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Most famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story writer, as exemplified by the tales included in this volume. Concerned with the manifold aspects of everyday life and varying in their settings – from aristocratic drawing rooms to poverty-stricken garrets, from the hustle and bustle of Paris to the Provençal countryside of the author’s childhood – these stories will keep the reader riveted from the beginning to the end and surprise for their modernity. Contains: The Attack on the Mill The Girl Who Loves Me Rentafoil Death by Advertising Story of a Madman Big Michu The Way People Die A Flash in the Pan Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder Priests and Sinners Fair Exchange The Haunted House

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Inspired by Boileau’s Lutrin and illustrating the debate within European intellectual circles between the “Ancients”, who argued that all essential knowledge was to be found in classical texts, and the “Moderns”, who claimed that contemporary learning superseded the old sources, The Battle of the Books shows Swift at his wittiest and most trenchant. In this early satire, various books in St James’s Library take on a life of their own and come into conflict with one another, in a pastiche of the heroic epic genre. As well as providing humorous reflections on the nature of scholarship and education, Swift seizes the opportunity to take swipes at several authors and critics. The result is a timeless and entertaining parody by one of the most enduringly popular writers in the English language.

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First published in 1921, this volume collects some of the most comical stories Kipling published throughout his writing career. These tales derive their humour from absurd situations – a drunken Irish soldier waking up to find himself worshipped as a god in the Indian holy city of Benares, a monkey let loose in an English village – and from lampooning the attitudes and discourses of the time. While presenting many aspects which will be familiar to Kipling readers – rollicking adventures, exotic locales and an interest in the animal world – these Humorous Tales explore the more light-hearted and amusing side to the great master’s work.

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When Cyril, Anthea, Robert and Jane accidentally destroy a carpet in their London home with fi reworks, their parents replace it with a second-hand one. Upon unfurling it, the children fi nd an egg inside, and, when one of them accidentally drops it into the fi re, it hatches into a magical golden phoenix, who tells them that he can take them on the carpet to any location they wish. This revelation sets the siblings - and their baby brother Lamb - off on wild adventures, taking them around London and to far-fl ung destinations such as India and a remote tropical island. After the success of Five Children and It, E. Nesbit decided to recast its much-loved characters in this sequel, which has now become a classic in its own right, enchanting generations of readers and inspiring many fi lm and television adaptations.

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These five stories were collected and published as Tales of Unrest in 1898, shortly before Heart of Darkness, the first of Conrad’s major novels. Ranging from the faraway and unfamiliar, where the acquisitiveness of colonial adventure is damningly exposed, to an ostensibly ordinary London household, these disparate tales display Conrad’s ability to explore and lay bare human nature. Set in Central Africa, ‘An Outpost of Progress’ is suffused with irony and represents a ruthlessly mocking view of European imperialism. ‘Karain’ and ‘The Lagoon’ are exotic tales of the Malay Archipelago, with the former telling of disharmony and discord between Western traders and the indigenous inhabitants. ‘The Return’ recounts the story of, in the author’s own words, “a desirable middle-class town residence which somehow manages to produce a sinister effect”. The collection also includes ‘The Idiots’, the first of Conrad’s short stories to be serialized in an English magazine.

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The orphan girl Pollyanna moves in with her strict aunt in New England. Despite a difficult start, Pollyanna’s exuberance and positivity affect everyone who meets her, and she spreads joy and love wherever she goes. But when tragedy strikes, Pollyanna finds her optimistic attitude tested, and she must learn to find happiness again. A heartwarming tale that has become one of the most loved children’s stories of all time, Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 best-seller – the first in a long series of Pollyanna novels by the author and other writers – is a beautiful story with a powerful moral message.

