Search results for ""alma books ltd""

When shop-owner Julia Segovia decides that she’s going to marry the handsome if exceedingly young and naive soldier Valentin Brû, he willingly goes along with her scheme. Little does he know that he will have to contend with disgruntled in-laws, eccentric locals, a cunning wife, a shifty career in fortune-telling, the approaching threat of war with Germany and the mysteries of Parisian public transport. With a cast of eccentric characters, amusing incidents and an uplifting tone, The Sunday of Life – its title playfully alluding to Hegel’s theory of history – is a scintillating novel which showcases Queneau’s trademark punning, sly wit and delight in the absurdity of people and situations.

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The local landowner Van Cheele experiences an unnerving encounter with a youth sunning himself near a pond, and starts to wonder if there is any connection between this wild-looking boy and the recent disappearances of poultry, hares, lambs and, more alarmingly, an infant child in the area. To his astonishment, he discovers the next day that his aunt has decided to take the boy in, buying him a suit of clothes and naming him Gabriel-Ernest. Van Cheele remains suspicious, especially when it is revealed that there is something supernatural about their new ward...

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This collection of lesser-known early short fiction – ranging from absurd humorous sketches to psychological dramas and tragic tales – demonstrates Anton Chekhov’s mastery of the genre, with stories about marital infidelity, betrayal, deception and love in its various forms. Although varying in tone and purpose, what these tales have in common is a profound and subtle understanding of the human condition, in its farcical and melancholy aspects, couched in Chekhov’s trademark minimalist style.

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Although he is now mostly remembered as a novelist, it is as a poet and a translator of poetry that Sándor Márai - the acclaimed author of 'Embers' and 'Conversations in Bolzano' - first made his name in the literary world. This collection, the first and only edition of Márai's poems in the English language - here presented in John M. Rudland's and Peter V. Czipott's brilliant verse translation - offers a comprehensive selection spanning the author's whole career and exemplifying his mastery of what he considered to be the highest form of literary expression.

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The Beatles’ hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol of the Sixties’ psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. In the midst of this epochal change was Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to the Beatles and some of the greatest stars of the music and entertainment industry. But just how did a fifteen-year-old Jewish school dropout from an undistinguished North London suburb, with no particular artistic talent or show­business connections, end up literally at the cutting edge of Sixties’ fashion in just four years? His story – honest, always entertaining and inspiring – parallels the meteoric rise of the Beatles themselves, and is no less astounding.

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Jim Talbot, a writer with a dozen unpublished novels under his belt, has been roundly rejected by every agent and publisher in the land, and is willing to go to extreme lengths to make his dream of literary stardom come true. Charles Randall, the eccentric founder and managing director of Tetragon Press, a small independent publisher that has managed to survive for thirty years in a fierce environment dominated by corporate juggernauts, is about to be brutally sacked by a newly appointed business consultant. In the cut-throat world of modern publishing, Charles and Jim’s paths towards literary salvation are fraught with the most unpredictable dangers. A novel of intrigue, deceit and sheer desperation, Bestseller is a caustic portrait of contemporary culture and of Britain’s obsession with fame, success and becoming the next J.K. Rowling.

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"These five plays provide an excellent introduction to Kaiser’s vision of the regeneration of man, which he illustrated in his works by a total paring down of detail, penetrating to the core of the matter and revealing man’s true potential. In From Morning to Midnight the cashier, downtrodden victim of the capitalist system, turns bank robber in order to test the power, freedom and happiness that money can bring. His grand gesture of setting himself and others free turns into an odyssey of disillusion and ends in his violent death. The unique stage technique employed by Kaiser is as challenging today as it was when the play was first performed. The Burghers of Calais has always been considered Kaiser’s greatest play and the “classic” of Expressionist drama. In it, Kaiser exploits the non-naturalistic technique of Expressionism. The play embraces vast expansiveness and total concentration, stylized gesture and lengthy monologues."

