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There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. Nuns, maidens, adventurers – with electricity, ‘The Story of an Hour’ collects stories of female freedom, as Kate Chopin asks the question: what will emancipation feel like for her, looking at the horizon and the future, to the frontier?
What would happen if a doctor implanted the pituitary gland and testicles of a man into the body of a stray dog? In Mikhail Bulgakov’s topsy-turvy world, the dog starts to walk on two legs, drink, smoke, thieve, chase women and recite every swear word in Russian. The perfect candidate for a government official, in other words. This rude, riotous send-up of the Soviet Union, banned immediately on publication, is satire red in tooth and claw.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. In this glittering new selection of Fitzgerald’s short stories, we meet Anson Hunter, ‘The Rich Boy’, whose opulent, haunting world paints a vivid portrait of the American elite. ‘Absolution’ offers a poignant glimpse into the soul of a young boy grappling with sin, whilst ‘May Day’ captures the whirling hysteria at the dawn of the Jazz Age.
Plagued by ill-health, violently sick at sea, irritated by renovation costs: Seneca is never less than sympathetically human. In these letters written 2000 years ago, the ancient philosopher speaks to the reader today with lucidity and warmth. Whether advising on how to live a good life, spend time alone or free oneself from fears of death, Seneca is the wise and compassionate friend we all need now.
Marian Forrester arrives in the prairie town of Sweet Water as a young bride – beautiful, aristocratic, and spirited. To Captain Daniel Forrester, her pioneer husband, she’s a precious jewel, and in the eyes of her new neighbour, young Niel Herbert, she’s the perfect lady. But like the burgeoning promise of the American frontier, Marian’s charms decline with the passing of time, and the world’s admiration curdles into pity and contempt.
It’s terribly important that I get in touch with a gentleman who may have stopped in here to buy flowers this morning. Terribly important. Sometimes, the person you think you love isn’t who they seem. And sometimes, you can be your own deception. Spanning Shirley Jackson’s entire career, these devilish tales of love, death, and despair show us how all that keeps us safe in suburbia can strike up, leave, and instantly disappear.
A Nottinghamshire coal miner’s wife waits for her abusive husband Walter to come home. She blames his drinking for his absence, but in reality he has been killed in a pit accident. Laying out his corpse makes her realise they never really knew each other.
Fabien tonight was wandering over the vast splendour of a sea of clouds, but below him lay eternity. Inspired by his career as an aviator, Saint-Exupéry’s soaring novel follows the journeys of three pilots delivering mail overnight. The author’s prose is as haunting as his own disappearance in flight, eerily foreshadowed by his protagonist Fabien, who becomes lost in otherworldly darkness.
In 1666, Margaret Cavendish had a vision – there was a crack in reality at the North Pole leading to a utopian parallel universe, where gender roles, scientific orthodoxy and political norms had been razed to the ground. She slipped through the portal and returned with the first science fiction novel in English – an explosive account of ‘The Blazing World’.
The Major and his fragile wife dine and play cards with Captain Penderton and his flamboyant wife, watched at a distance by Private Williams. Quiet and unfathomable, he is fascinated by the captain’s wife.
A bashful dragon, a lost wood-sprite, the prophet Elijah and the Devil disguised as a middle-aged woman appear in these playful, exuberant stories by Vladimir Nabokov. So do a vengeful husband, a barber confronting his torturer and the author himself, as he recalls his first love. Each of the 13 tales here enchants and enraptures us, only to gleefully confound our expectations.
Laurie Lee was still a young man when he decided to fight for the Republican cause in Spain’s civil war. But though he braved icy, storm-swept mountains alone to contact Republican sympathisers, he was immediately suspected of being a Nationalist spy. Imprisoned and almost executed by his own side, he eventually joined the International Brigade. This is the story of his experiences as a Republican soldier, fighting for the losing side in a doomed war.
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