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On the eve of the Crimean War, the young, headstrong Yelena, the daughter of aristocratic Russian parents, falls in love with a revolutionary from Bulgaria named Insarov. Facing the wrath and disapproval of her family, Yelena abandons her home to follow Insarov to Bulgaria. Their fateful match sets in motion a series of tragic events which challenge notions of love, revolution and idealism. A highly controversial work upon its original publication, Ivan Turgenev’s On the Eve is now recognized as one of the masterpieces of Russian literature and an essential document of the upheaval that dominated Russian society in the years prior to the Crimean War. Turgenev’s restrained, nuanced prose is rendered beautifully in Michael Pursglove’s new translation.

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Originally told by Rudyard Kipling to his children at bedtime, this compendium of witty tales imagines how animals came to be as they are now. Discover how the massive whale got a tiny throat by swallowing a mariner, how the lazy camel got a hump so that he had no excuse not to work, and why the leopard's spots were painted on. Kipling's imagination runs wild as he creates charming origin stories that still enchant and delight children to this day. This edition features Kipling's iconic original illustrations.

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Set in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during the chaotic winter of 1918–19, The White Guard, Bulgakov’s first full-length novel, tells the story of a Russian-speaking family trapped in circumstances that threaten to destroy them. As in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the narrative centres on the stark contrast between the cosy domesticity of family life on the one hand, and wide-ranging and destructive historical events on the other. The result is a disturbing, often shocking story, illuminated, however, by shafts of light that testify to people’s resilience, humanity and ability to love in even the most adverse circumstances.

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From his Baker Street apartment, Sherlock Holmes wields his powers of deduction in pursuit of justice and truth, venturing out into foggy Victorian London accompanied by his faithful sidekick Dr Watson. This classic collection of Holmes tales includes many of the detective’s most-loved exploits: Holmes is confronted by a venomous snake in ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, mystified by a missing thumb in ‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’ and beguiled by a beautiful opera singer in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, never once losing his famous cool. First appearing separately in the Strand Magazine, these stories were published together in 1892 in a volume that rapidly became one of the most popular Sherlock Holmes collections. Showcasing Arthur Conan Doyle’s inimitable genius for mystery and storytelling, these tales are proof that the famous detective remains one of the greatest crime fighters ever created.

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Roberta, Phyllis and Peter have their comfortable lives in London thrown into disarray by the unexpected disappearance of their father. They are forced to move to a small cottage in the countryside with their mother, who struggles to make ends meet by writing books. The children find solace in a stretch of railway track and the station nearby, and befriend the railway porter, who teaches them about running the station, and an old gentleman who takes the 9.15 train every day. Through this love of the trains they are led on many exciting adventures, including a quest to discover the secret of their father's disappearance. One of the most popular children's books ever written, E. Nesbit's tale has enchanted generations of readers since it was first released in 1906. It has been adapted for the screen and the stage many times, and its story of innocence, intrigue and discovery remains perfectly poignant today.

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Under the pressure of his boss, the intransigent Riviere, the airmail pilot Fabien attempts a perilous flight during a heavy night-time thunderstorm in Argentina. As conditions get worse and the radio communication with Fabien becomes increasingly difficult, Riviere begins to question his uncompromising methods, and his distress turns to guilt when the pilot's wife comes to find him in search of answers. Based on Saint-Exupery's own experiences as a commercial pilot, Night Flight is a haunting and lyrical examination of duty, destiny and the individual, as well as an authentic and tragic portrayal of the intrepid early days of human air travel.

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After a wonderful early life as a young colt on Farmer Gray's meadows, the stallion Black Beauty is sold to Squire Gordon of Birtwick Hall and joins the gentleman's stables. While his existence is no longer as carefree as before and he has to be trained by humans, he enjoys the company of the other horses there, such as the fiery Ginger and the kind Merrylegs. Unfortunately one day he is sold on to new owners, and a new chapter opens in his life, full of uncertainty, hardship and cruelty. Will Black Beauty ever make it back home, or reconnect with the people and horses that cared about him?