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Babel, Alan Burns’s fourth critically acclaimed novel, contains all the hallmarks of the aleatoric style he helped to define – shot through with seemingly random newspaper headlines, poems, snatches of conversation and anecdote, which both heighten and undermine meaning, and characterized by extreme contrasts of mood and style and startling surrealist juxtapositions of images and ideas. By turns comic and tragic, tender and brutal, religious and blasphemous, the narrative rockets from London to the United States to Vietnam to interstellar space, familiar events are constantly fragmented and reset into new patterns, and ultimately Babel becomes a cautionary tale about the tragedy arising from attempting to build Utopia.

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Set on a canal linking Glasgow and Edinburgh, Young Adam is the masterly literary debut by one of the most important British post-war novelists. Trocchi’s narrator is an outsider, a drifter working for the skipper of a barge. Together they discover a young woman’s corpse floating in the canal, and tensions increase further in cramped confines with the narrator’s highly charged seduction of the skipper’s wife. Conventional morality and the objective meaning of events are stripped away in a work that proves compulsively readable.

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Stravinsky’s genius for the stage is here represented by two very different works. Oedipus Rex (1927) is the fruit of a collaboration with Jean Cocteau, in which the Sophocles tragedy is pared down to make an opera-oratorio of overwhelming impact. Judith Weir analyses how this is achieved: the Latin text has an immediacy which is sometimes even comic, and the vibrant rhythms are reminiscent of the Italian operatic tradition – explored by David Nice in his analysis of the score. The libretto of The Rake’s Progress (1951) by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman is one of the greatest English opera texts. In a survey of the composition period, Roger Savage examines the contributions of the different collaborators. Contents: The Person of Fate and the Fate of the Person: ‘Oedipus Rex’, David Nice; ‘Oedipus Rex’: A Personal View, Judith Weir; On an Oratorio, Jean Cocteau; Oedipus Rex: Libretto by Jean Cocteau, translated into Latin by Jean Daniélou; Oedipus Rex: English translation of the narration by e. e. cummings and of the Latin text by Deryck Cooke; Making a Libretto: Three Collaborations over ‘The Rake’s Progress’, Roger Savage; The New and the Classical in ‘The Rake’s Progress’, Brian Trowell; The Rake’s Progress: Libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman

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What can explain Wagner's obsession with Tannhauser, an opera which he first conceived in 1845 and still considered unfinished at his death in 1883? The subject is the struggle of a man torn between erotic love and spiritual fulfilment, between worlds of liberation and of sterile order. It contains the kernels of all his later works: man's need for love and artistic satisfaction, his desire for an existence beyond death, the operation of memory and the nature of madness. The essays in this volume examine the medieval legends which Wagner chose to weave into his text, and their significance for him. Carolyn Abbate also considers the effect of his many revisions upon the score, pointing out that the initial idea already involved a contrast of musical language to focus the conflict. As Wagner remained unsatisfied with the work, it provokes constant reassessment.

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Richard Strauss turned his genius to opera at the turn of the twentieth century, and this guide contains the texts and introductions to his first two masterpieces in what was, for him, a new genre. Despite obvious similarities – both operas consisting of one act, centred upon one female title role – the works are quite different in subject and treatment. Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s notorious play, has a kaleidoscopic range of orchestral colour and a lurid climax. Elektra, derived from the myths of the ancient Greeks and the first collaboration between Strauss and Hofmannsthal, is a study in neurosis, ripe for Jungian comparative analysis. Contents: Richard Strauss and the Unveiling of ‘Salome’, Paul Banks; Salome: Libretto by Hedwig Lachmann; Salome: English translation by Tom Hammond; Hofmannsthal’s ‘Elektra’: from Drama to Libretto, Kenneth Segar; Elektra and the ‘Elektra Complex’, Christopher Wintle; Elektra: Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Elektra: English translation by Anthony Hose; Strauss’s Orchestra in ‘Salome’ and ‘Elektra’, Jonathan Burton

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Rossini is one of the great operatic composers and a major innovator in the field of serious and comic operas. Moise et Pharaon is a score which he revised for Paris ten years after it had been composed for Naples; the result shows the evolution of his dramatic taste over a crucial decade - from the neo-classical sublime to spectacular Romantic grand opera. Il barbiere di Siviglia has been a consistent favourite with the public and performers since it opened, and Marco Spada analyses how its stylish comedy has been misunderstood. Other essays throw light on the working conditions of the 'opera industry' in Rossini's Italy, on Balzac's delightful novel concerning Moise and on the exceptional challenge of performing this type of music to a high standard.

