«Germinal» (1885) is the thirteenth in Émile Zola’s cycle of twenty novels about the Rougon-Macquart dynasty. It tells the story of Étienne Lantier, from the illegitimate Macquart branch of the family, who arrives in the mining settlement of Montsou, and witnesses at first hand the appalling conditions in which miners live and work. Gradually becoming embroiled in a bitter dispute between the miners and their employers, he eventually leads the strike which is the centrepiece of the novel. But this is more than the struggle of labour against capital. It is also the struggle of the hungry against the well-fed, against the passivity and resignation passed down over generations of starving people, and ultimately against hunger itself, represented by the fantastical devouring monster of the mine, which swallows up men, just as the beast of the modern industrial economy relentlessly swallows up capital. This apparent pessimism about society is offset by the possibility of rebirth and regeneration. For all the inherited misery of the downtrodden, the old order may some day be overturned.»

«Jane Austen is without question, one of England's most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature's most charismatic and believable heroines, she mesmerises her readers as much today as when her novels were first published. Whether it is her sharp, ironic gaze at the Gothic genre invoked by the adventures of Catherine Morland in «Northanger Abbey»; the diffident and much put-upon Fanny Price struggling to cope with her emotions in «Mansfield Park»; her delightfully paced comedy of manners and the machinations of the sisters Elinor and Marianne in «Sense and Sensibility»; the quiet strength of Anne Elliot in «Persuasion» succeeding in a world designed to subjugate her very existence; and Emma — 'a heroine whom no one but myself will like' teased Austen — yet another irresistible character on fire with imagination and foresight.Indeed not unlike her renowned creator, Jane Austen is as sure-footed in her steps through society's whirlpools of convention and prosaic mores as she is in her sometimes restrained but ever precise and enduring prose.»

Selected by Rosemary Gray, poignant, wry, chilling, challenging, amusing, thought-provoking and always intriguing, these accomplished tales from the pens of great writers are object-lessons in the art of creating a literary masterpiece on a small canvas. From the straightforwardly anecdotal to the more analytical of human behaviour, all are guaranteed to capture the imagination, stir the emotions, linger in the memory and whet the reader's appetite for more. In this book, Wordsworth Editions presents the modern reader with a rich variety of short stories by a host of towering literary figures ranging from Arnold Bennett to Virginia Woolf. This disparate and distinguished company of writers has rarely — if ever — met within the pages of one volume: the result is a positive feast.

The critically acclaimed first novel from Jonathan Franzen, author of the prize winning and internationally bestselling, The Corrections. St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city until it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, India, named S. Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city's leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, 'The Twenty-Seventh City' shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, and the American Dream unraveling into terror and dark comedy.

«The garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim — that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this, she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband. This is an ironic novel of manners. «Pride and Prejudice», which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it, the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim — that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this, she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband. With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, «Pride and Prejudice» has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.»

The delicate artistry and lyrical prose of Woolf's novels have established her as a writer of sensitivity and profound talent. Virginia Woolf displays genuine humanity and concern for the experiences that enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party and her thoughts on that one day, and the interior monologues of others with interwoven lives reveal the characters of the central protagonists. To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. Based on her early experiences, it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires. It is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War. Orlando, 'the longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. 'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', said Woolf of The Waves. Regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time.

This work contains an Introduction by M.J. Elliot. The sixteenth-century Puritan Solomon Kane has a thirst for justice which surpasses common reason. Sombre of mood, clad in black and grey, he 'never sought to analyse his motives and he never wavered once his mind was made up. Though he always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that all his actions were governed by cold and logical reasonings... A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, and avenge all crimes against right and justice'. Immune to the attractions of the opposite sex, he seems drawn by some psychological distress beacon to places where he knows only that he will be called upon to defend the helpless or (more often) exact retribution on their behalf. Himself a Christian, possessed of enormous strength and skill in swordplay, he yet has little hesitation in calling upon the assistance of his Voodoo-practising friend N'Longa when strength, skill and Christian belief are not enough.

Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; but crime, of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential. Bulldog Drummond was the original daredevil adventurer who, with his various friends, made it their mission to fight all enemies of Britain in the uncertain years following the First World War. Fearless, resourceful and debonair, Drummond could easily have been the father of James Bond. In the first four novels of the series, Bulldog Drummond, The Black Gang, The Third Round, The Final Count, all of which are contained within this volume, Hugh Drummond finds himself pitting his wits again Carl Peterson, a criminal genius with an insatiable passion for power and world domination. He has the great facility of disguise and his chameleon appearances are one of the joys of these thrilling tales. Peterson s constant companion is the sinister but beautiful Irma. The Drummond books are exciting page-turning adventures for grown up boys and girls.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is best known today as one of the Victorian period's leading exponents of supernatural fiction, and was described by M R James as standing 'absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.' The House by the Churchyard is perhaps his best novel in this genre. Set in the village of Chapelizod, near Dublin, in the 1760s the story opens with the accidental disinterment of an old skull in the churchyard, and an eerie late-night funeral. This discovery relates to murders, both recent and historical whose repercussions disrupt the complacent pace of village affairs and change the lives of many of its notable characters forever. Charm and chilling darkness abound in equal measure in one of this greatest novels of a Victorian master of mystery.

Wilkie Collins is a master of mystery, and The Woman in White is his first excursion into the genre. When the hero, Walter Hartright, on a moonlit night in North London, encounters a solitary, terrified and beautiful woman dressed in white, he feels impelled to solve the mystery of her distress. The intricate plot is peopled with a finely characterised cast, from the peevish invalid Mr Fairlie to the corpulent villain Count Fosco and the enigmatic woman herself.