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Travelling to Italy on their honeymoon, Erszi and Mihaly are ready to take in all the beauties and pleasures of the country. But when they reach Venice, it is clear that Mihaly prefers to roam around the back alleys and the canals on his own, and as they continue their journey through the Bel Paese there is a growing sense of unrest between them, until Mihaly misses the train to Rome they were due to take together. Wandering alone from city to city, with his marriage rapidly falling apart, Mihaly must confront the ghosts of his past and try to find a sense of purpose. Originally written in 1937, and here presented in a brilliant new translation by Peter V. Czipott, Antal Szerb's gently humorous and psychologically subtle exploration into the workings of a budding bourgeois marriage has been hailed as one of the great rediscovered classics of the twentieth century.

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Judicially condemned in 1857 as offensive to public morality, The Flowers of Evil is now regarded as the most influential volume of poetry published in the nineteenth century. Torn between intense sensuality and profound spiritual yearning, racked by debt and disease, Baudelaire transformed his own experience of Parisian life into a work of universal significance. With his unflinching examination of the dark aspects and unconventional manifestations of sexuality, his pioneering portrayal of life in agreat metropolis and his daring combination of the lyrical and the prosaic, Baudelaire inaugurated a new epoch in poetry and created a founding text of modernism.Anthony Mortimer, already praised for his virtuoso translations of Petrarch, Dante and Villon, has produced a new version that not only respects the sense and the form of the original French, but also makes powerful English poetry in its own right. Presented here in a dual-language edition, with extra material, notes and bibliography.

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When young Dorothy and her dog Toto are caught in a cyclone, their Kansas farmhouse is carried off to the magical Land of Oz. Upon being told that the only way back is to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, home to the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy embarks on an extraordinary but perilous quest, in which the Wicked Witch of the West is constantly lurking around the corner. With its unforgettable cast of now iconic characters such as the Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an instant hit when it was published over a century ago, inspiring numerous adaptations and sequels.

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The boy who wouldn’t grow up, Peter Pan has the power of flight and lives on a magical island. But he is fascinated by Mary Darling’s bedtime stories for her children and makes covert night-time visits to their Bloomsbury home. One evening he loses his shadow, and after Mary’s daughter Wendy helps him reattach it, he invites her to fly away with him on an extraordinary adventure. In addition to the famous 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, which tells the familiar adventures of Peter Pan in Neverland and popularized the characters of Tinkerbell and Captain Hook, this volume contains the celebrated stage version on which Peter and Wendy is based, as well as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, in which Peter Pan is a seven-day-old infant who consorts with birds and fairies and travels down the Serpentine in a thrush’s nest.

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A battle of wits between the nimblest French thief and the shrewdest British detective This volume contains two adventures which pit the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin against Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous detective. In ‘The Blonde Lady’, Holmes must discover the identity of a mysterious female thief who is linked to Lupin, while in ‘The Jewish Lamp’ he finds out that the theft of a lamp containing a precious jewel conceals an astonishing secret. While their tone is at times ironic and firmly tongue-in-cheek, the two stories in Arsène Lupin vs Sherlock Holmes bear all the hallmarks of classic detective fiction, and will put a smile on the lips and set the pulses racing of all fans of mystery and detective fiction.

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The Good Soldier tells the stories of two outwardly happy couples who meet at a health spa in Germany just before the start of the First World War, and whose loveless, adultery-ridden relationships are strained and gradually disintegrate, with tragic consequences. Drawing inspiration from his personal life, Ford Madox Ford innovatively used non-chronological flashbacks as well as an unreliable narrator to reveal the scandalous affairs, lies and betrayals behind the facade of respectability, and craft a masterly work of fiction and a subtle investigation of the notions of truth and deception.

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Fathers and Children, arguably the first modern novel in the history of Russian literature, shocked readers when it was first published in 1862 - the controversial character of Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist intent on rejecting all existing traditional values and institutions, providing a trenchant critique of the established order. Turgenev's masterpiece investigates the growing nihilist movement of mid-nineteenth-century Russia - a theme which was to influence Dostoevsky and many other European writers - in a universal and often hilarious story of generational conflict and the clash between the old and the new.