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Wagner wanted Siegfried, the third music drama in The Ring of the Nibelung, to be the most popular of the cycle. Despite its many beautiful and dramatic scenes, it has not fulfilled its composer’s aspiration: Professor Ulrich Weisstein examines why. Professor Anthony Newcomb contributes a detailed analysis of Wagner’s leitmotifs and the different purposes they fulfil. Derrick Puffett discusses how Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nu¨rnberg in the eight-year hiatus between his beginning and completion of Siegfried’s second act. The thematic guide complements those found in the other Opera Guides to The Ring Cycle. Contents: Educating Siegfried, Ulrich Weisstein; ‘Siegfried’: The Music, Anthony Newcomb; ‘Siegfried’ in the Context of Wagner’s Operatic Writing, Derrick Puffett; Siegfried: Poem by Richard Wagner; Siegfried: English translation by Andrew Porter

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The story of Manon Lescaut has become part of the European imagination: she is the fun-loving woman who is irresistible to men. Of Massenet’s many operas, she inspired the most popular one, and this libretto shows his minute attention to detail in bringing the character and the period to life. This guide opens with a general survey of Massenet’s career by the musicologist Gérard Condé, and includes two essays about this particular opera. Professor Hugh Macdonald explores the interplay of speech and song in Manon and Massenet’s genius for comedy. Professor Vivienne Mylne traces the sources and context of Prévost’s novel. Contents: Massenet, Gerard Conde; A Musical Synopsis, Hugh Macdonald; Prevost and ‘Manon Lescaut’, Vivienne Mylne; Manon: Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille; Manon: English version by Edmund Tracey

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This famous opera has had a chequered performance history, and Professor Laurel E. Fay, in an illuminating musical analysis, points out that the interpretation of the opera depends very much on which edition is used. Robert Oldani introduces the 'Boris problem': Pushkin's play was not an obvious choice for a young composer, since it had been banned from performance for forty years, and it is the Russian people, rather than any single character, who is the protagonist. Mussorgsky forged his own text and created a legendary masterwork; Alex de Jonge examines its uniquely Russian character and notes the unsettling parallels of the history of old Russia with today. Nigel Osborne's comparison of the Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky versions highlights their individual qualities.

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Winton Dean relates how Otello came into being as much because of the persistence of Verdi’s publisher as of the composer’s lifelong passion for Shakespeare, and the collaboration of the brilliant poet Arrigo Boito. Benedict Sarnaker argues that this magnificent large-scale opera rivals Shakespeare in intensity and profundity. William Weaver’s lively review of Shakespeare on the Italian stage in the last century enables us to make a wholly fresh appraisal of Verdi’s stature as a dramatist. The libretto itself is a masterpiece, and Andrew Porter has also translated the third-act revision which Verdi came to prefer and which has not been performed outside France before the 1981 ENO production. Contents: ‘Otello’: The Background, Winton Dean; ‘Otello’: Drama and Music Benedict Sarnaker; Verdi, Shakespeare and the Italian Audience, William Weaver; Otello: Libretto by Arrigo Boito; Otello: English Translation by Andrew Porter

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In these vivid and anecdotal memoirs, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, one of the twentieth century’s most successful impresarios, tells of his long reign in two of the world’s most famous opera houses: a decade at La Scala in Milan, followed by twenty-seven years at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. With an inimitable tone, Gatti relates an astonishing wealth of history, including an impressive cast of personal friends numbering Verdi, Puccini, Debussy and many more. Gatti’s memoirs are totally unimpeded either by time or by their sheer content, recollecting in extraordinary detail his earliest musical experiences that led to a lifelong inspiration. Most remarkable is Gatti’s never-failing self-awareness, always appreciative of his role in cultural history, but never boastful of his talents. He commits his memories of opera’s golden age to paper, he says, only for posterity – and they serve posterity well.