«The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing.This new volume contains six of her finest stories that have been selected specifically to demonstrate this, and to trace the development of her art. As diverse in setting as in subject matter, these tales move from the gentle comedy of life in a small English country town in «Dr Harrison's Confessions», to atmospheric horror in far north-west Wales with «The Doom of the Griffiths». The story of «Cousin Phillis», her masterly tale of love and loss, is a subtle, complex and perceptive analysis of changes in English national life during an industrial age, while the gripping «Lois the Witch» recreates the terrors of the Salem witchcraft trials in seventeenth-century New England, as «Gaskell» shrewdly shows the numerous roots of this furious outbreak of delusion. Whimsically modified fairy tales are set in a French chateau, while an engaging love story poetically evokes peasant life in wine-growing Germany.»

«Mrs H.D. Everett was the last in a long line of gifted Victorian novelists who knew how to grip the reader through the invasion of everyday life by the abnormal and dramatic, leaving the facts to produce their special thrills without piling on the agony. 'I always know', says one of her characters, 'how to distinguish a true ghost story from a faked one. The true ghost story never has any point and the faked one dare not leave it out.' From the chilling horror of «The Death Mask» to the shocking violence of «The Crimson Blind», from the creeping menace of Parson Clench to the mounting suspense of «The Pipers of Mallory», these thrilling stories were enthusiastically received by readers and critics when they first appeared, and are sure to delight and terrify the modern reader in equal measure.»

This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The Star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale. The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.

«Beware, the Dead are coming back! This is a unique and fascinating collection of early mummy stories that helped to establish the chilling concept of the Dead returning to life as a potent sub-genre of horror fiction. The main feature on the mummy bill, «The Jewel of the Seven Stars» by Bram Stoker, is generally regarded as his best work after «Dracula». A weird mixture of adventure, the supernatural and science fiction is found in Jane Webb's «The Mummy», a tale written in 1827 but set in 2126. «Some Words with a Mummy» is by the great horror writer Edgar Allen Poe. Arthur Conan Doyle's «The Ring of Thoth» is the classic mummy tale and was the basis for the 1932 movie «The Mummy» starring Boris Karloff and, indeed most mummy films ever since. «Lot 249», another Doyle chiller, completes this collection, which is guaranteed to entertain and possibly prompt a nightmare.»

A general purpose dictionary suitable for a great variety of both English and Spanish speakers at all levels of proficiency, this volume contains over 100,000 entries — common and technical words and phrases, slang and idioms — with examples of usage that include many especially chosen to help users express themselves in a natural and fluent style. All headwords — both English and Spanish — have phonetic transcriptions based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assist with pronunciation.

«Some six or seven feet above the port bulwarks, framed in fog, and as utterly unsupported as the full moon, hung a Face. It was not human, and it certainly was not animal, for it did not belong to this earth as known to man». Rudyard Kipling, celebrated author of «The Jungle Book», the «Just So Stories» and other entertaining fictions, was also a master of the short story in which he was able to combine the strange and unnerving in order to draw the reader into the world of his own dark imaginings. This collection presents the best of these strange tales in which ghosts, monsters and inexplicable happenings abound. From the exotic and magical locale of India, to the leafy suburbs of England and then to the blood-soaked trenches of the First World War, Kipling provides us with a chilling array of experiences and images which will linger long in the memory.»

«May Sinclair was an innovator of modern fiction, a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. In her «Uncanny Stories» (1923), Sinclair combines the traditional ghost story with the discoveries of Freud and Einstein. The stories shock, enthral, delight and unsettle. Specially included in this volume is «The Intercessor» (1911), Sinclair's powerful story of childhood and abandoned love, a tale whose intensity compares with that of the Brontes.»

«In the midst of a wood of evergreens on the banks of the Arno, a man — young, handsome, and splendidly attired — has thrown himself upon the ground, where he writhes like a stricken serpent. He is the prey of a demoniac excitement: an appalling consternation is upon him — madness is in his brain — his mind is on fire. Lightnings appear to gleam from his eyes — as if his soul were dismayed, and withering within his breast. 'Oh! no-no!' he cries with a piercing shriek, as if wrestling madly — furiously — but vainly, against some unseen fiend that holds him in his grasp. Aged and deserted, Fernand Wagner agrees to serve John Faust for the last year of his life. In return he is given youth, wealth and beauty — but at the terrible price of becoming a werewolf. He loves the glacial, beautiful, sensual Nisida, whose family history conceals a dreadful secret. Together, they flee from Florence to a desert island: but dogged by the Inquisition, and by the might of the Ottoman Empire, they are finally forced to face the horror that lurks in the closet... First published in 1847, «Wagner the Werewolf» is one of the very earliest treatments of the Werewolf theme in English literature, and has lost none of its power to shock, it is one of the greatest works of George W. M. Reynolds, once the most popular author in England, and the «Master of the Penny Dreadful».»

«'As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved...It was good, good, good...' Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents — a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. «The Well of Loneliness» was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond.»

«Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent the last fourteen years of his life writing «la recherche du temps perdu». It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age. Scott Moncrieff's delightful translation was for many years the only access to Proust in English. A labour of love that took him nearly as many years as Proust spent writing the original. Moncrieff's translation strives to capture the extraordinary blend of muscular analysis with poetic reverie that typifies Proust's style. It remains a justly famous classic of translation.»