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Regarded as one of the most influential horror stories of all time and the inspiration for countless literary spin-offs, the tale of the young Englishman Jonathan Harker’s journey into the very heart of Count Dracula’s evil realm remains a compelling read to this day. A thriller of hypnotic power, a dark exploration of human passion, mythology and the paranormal, and a plain old-fashioned masterpiece of storytelling, the nightmarish saga of Dracula is one of the enduring classics of supernatural fiction.

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Completed in 1933, but not published until 1962, over twenty years after its author's death, "The Life of Monsieur de Moliere" charts the life of the French playwright, from humble beginnings to later theatrical triumphs and political controversies. The work was met with disapproval by the Soviet authorities, who detected parallels between the lives of Moliere and Bulgakov, and viewed the work as a veiled critique of their own times. With a dazzling blend of biography and novelistic imagination, Bulgakov's eccentric and satirical take on the life of a fellow writer energetically captures the genius of Moliere, while revealing another aspect of his own self.

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Considered one of the most influential authors of twentieth century Russian Literature, Ivan Bunin's "Dark Avenues" is the culmination of a life's work which unrelentingly questioned of the political doxa whilst taking his poetic mastery of language to dark new heights. Written between 1938 and 1944 and set in the context of a disintegrating Russian culture, this collection of short fiction centres around dark, erotic liaisons told with a rich, elegaic poetics which probes the artistic limits of depicting desire.A prolific writer and fierce political activist, Bunin became the first Russian to win the Nobel prize for Literature in 1933 and was highly influential on his contemporary Russian emigres, Checkov and Nabokov. The "Dark Avenues" is the zenith of his work and one of the most important Russian texts to come out of the twentieth century.

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When Rachel Verinder's legacy of a priceless Indian diamond is stolen, all the evidence indicates that it is her beloved, Franklin Blake, who is guilty. Around this central axis of crime and thwarted love, Collins constructs an ingenious plot of teasing twists and surprises, and an elaborate multi-voiced narrative that sustains the tension all the way to its stunning ending. Described by T.S. Eliot as the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels, Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone is an important precursor of the modern mystery and suspense genres.

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Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne's novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious asides, explanations and host of memorable secondary characters - such as Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Parson Yorick and Widow Wadman - take centre stage, at the expense of the actual life events the book sets out to depict. A humorous compendium of European thought and literature - pastiching the likes of Locke and Bacon and referencing Pope, Swift, Cervantes and Rabelais - emerges amid the convoluted accounts of Tristram's conception, misnaming and accidental circumcision by a sash window, in a shrewd narrative that examines the role and nature of language itself.

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Inspired by Fitzgerald’s own courtship of his future wife Zelda, ‘The Last of the Belles’ centres on the Southern beauty Ailie Calhoun from Tarleton, Georgia, who finds herself the object of attention of all the officers at a nearby army base, including the narrator, Andy. A wistful and melancholy exploration of unfulfilled dreams and lost youth, the story is considered one of Fitzgerald’s finest pieces of short fiction. This volume also includes other acclaimed stories – such as ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, ‘The Swimmers’ and ‘The Bridal Party’ – written by Fitzgerald between 1927 and 1931, during the prolonged period in which he was struggling to compose Tender Is the Night.

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When Francis Raven is roused from his sleep on the eve of his birthday and confronted by the sight of a woman trying to stab him, he is unsure whether she is real or an apparition. Years later, against the wishes of his mother, he marries Alicia, a woman with a strange resemblance to the mysterious visitor, who ends up attacking him on his birthday, before vanishing from his life. Is Francis's wife a ghost, a demon or a living human being? And will the prophecy of the night-time visitation be fulfilled one day? Originally published in Household Words in 1855 as 'The Ostler', but recast and expanded two decades later, The Dream Woman is a powerfully dark and suspenseful multi-narrative novella from the master of the mystery genre and the author of some of the most enduringly popular novels of the Victorian era.