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Renowned for its versatility, the piano has played a major role both in musical development and in the shaping of public taste. Throughout its history it has always remained at the centre of the music scene as the composer’s tool, the virtuoso’s partner and the accompanist’s mainstay. Style in Piano Playing is a book not only about the piano, its uses and performers, but also about the music written for the piano. In it, the author shows how the great pianists of the past built their programmes, tells of how they were received and takes a critical look at the history of musical taste.

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This is the revised edition of April FitzLyon’s celebrated biography of Mozart’s librettist, who provided the brilliant, witty texts for The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. Born a Jew in the Republic of Venice, Da Ponte became a Christian before involving himself in political and amorous intrigue and having to flee, like his friend Casanova, to Vienna, pursued by both the Inquisition and jealous husbands. As court poet to Joseph II he succeeded Metastasio and worked with many composers, until his escapades forced him to move on to London, where he managed the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. After a series of financial disasters, he moved to New York, where he worked several jobs before becoming a professor at Columbia. He helped to introduce Italian opera to the USA and in old age wrote his notoriously unreliable memoirs. This fascinating portrait provides a colourful picture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life in four capitals, combining musical and literary history with an account of the social life of the period.

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Happily engaged to the poet Amandus, Fräulein Anna is horrified to discover that a beautiful ring, mysteriously deposited upon her finger whilst tending her kitchen garden, forces her into marriage with the gnome Corduanspitz. Can Anna find any way of removing the ring? Will her poet lover shake off his passive demeanour and come to her aid? And has Corduanspitz truly relinquished all ties to his gnome heritage?Around a love story very much of its time, Hoffman arranges a narrative that brings to mind the most successful elements of contemporary magical realism and surreal comedy. Always entertaining, yet capable of a focused though subtle morality, The King's Bride brings disparate elements into a masterful harmony.

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Unsuccessful in his endeavours, the young and naive Peter Schlemihl seals a pact with the Devil in which he exchanges his shadow for the purse of Fortunatus, thereby gaining everlasting riches. But when he is ridiculed, persecuted and hated for being different from other men, he realizes that poverty is easier to bear than the loss of his peace of mind.Originally written as a cautionary tale for the children of Chamisso's patron, Peter Schlemihl was hailed by contemporaries as a masterpiece with a wide adult appeal, and continues to capture imaginations today.

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A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have become part of our collective imagination, these stories - concerned with ghosts, obscure scientific experiments and other unexplained phenomena - are now unjustly neglected.

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A mysterious murder near Esher, a gruesome delivery of two human ears packed in coarse salt, the disappearance of secret submarine plans, the sudden descent into madness of two brothers – these are only some of the apparently unsolvable cases contained in this volume, which the great sleuth, assisted by his trusted friend Doctor Watson, is challenged to clear up with the aid of his sagacity and unrivalled analytical skills. Published a quarter of a century after the first book of Holmes adventures, and including the famous titular story His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes, this collection shows the detective’s powers of deduction at their most dazzling, proving that Conan Doyle’s ability to entertain and surprise remains undiminished.

