The American poet John Shade is dead. His last poem, 'Pale Fire', is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should be. Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum. Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.

Daphne du Maurier's occasional volumes of short stories have always shown how compellingly she can make our flesh creep (think of the brilliant 'The Birds', and that truly horrifying story 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger'). This new collection, which contains five long stories, makes exactly the same stunning, sinister impact. Not After Midnight-the title gives warning that here are no cosy tales for reading to a maiden aunt or an elderly cousin. Venice... Crete... Ireland... Jerusa- lem... East Anglia: the settings are as varied as the plots. A married couple enjoying a holiday in Venice are swept helplessly into a tragedy played out against a back-drop of murky canals and back- alleys. A middle-aged schoolmaster gets involved with an American couple whose fishing expeditions are very far from being what they appear. A young actress, setting out on an impulsive but innocent quest, blunders into a situation which sweeps away all the roots of her youthful self- confidence. One story, subtly mocking, follows the vicissitudes of an ill-assorted little party of pilgrims in Jerusalem; another explores the meaning of life and death in a brilliantly original tale. Such unremarkable people, following their unexceptionable paths-yet all caught up in situations beyond the boun- daries of their experience and outside their control. Compelling, exciting, this collec- tion shows once again what mastery of the short story Daphne du Maurier has.

Daphne du Maurier's occasional volumes of short stories have always shown how compellingly she can make our flesh creep (think of the brilliant 'The Birds', and that truly horrifying story 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger'). This new collection, which contains five long stories, makes exactly the same stunning, sinister impact. Not After Midnight-the title gives warning that here are no cosy tales for reading to a maiden aunt or an elderly cousin. Venice... Crete... Ireland... Jerusa- lem... East Anglia: the settings are as varied as the plots. A married couple enjoying a holiday in Venice are swept helplessly into a tragedy played out against a back-drop of murky canals and back- alleys. A middle-aged schoolmaster gets involved with an American couple whose fishing expeditions are very far from being what they appear. A young actress, setting out on an impulsive but innocent quest, blunders into a situation which sweeps away all the roots of her youthful self- confidence. One story, subtly mocking, follows the vicissitudes of an ill-assorted little party of pilgrims in Jerusalem; another explores the meaning of life and death in a brilliantly original tale. Such unremarkable people, following their unexceptionable paths-yet all caught up in situations beyond the boun- daries of their experience and outside their control. Compelling, exciting, this collec- tion shows once again what mastery of the short story Daphne du Maurier has.

A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago's divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above. An exiled auspex who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist―the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves. To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

'Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.' With this pair of absurd, comic stories Gogol indulges his imagination and delights readers. Contains 'The Nose' and 'The Carriage'.

When Laura Willowes’s beloved father dies, she is absorbed in the household of her brother and his family. There, she leaves behind “Laura” and enters into the state of “Aunt Lolly,” a genteel spinster indispensable to the upbringing of her nieces. For twenty years, Lolly is neither indulgent nor impulsive, until one day when she decides to move to a village in the Chilterns, much to her family’s chagrin.   But it’s in the countryside, among nature, where Lolly has her first taste of freedom. Duty-bound to no one except herself, she revels in the solitary life. When her nephew moves there, and Lolly feels once again thrust into her old familial role, she reaches out to the otherworldly, to the darkness, to the unheeded power within the hearts of women to feel at peace once more . . .

When a disfigured corpse is discovered in a country parish, the local rector pleads with Lord Peter to take on what will become one of his most brilliant and complicated cases.