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After a traumatic early childhood spent living in poverty in a Preston cellar, the suddenly orphaned George Silverman grows up convinced that he is at fault for all the misfortunes in his life. Hoodwinked by hypocritical clergymen and exploited by his employer, he finds himself forsaking love and facing professional ruin. One of Dickens’s very last writings, ‘George Silverman’s Explanation’ is a dark and psychologically insightful investigation of failure and guilt. This volume also includes two other lesser-known pieces of fiction by Dickens: the novella for children ‘Holiday Romance’ and the detective story ‘Hunted Down’.

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Originally conceived by its author as an entertaining story for Alice Liddell, the daughter of an Oxford dean, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the fantastic tale of the young Alice’s encounters with the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts, has captured the imaginations of young and old throughout the world since it was first published in 1865. In addition to the vivid and unforgettable characters, it is the book’s experimental style, linguistic inventiveness and myriad of jokes and puzzles that account for the timeless fascination it inspires. Published to coincide with Alice in Wonderland’s 150th anniversary, this volume includes John Tenniel’s iconic drawings, the sequel Through the Looking Glass and a facsimile of Alice’s Adventure’s Under Ground, the early manuscript version of the novel illustrated by Lewis Carroll himself.

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Turgenev’s final novel, Virgin Soil traces the destinies of several middle-class revolutionaries who seek to “go to the people” by working on the land and instilling democratic ideas in the countryside’s locals. They include the daydreaming impoverished young tutor Nezhdanov – employed by the liberal councillor Sipyagin and his vain and beautiful wife Valentina – the naive young radical Maryanna and the progressive factory manager Solomin. Their liaisons, intrigues and conspiracies, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, form the matter of Turgenev’s most ambitious and elaborate work, which cemented the author’s place in the West as Russia’s foremost novelist while at the same time proving controversial at home – culminating in the arrest of fifty-two real-life revolutionaries barely a month after it was published.

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The pride of high-ranking Mr Darcy and the prejudice of middle-class Elizabeth Bennet conduct an absorbing dance through the rigid social hierarchies of early-nineteenth-century England, with the passion of the two unlikely lovers growing as their union seems ever more improbable. One of the most cherished love stories in English literature, Jane Austen's 1813 masterpiece has a lasting effect on everyone who reads it.

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Professor Persikov, an eccentric zoologist, stumbles upon a new light ray that accelerates growth and reproduction rates in living organisms. In the wake of a plague that has decimated the country's poultry stocks, Persikov's discovery is exploited as a means to correct the problem. As foreign agents, the state and the Soviet media all seize upon the red ray, matters get out of hand... Set in 1928 but written four years earlier, during Stalin's rise to power, The Fatal Eggs is both an early piece of science fiction reminiscent of H.G. Wells and a biting, brilliant satire on the consequences of the abuse of power and knowledge.

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Musil's limpid, psychological evocation of adolescent sexuality and its often sadistic eroticism which anticipates the carnage of both World Wars. As the nineteenth century draws to an end, young Törless is sent to a military boarding school for the sons of the nobility on the eastern outreaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Far from his comfortable, free-thinking bourgeois home and left to his own devices, he experiences the joy, pain and self-doubt of adolescence. He is confronted with desire and love, but also his own cruelty, as he finds himself participating in his fellow pupils’ bullying campaigns. A dark Bildungsroman which shocked its readership at the time, Robert Musil’s first novel is a fresco of psychoanalysis, philosophy, eroticism, snobbery, sado-masochism and schoolboy humour, a hothouse of alternately repressed and unchained desires that prefigure the carnage of both World Wars.

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First published in 1831, Belkin's Stories was the first completed work of fiction by the founding father of Russian literature. Through a series of interlinked stories purporting to have been told by various narrators to the recently deceased country squire Ivan Belkin, Pushkin offers his own variation on themes and genres that were popular in his day and provides a vivid portrayal of the Russian people. From the story of revenge served cold in 'The Shot' to the havoc wreaked by a blizzard on the life of two young lovers, from the bittersweet tones of 'The Station Master' to the supernatural atmosphere of 'The Undertaker', this collection - presented here in a brand-new translation by Roger Clarke - sparkles with humour and is a testament to the brilliance and versatility of Pushkin's mind.