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Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel and Horace Octavius (“H.O.”) Bastable are desperate to help their widowed father to restore the family’s fortunes after his business fails. Their moneymaking schemes, from digging for treasure in their South-London garden to becoming highwaymen on Blackheath, mainly lead to a good deal of trouble, until one adventure promises to change everything…

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Old Arkhip sits every day by the roots of a wizened, hunchbacked willow, fishing and exchanging whispered stories with the ancient tree. One of these takes Arkhip three decades back in time, to a quiet day in early spring when a strange encounter shook him momentarily from the rural bliss in which he lived, catapulting him into a world of crime, corruption, violence and murder.A quintessential example of Chekhov''s artistry, ''The Willow'' is here accompanied by thirty-two other short stories some of them never or rarely translated into English which are representative of the three main phases of the author''s career: the short, light-hearted pieces of the late 1880s, the darker, more pessimistic tales of his maturity and the psychologically nuanced stories he wrote towards the end of his life. Taken together, this collection is further proof of Chekhov''s unparalleled skills as a practitioner of the short-story genre.

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After the death of her father, an exiled Iranian man of letters, the bookish twenty-two-year-old Zebra finds herself alone in New York and decides to retrace the steps of her traumatic flight with her family from their homeland in the 1990s, hoping that in the process she will be inspired to write a major manifesto on literature. Her first stop is Barcelona, where she meets the Italian Ludo, who becomes her lover, intellectual sparring partner and travelling companion in her picaresque meanderings around Catalonia. A natural-born raconteur, Zebra takes the reader on an irresistible journey through her thoughts, as she conceives elaborate theories about art and is increasingly convinced that her mother has been reincarnated as a cockatoo. Sparkling with wit and mischief and brimming with imaginative vignettes and unconventional musings, Call Me Zebra is a riotous, erudite, unpredictable novel about literature, lust and dislocation.

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Following in the footsteps of other illustrious Italian gastronomic successes – from pizza to pasta, from mozzarella to Parmesan and mortadella – Prosecco is the most recent “made in Italy” product to have colonized the world. But what is its history, and how did it come to be a global phenomenon? Luigi Bolzon retraces the origins of Prosecco’s immense popularity back to the story of the Italian emigrants who left their country in the second half of the nineteenth century and the experiences of those who, knowingly or not, were most instrumental in cementing Prosecco’s reputation in the UK and worldwide. Peppered with anecdotes and containing a rich tapestry of direct testimonies from the protagonists of Prosecco’s ascent in the world of wines, Bolzon’s book delves deep into the Italian soul to offer an insightful look behind the production and the continuing success of Britain’s most loved bubbly.

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The Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio – Stendhal’s first published work – owes its inspiration to the audacious pragmatism of its author. After the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, Henri Beyle was jobless, soon destined to become a refugee and in desperate need of money. His most abiding passion in life was music, so why not write about it? Unfortunately, however, he knew next to nothing about it. So, calmly and without the slightest pang of conscience, he resolved to plunder the works of other writers – in particular those of the musicologist Giuseppe Carpani, who was annoyed and said so vociferously. The result of Stendhal’s unscrupulous plagiarism is one of the most fascinating literary enigmas of all time. How is it that what started as a blatant act of piracy evolved into a work of enduring value? Despite its unpropitious beginnings, this work represents the wrong-headedness of a genius – and the singular Louis-Alexandre-César Bombet who signed the Lives was already, in everything that mattered, the man who was to be Stendhal, one of the most prominent literary figures of the nineteenth century.

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After her tragic death in December 1938 at the early age of twenty-six, Antonia Pozzi’s poems – which she had been secretly writing for years – were brought to light and became the object of great critical attention, going through several editions in Italy and being translated into all the major European languages. Since then, her reputation has risen steadily, and she is now considered one of the greatest Italian poets of the twentieth century. This new version by prize-winning poet and translator Peter Robinson perfectly renders the delicate undertones and that sense of longing which is such a distinctive feature of Pozzi’s poetry.

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On a train journey, Pozdnyshev tells his story to a stranger: how his relationship with his wife gradually deteriorated from one of love and passion to jealousy and resentfulness, culminating in a mad act of desperation while she practised Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with her violin teacher. An uncompromising examination of lust, suspicion and infidelity which was once forbidden by censors in Russia and banned in the US due to its shocking content, Tolstoy’s controversial novella – here presented in a new translation, along with ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus’, ‘Master and Man’ and ‘After the Ball’ – is now considered one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy’s late period.

