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons (and his eccentric and wayward subjects) according to strict age-old rituals, but things are changing in the castle. Titus must contend with treachery, manipulation and murder as well as his own longing for a life beyond the castle walls. 
 
'Peake's books are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before' C. S. Lewis

The Gormenghast Trilogy

Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake? 
 
Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SARAH WATERS 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** 
 
'A spellbinding achievement' Literary Review 
 
'Raunchy, raucous...a rich, turn of the 19th century world, which reeks of human and animal variety' The Times

Nights at the Circus

H. Rider Haggard

Read the thrilling Victorian blockbuster, with an introduction from Booker prize-winning author Margaret Atwood. 
 
A note from The Editor: 
 
I feel it incumbent upon me to explain how this wonderful and mysterious history found its way into my hands. I received a letter and two parcels- one a manuscript, the other containing a scarab and an ancient sherd - from a brief acquaintance of mine called Mr Horace Holly. Mr Holly and his ward Leo Vincey had passed through a most uncommon African adventure, a tale of a nature so marvellous that I fear the reader might disbelieve it. To me the story seems to bear the stamp of truth upon its face. But I must leave the reader to form his own judgment... And with this explanation I introduce the world to Ayesha - She-who-must-be-obeyed - and the Caves of Kôr.

Mikhail Bulgakov

in Bulgakov's allegorical masterpiece of Stalin&rsquo;s regime the devil is making a personal appearance in Moscow. 
 
He is accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order are in disarray. Only the Master, a writer and a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil&rsquo;s onslaught. 
 
&lsquo;Stunning, superb...Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest&rsquo; Independent 
 
&lsquo;A masterpiece &ndash; a classic of twentieth-century fiction&rsquo; New York Times 
 
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL GLENNY, INTRODUCED BY WILL SELF

The Master and Margarita

Charles Dickens

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Dickens's spooky but wonderfully Christmassy tale, complete with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
JOIN THE OBSESSION 
'These might be the most beautiful books I've ever seen? Get them in an art gallery' 
'The marbled paper, I could cry' 
'Love love love this collection ' 
'I must have all of them' 
'Our beloved classics with sprayed edges too! They are absolutely STUNNING!' 
 
'Bah! Humbug!' 
 
Mr Scrooge is a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, miserable old man. Nobody stops him in the street to say a cheery hello; nobody would dare ask him for a favour. And I hope you'd never be so foolish as to wish him a 'Merry Christmas'! Scrooge doesn't believe in Christmas, charity, kindness - or ghosts. 
 
But one cold Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives some unusual visitors who show him just how very mistaken he's been... 
 
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.

A Christmas Carol

James Hilton

The gripping adventure that invented the mystery of Shangri-La. 
 
 Flying out of India, a light aircraft is hi-jacked and flown into the high Tibetan Himalayas. The few passengers on board anxiously await their fate, among them Conway, a talented British consul. But on landing they are unexpectedly conducted to a remote valley, a legendary paradise of peace and beauty, known as Shangri-La. Have they been kidnapped? Can they escape? And do they even want to? 
 
From the author of Goodbye Mr Chips, this is the epic adventure story of literature's most entrancing utopia and one of our most enduring literary mysteries.

Lost Horizon

Julio Cortázar

When a group of Argentinians win a mysterious lottery, their prize – a luxury cruise – seems too good to question. But as the voyage unfolds, strange and unsettling events begin to mount. The passengers find themselves trapped aboard a ship run by a silent, secretive crew, and the true nature of their journey grows ever more uncertain. 
 
Funny, frightening, and richly lyrical, The Winners is a philosophical thriller of tangled fates and wayward love – an incisive meditation on power, exile, and the myth of the New World.

The Winners

What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating Spain and Portugal from the rest of Europe? 
 
In Saramago's fable, a new island is sent spinning through the ocean like a great stone raft. While the authorities panic and tourists flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by omens that burden them with a peculiar responsibility. In this magical realist tale, the six take to the road, finding themselves adrift in a world now unfamiliar and forced to reckon with their relationships, human psychology and the shakiness of belief itself.

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