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The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism As a lifelong socialist, Shaw believed that economic inequality was a poison destroying every aspect of human life, perverting family affections and the relations between the sexes. According to him, all British institutions were "corrupted at the root by pecuniary interest" - and idealism, integrity and any piecemeal attempts at political reform were futile in the face of the gross injustice built into the Empire's economic system. Begun in 1924 - the year of the British Labour Party's first period of office under Ramsay MacDonald (who hailed it as "the world's most important book since the Bible") - and first published in 1928, The Intelligent Woman's Guide draws on Shaw's decades of activism and remains a brilliant, thoughtprovoking classic of political propaganda.

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Dante’s dramatic journey through the circles of hell in search of redemption – and his encounter with devils, monsters and the souls of some of the greatest sinners who ever walked on earth – is one of the cornerstones of Western literature, the summit of medieval thinking and arguably the highest poetic achievement of all time. Inferno, the first part of Dante’s Comedy, is presented here in a new verse translation by acclaimed poet and prize-winning translator J.G. Nichols, together with the original text facing, extensive notes, illustrations and a critical apparatus focusing on the author’s life and works.

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Encapsulating in luxurious detail the phenomenon of consumer society - obsessed with image, fashion and instant gratification - Ladies' Delight vividly depicts the workings of a new commercial entity, the department store. The novel centres around the story of Denise, a young shopgirl from the provinces, and Octave Mouret, the dashing young director of a shopping emporium, who find themselves torn between the conflicting forces of love, loyalty and ambition. Set in the heart of the city, Zola's novel - the eleventh in his Rougon-Macquart series - evokes the giddy pace of Paris's transition into a modern city and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place during the second half of the nineteenth century.

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"Among the earliest artistic descriptions of the hallucinogenic experience in European literature, the four pieces in this volume document Gautier’s and Baudelaire’s own involvement in the Club of Assassins, who met under the auspices of Dr Moreau to investigate the mind-enhancing effects of hashish, wine and opium. As well as providing an absorbing account of nineteenth-century drug use, Hashish, Wine, Opium captures the spirit of French Romanticism in its struggle to free the mind from the shackles of the humdrum and the conventional, and serves as a fascinating prologue to the psychedelic literature of the following century."

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A remarkable nineteenth-century account of Istanbul – which begins with a dazzling description of the city gradually appearing through the fog as the author’s ship approaches the harbour – Constantinople expertly combines personal anecdote, breathtaking visual observation and entertaining historical information. An invaluable record of the metropolis as it used to be – a fascinating crossroads between Eastern and Western civilization and one of the most cosmopolitan cities of its time – as well as a vivid example of a European tourist’s reaction to it – part delight, part incomprehension – this book will provide an enriching read for lovers of history or those planning to visit Istanbul themselves.

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The Village, Ivan Bunin's first full-length novel, is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centring on episodes in the lives of a landowner and his self-educated peasant brother, the book follows characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human. A triumph of bitter realism, Bunin's cruel, lyrical prose reveals the pettiness, violence and ignorance of life on the land, foreshadowing the turbulences of Russia in the twentieth century.

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Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky business interests and a shadowy past. As the two men strike up an unlikely friendship, details of Gatsby's impossible love for amarried woman emerge, until events spiral into tragedy. Regarded as Fitzgerald's masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of American literature, The Great Gatsby is a vivid chronicle of the excesses and decadence of the Jazz Age, as well as a timeless cautionary critique of the American dream.

