Valerie, a wartime Land Girl, meets and falls in love with an American pilot; meanwhile, her cousin has rescued a mistreated border collie named Peter Woodhouse. Together, Val, Mike and Peter Woodhouse do their bit for love, the war and international relations.

The world’s longest-running serial novel continues apace: starting with Pat Macgregor’s meeting with her ex-boyfriend and the colossal embarrassment that followed, here are further adventures of Stuart and Irene, young Bertie, the Duke of Johannesburg and resident anthropologist Domenica Lordie (née MacDonald).

Following two years spent nursing Blitz casualties in London, Elizabeth returns to rural Ireland to marry Reegan, a disgruntled police sergeant. As she struggles to adjust to the drudgery of her new life, she is diagnosed with a serious illness.

Traumatized by her famous father's death, highly strung actress Eve, already struggling to adapt to life with her anxiety-specialist husband, finds herself in the orbit of sisters Beatrice, a grief counsellor, and Rebecca, a troubled tabloid journalist.

After years of war and travel, Ulysses returns to Ithaca penniless and alone. In this spirited retelling of the concluding scenes of Homer’s Odyssey, his wife Penelope, less than overjoyed, wonders what took him so long.

Eleanor of Aquitaine rules England while one son, Richard the Lionheart, is imprisoned and the other, John, stands accused of a plot to murder his brother. Justin de Quincy is tasked with proving John’s innocence.

Born into a noble family, young Anne Boleyn yearns to grow and discover herself. At first, she spurns King Henry’s attempts to make her his mistress, but her ambitious family has other ideas. Off-mint and felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge.

In an attempt to improve the fortunes of his troupe of 'Remarkables', Victorian showman Percy Unusual George acquires the skeleton of an infamous 18th-century French court dwarf. Entwining the two men's stories, this epistolary novel explores themes of love, ambition and what it means to be different.

As Sarah Ribbons prepares to attend her school reunion, she is haunted by memories of her final year there. The narrative, moving between 1985 and the present day, explores the treachery of adolescent friendships and traces the repercussions of a toxic relationship.

When fledgling diplomat Daniel Maddison arrives in Bakinabe, West Africa, nothing is quite what he imagined it would be. Searching for something beyond the shallow glitz of ex-pat life, he finds himself drawn to Rachel, a troubled cloth seller.

This German satire envisages a future with closed borders, where a TV star visits a vast African refugee camp to film her new series. Enabled by a sycophantic journalist, she accidentally triggers a huge march northward, with chaotic consequences.

In 1965, six climbers died while attempting to climb Mount Poroshiri in Japan's northern island. One climber, Odagiri, is known to have survived four days longer than his companions. This stream-of-consciousness novel imagines his thoughts as the cold and sleepiness start to overwhelm him and his death approaches. Slightly off-mint.

Joseph Conrad's dark and profoundly influential novel is narrated by Marlow, a mariner who recalls his journey up-river into the densely forested depths of Africa on a mission to find the enigmatic trading company agent, Kurtz. In this edition, it is accompanied by the Tales of Unrest (1898), including Conrad’s ‘best story’, An Outpost of Progress.

Spurned by his love Katrina, schoolmaster Ichabod Crane rides through the autumn night to encounter a headless horseman. Irving’s 1820 classic is accompanied by 14 other tales, including ‘Roscoe’, ‘Kidd the Pirate’ and the famous ‘Rip Van Winkle’.

The recurring character Carter, presumed to be Lovecraft’s alter ego, is an obscure author with magical ancestry who faces unnameable monsters and nightmares. This collection of stories describes his encounters with and philosophical musings about the dreamworld, mummies and aliens.

This crime drama is set in 1950s Atlanta as racial tensions are inflamed by black families moving into all-white neighbourhoods. Two of the city's first black policemen face Klan activity, drug trafficking and discrimination as they try to keep the peace. Slightly off-mint.

This fifth adventure for county guidebook writer Swanton Morley finds him investigating the death of a woman in a Lewes lido. Set in the 1930s, the novel nostalgically recreates the atmosphere of a bygone England and the golden age of detective fiction.

When a young journalist investigates the death of a tabloid star in a helicopter crash, he is caught in an international web of political and corporate corruption reaching from Ireland to Congo, Paris and New York.