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Portraying the characters and events of a small Midwestern town at the end of the nineteenth century, Winesburg, Ohio is a chronological cycle of stories which reads like an episodic novel. Centring on George Willard, a young local reporter with big-city aspirations, and his conversations with fellow inhabitants, the book gives voice to a disparate cast of figures and lays bare the constraints and struggles of life in a small community.

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Set during the Pugachov rebellion against Catherine the Great, The Captain's Daughter was Pushkin's only completed novel and remains one of his most popular works. The inexperienced and impetuous young nobleman Pyotr Grinyev is sent on military service to a remote fortress, where he falls in love with Masha, Captain Mironov's daughter but then the ruthless Cossack Pugachov lays siege to the stronghold, setting in motion a tragic train of events.This volume also contains another work by Pushkin on the same theme, A History of Pugachov, which presents an impartial, meticulously researched history of the revolt, but was regarded in aristocratic circles as subversive on its publication. Together, these two works provide a fascinating insight into the character of the peasant who tried to overthrow an empress, written with the clarity and insight of Russia's greatest poet.

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Where can you find truth in a world that is so thoroughly ruled by lies? That is the question tackled by the investigation of a French journalist who endeavours to shed light on the enigma of an unexplained death: that of the Argentinian writer Alejandro Bevilacqua, found lying on the pavement underneath his balcony in Madrid in the mid-1970s. The few accounts of those who knew him – which include those of his last lover, a former fellow prison inmate, a sworn enemy and even the author Alberto Manguel himself – are contradictory and unreliable. Poor devil with a troubled childhood, literary genius and irresistible seducer, ordinary man masquerading as hero, pure and simple impostor – these are but a few facets of a mysterious figure in this tribute to falsehood. Between the lines, the reader must discover the only worthwhile truth: the fascinating homage Alberto Manguel pays to literature and its shape-shifting creations, which give infinite expressions to the objects of our desires.

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The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and eleven-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes has agreed to hide him. Mariana is a bitterly unhappy woman who hates what she has done to her life, and night after night Hugo sits in her closet and listens uncomprehendingly as she rages at the Nazi soldiers who come and go. When she's not mired in self-loathing, Mariana is fiercely protective of the bewildered, painfully polite young boy. And Hugo becomes protective of Mariana, too, trying to make her laugh when she is depressed, soothing her physical and mental agony with cold compresses. As the memories of his family and friends grow dim, Hugo falls in love with Mariana. And as her life spirals downwards, Mariana reaches out for consolation to the adoring boy who is on the cusp of manhood. Multi-award-winning writer Aharon Appelfeld once again crafts out of the depths of unfathomable tragedy a renewal of life and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.

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'A Landmark in Musical History' is John Luke Rose's title for the introduction to this extraordinary piece of theatre. It belongs to the German tradition of mystical writing, and a short note on the poem itself by Martin Swales and Timothy McFarland elucidates some of Wagner's literary techniques. Anthony Negus, who assisted Reginald Goodall on the WNO production of Tristan und Isolde, has contributed a penetrating analysis of the musical structure of the opera, while Patrick Carnegy assesses the remarkable solutions to staging an opera which some argue is best experienced with your back to the performers. Contents: Behind 'The Flying Dutchman', John Warrack; An introduction to 'The Flying Dutchman', John Deathridge; Loneliness, Love and Death, William Vaughan; The Overture to 'The Flying Dutchman', Richard Wagner; Remarks on Performing 'The Flying Dutchman', Richard Wagner; Der fliegende Hollander: Poem by Richard Wagner; The Flying Dutchman: English translation by David Pountney

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Trapped in a loveless marriage and weighed down by poverty, Ethan Frome’s days are enlivened by the presence of Mattie, his ailing wife Zeena’s youthful and charming cousin, who provides help to the household. When Zeena realizes that her husband’s feelings for Mattie go beyond simple affection, and that they seem to be reciprocated, the scene is set for a confrontation that will lead to heartbreak, misery and tragedy. A marked contrast to the mordantly satirical novels of manners set among New York high society for which she is best known, this story set in rural Massachusetts is considered by many to be Edith Wharton’s highest achievement, and is unsurpassed as a study of forbidden love and thwarted desire.