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A major work by one of France’s most important authors of the twentieth century, London Bridge is a riotous novel about the London underworld during the First World War. Picking up where its predecessor Guignol’s Band left off, Céline’s narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with an eccentric Frenchman intent on financing a trip to Tibet by winning a gas-mask competition; his uneasy relationship with London’s pimps and whores and their common nemesis, Inspector Matthew of Scotland Yard; and, most scandalous of all, his affair with a colonel’s daughter. Written in Céline’s trademark style – a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses – London Bridge recreates the dark days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity.

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First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Told in the first person by Celine's fictional alter ego Bardamu, the novel is loosely based on the author's own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA and, later, as a young doctor in a working-class suburb in Paris. Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness that distinguishes his idiosyncratic, colloquial and visionary writing and gives it its force.

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This Side of Paradise charts the life of Amory Blaine, an ambitious young man loosely based on Fitzgerald himself, as he moves from his well-heeled Midwest home to study at Princeton and then starts frequenting the circles of high society as an aspiring writer. Experiencing failure and frustration in love and in his career, Blaine finds his youthful enthusiasm gradually giving way to disillusionment, cynicism and a life of dissolution. A critical account of its own era, introducing many themes which would be developed in later works, Fitzgerald’s first novel was an instant critical and commercial success, propelling him into the limelight as a literary celebrity.

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The heir to his grandfather's considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations and distractions of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligacy is accelerated by his marriage to the attractive but turbulent Gloria, and the couple soon discover the dangerous flip side of a life of glamour and debauchery.

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"Odyssey, a volume of twenty-one stories aimed at young adults, offers a variety of takes on the theme of travelling – at times funny and playful, at others dramatic and poignant – covering a wide range of themes relevant to teenagers across Europe such as coming of age, sexuality, migration, identity and displacement. Whether you’re after realism or escapism, tales about inner cities, sunny holidays or sci-fi ventures into the future, this book will have something for everyone. Hay Festival is delighted to present Aarhus 39, a two-volume collection of the best emerging writers for young readers from across wider Europe. Three of among Europe’s best loved children’s authors – Matt Haig (UK), Kim Fupz Aakeson (Denmark) and Ana Cristina Herreros (Spain) – have selected thirty-nine writers under the age of forty, and invited them to write an original story on the theme of “journey”. These new stories, together with the specially commissioned illustrations that accompany them, are a celebration of great new writing for young people and reflect issues facing them in contemporary Europe. Reading stories of other people’s lives and journeys extends understanding and empathy to new generations."

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In 1930s Greater London, Shirley is a talented ballerina who dreams of becoming a principal dancer at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company. Yet one summer, on the way back from staying with her grandparents in France, she meets a handsome young man, Alan, for a fleeting moment and her life changes for ever. Finding him becomes an obsession for Shirley and now she longs to fulfill her dreams in the ballet simply so that he might see her name in lights and know where to find her. With the outbreak of the Second World War, and those she loves in danger, Shirley’s priority becomes to help in the war effort, but with Alan appearing once more in her life, and the war threatening to part them for a second time, she knows that she cannot cope if she were to lose him again.

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Quest, a volume of seventeen stories aimed at children, will whisk you away from dark bedrooms to new dimensions and fantasy realms, via the Russian countryside and modern Rome. You'll encounter talking field mice, invisible friends, flying kraiks, white elephants, runaway books and wardrobes that act as magic portals. Hopping across all sorts of genres and showcasing authors from all over Europe - from the Basque country and Cyprus to Iceland and the Czech Republic - this book is certain to broaden horizons and engage the reader in all kinds of fun. Hay Festival is delighted to present Aarhus 39, a two-volume collection of the best emerging writers for young readers from across wider Europe. Three of among Europe's best loved children's authors - Matt Haig (UK), Kim Fupz Aakeson (Denmark) and Ana Cristina Herreros (Spain) - have selected thirty-nine writers under the age of forty, and invited them to write an original story on the theme of "journey". These new stories, together with the specially commissioned illustrations that accompany them, are a celebration of great new writing for young people and reflect issues facing them in contemporary Europe. Reading stories of other people's lives and journeys extends understanding and empathy to new generations.

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