Investigating the murder of a man during a wedding celebration at a Californian resort, Detective Ramone is perplexed when four guests – harassed mother Ginger, serial divorcee Lulu, borderline alcoholic Emily and wealthy lawyer Kate – confess their guilt, each insisting she acted alone. Slightly off-mint.

When psychotherapist Helen Brunswick is murdered, her ex-husband is the prime suspect. Details of the crime mirror one committed 20 years earlier by a serial killer serving a life sentence, and NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher is brought in to investigate.

A drug addict’s death from an overdose appears to be an accident, but Eve Dallas suspects his old gang. As she and her husband Roarke track the killer through New York’s dives and strip joints, the body count starts to rise.

When a lethal golden egg is delivered to Kent Abner, a happily married New York paediatrician, detective Eve Dallas is puzzled why anyone should want him dead. Then a second, similar murder sends her in pursuit of a serial killer.

When American academic Michael Lowell accepts an invitation to a university reunion in Oxford, he finds himself inextricably drawn into a global conspiracy that could force the hand of governments and affect the lives of millions.

With the publication of the explosive biography of a media business tycoon at stake, this thriller follows literary agent Isabel Reed, CIA Station chief Hayden Gray and book editor Jeffrey Fielder through 24 crucial hours as the politically connected magnate tries to suppress its release.

Part taut psychological thriller, part terrifying ghost story, this novel weaves together the stories of Liz Kendall, a devoted mother-of-two who is in the thrall of a malicious alter-ego named Beth, and Fran, a teenaged survivor of childhood trauma who is protected by Jinx, an imaginary fox.

A grieving mother and daughter are both captivated by their charming young counsellor but Jed is too good to be true. Breaking the triangle of obsession and manipulation, Rosalie uncovers the truth about him and about her son's death.

In this Scandinavian thriller Eva takes revenge on her cheating husband and then meets a man who has been keeping patient vigil by his comatose girlfriend's bedside. In contrast to her husband he appears constant, but behind his devotion are more secrets and betrayals. Slightly off-mint.

One night in Prague, Helen Franklin is given an old manuscript by a friend. The personal testimonies within its pages range from 17th century England to wartime Czechoslovakia, and tell of a mysterious woman in black bearing an unforgettable message.

Among the 20 stories in this collection are some of Edgar Allen Poe’s most celebrated tales of gothic mystery and horror, including ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’.

When fun-loving Londoner Alan Lewrie is caught in flagrante he escapes the consequences by going to sea. This series of naval adventures follows his rise through the Royal Navy ranks during the French and American Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars. The two titles included in this set are: A King’s Commander (Read more...) Jester’s Fortune (Read more...)

The two titles included in this set are: Clap When You Land (Read more...) With the Fire on High (Read more...)

Created by the award-winning screenwriter and novelist Lynda La Plante, Jane Tennison was a good-looking, intelligent, yet naive young woman when she joined the Met in 1973. Posted to one of the roughest areas of London, she has to toughen up; but being a woman in the 1970s police force presents its own challenges. The two titles included in this set are: Murder Mile (Read more...) Good Friday (Read more...)

The epic adventure of Lyra Belacqua and her friend Will Parry, wandering through parallel worlds in search of knowledge about the enigmatic Dust, is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of storytelling that is both thrilling and profound. As well as awards, there have been controversies, but Pullman refuses to be drawn on the ‘meaning’ of His Dark Materials; as he writes on his webpage, ‘I’m not in the message business. I’m in the “Once upon a time” business’. Young Adult The three titles included in this set are:Northern Lights (Read more...) Subtle Knife (Read more...)Amber Spyglass (Read more...)

Tragic, comic and satirical, these 25 short stories evoke everyday life in 19th-century Russia: an illicit affair in ‘The Lady with a Dog’; a bereaved cabman in ‘Misery’; and a servant girl driven to desperation by a crying baby in ‘Sleepy’.

Edith Wharton’s novella, the story of young Mattie Silver, who goes to keep house at the remote Massachusetts farm belonging to Etham Frome and his wife, Mattie’s cousin Zeena, is accompanied in this edition by four short stories, including two from Wharton’s Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910).