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This collection brings together in a single volume the four books that feature the famous young rabbit with the blue jacket and a penchant for mischief and disobedience: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and The Tale of Mr Tod. From Peter’s early adventures in the kitchen garden of Mr McGregor to his late exploits in the rescue of his cousin Benjamin’s baby bunnies, these stories show why Beatrix Potter remains one of the most beloved children’s authors this country has ever produced.

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Presented in a new translation by Roger Cockrell, The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants was originally conceived as a play and first published in 1859, shortly after the author's release from forced military service. Gogolian in style and tone, and waspish in its description of the villainous Opiskin, it is a sustained exercise in caricatural cruelty and a comedic tour de force. The young Sergei is summoned from St Petersburg by his uncle, the retired colonel Yegor Rostanev, to the remote country estate of Stepanchikovo. Rostanev's household, populated by a medley of remarkable characters, is dominated by the figure of Foma Opiskin, a devious, manipulative hanger-on who has everyone in thrall and plots to marry the colonel to the woman of his choice, Tatyana Ivanova. When Opiskin finds that his plans are being thwarted, a confrontation with Rostanev ensues, and all hell is let loose.

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When the Basque dragoon Don José meets a Gypsy woman at the factory he is guarding, he is immediately ensnared by her wiles. After she is arrested for injuring a co-worker and he helps her to flee, he is imprisoned and demoted, but she repays him at their next meeting with a day of excess and a night of love. As Carmen continues to exert her spell, José is dragged further and further into a seedy world of smugglers, robbers, fiery passions and uncontrollable jealousy – one that he will find difficult to escape alive. Carmen, the archetype of the amoral femme fatale, is Prosper Mérimée’s highest creation, and a model for many subsequent literary heroines. First published in 1846, this story of crime and desire – here accompanied by another famous novella by Mérimée, The Venus of Ille – has been adapted into a number of dramatic works, including the famous 1875 opera of the same name by Georges Bizet.

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On his return to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War as an assistant surgeon, Doctor Watson is looking for a place to live. He is introduced to a certain Mr Holmes, an eccentric, pipe-smoking gentleman who shows an interest in chemistry and is currently engaged in a test to detect human haemoglobin. What begins as a simple house-sharing enquiry soon turns into a fully fledged “study in scarlet”, a case of blood, murder and betrayal that will transport the reader from the streets of London to the early settlements of Salt Lake City in Utah…

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Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all its accompanying challenges and expectations. Meg is preparing for her wedding, Beth continues to struggle with her health, Jo is more than ever devoting herself to literature and Amy is about to go on a tour of Europe with her aunt. Their experiences, hopes and ambitions are set in counterpoint to each other, until the whole family is brought together by tragedy and misfortune. Following on the immediate commercial success of Little Women, Good Wives completes the story of the March sisters and their friend Laurie, and is, together with its prequel, Louisa May Alcott’s crowning achievement and one of the most popular young-adult tales ever written.

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A respectable young widow and mother of two children, the Marquise of O- finds herself inexplicably pregnant after being rescued by a Russian officer from the attentions of his soldiers during the storming of her town's citadel. Convinced of her own innocence and wishing to vindicate her own integrity, the Marquise places an advert in the newspapers, appealing for the father to come forward and promising to marry him. But will this be enough to quench her family's doubts and the derision of the society around her? Will this help her solve the mystery and urge the perpetrator to acknowledge paternity of the child? One of the great classics of German literature, Heinrich von Kleist's sexually charged novella is as edgy today as it was when it was first published in 1808, and is accompanied here by two other celebrated stories, 'The Earthquake in Chile' and 'The Foundling', showcasing the range of their author's narrative abilities and his taste for the ambiguous and the paradoxical.

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