This collection of early stories shows Lovecraft experimenting with genres, from fantasy to Gothic horror. Featuring ancient powers and long-buried secrets, these 19 tales include the terrifying ‘Dagon’, the playful ‘Ibid’, and the subtly unnerving ‘The Music of Erich Zann’.

Presented in a slipcase and illustrated with drawings by the acclaimed Art Nouveau designer Harry Clarke, this collection of 29 of Edgar Allen Poe's most intriguing supernatural tales includes 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'.

This collection of darkly comic stories gives a feminist twist to fairy tales such as ‘Cinderella’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’, and the children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit.

Echoing the novelist's own experience, Villette (1853) follows Lucy Snowe, a young English woman, as she takes up a teaching post in Belgium, wins the respect of the pupils and headmistress, but also becomes romantically entangled with a fellow teacher.

As a young, independent woman taking over the running of a rural estate, Bathsheba Everdene attracts the attentions of three very different men: a respectable local farmer, a dashing soldier, and a devoted young shepherd, Gabriel Oak, who works on her land. This was the first of Hardy’s great novels, originally published in 1874.

A self-taught young stonemason whose ambition is to go to university, Jude Fawley has his hopes dashed when he is tricked into a bad marriage. Once free again, he finds a soul-mate, but society and class conspire to deny them happiness. Hardy described his novel as the story of a ‘deadly war waged between flesh and spirit’.

‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard’: so begins John Dowell, the unreliable narrator of this dark and intriguing tale of two disintegrating marriages – his own and that of the ‘good soldier’, Capt Edward Ashburnham. Set in the years before the First World War, and published in 1915, The Good Soldier is acknowledged as one of finest novels of the 20th century.

Martha Griffith Browne, a Southern slave-owner who became wedded to the cause of emancipation, wrote this ‘autobiography’ of Ann, a woman born into slavery, to raise the money to liberate those she had inherited from her father. Published in 1856, it was written in the style of contemporary narratives, and although a fiction, draws on Browne’s own experience to describe the horrors of slavery.

Pretty, charming and impetuous, Alice Ware is determined to embrace life in turn-of-the-century Yorkshire. When she falls for handsome soldier Matthew Cheevy, her future seems assured. Then she makes a reckless decision, throwing the lives of three people into turmoil.

Up at the crack of dawn to milk her uncle's cows, the one comfort in Molly Goodchild's life is her friendship with apprentice gardener Charlie. When her head is turned by a dashing naval officer, she must decide what she's prepared to sacrifice to escape a life of servitude.

During the Nazi occupation a Dutch couple are hiding a Jewish man, but when he dies they must find a way to dispose of his corpse. This darkly ironic novella, by a German author who himself fled to the Netherlands, was first published in 1947.

Addled by morphine, the dying Sigmund Freud is visited by the blind prophet Tiresias at his London home. Their conversation revisits the myth of Oedipus, leading the father of psychoanalysis to re-examine the foundations of his life’s work.

After returning from holiday with his wife Astrid and their two children, Thomas quietly steps out of the house – and his life. This novel by one of Switzerland’s most acclaimed writers poses questions about identity, connection and individual freedom.

Set in South Korea’s troubled 1980s, this novel follows teenage Bugeye, who joins a community of outsiders scavenging for recyclables at a Seoul landfill site. After seeing mysterious lights, he discovers the folkloric realm of the place’s ancient spirits.

The residents of Pepys Road in London, including a banker, a shopaholic, a cancer victim and a young Senegalese footballer, all receive anonymous postcards saying ‘We Want What You Have’. The mystery only deepens as the 2008 financial crash starts to impact the lives of their neighbours.

Following a long absence in New York, Elaine reluctantly returns to her childhood home in rural Ireland to nurse her ailing father – and finds herself haunted by visceral memories of the tragic events that compelled her to leave home aged just sixteen.

After their teenage sister Julia vanished, Claire and Lydia’s family was ripped apart. More than 20 years later, the murder of Claire’s husband Paul Scott is followed by a shocking discovery, and the estranged sisters come together to unearth the truth of Julia’s disappearance.

Having been found not guilty of infanticide by reason of insanity, Melisandre Dawes fled the country, leaving her surviving daughters with their father. Twelve years later, back in Baltimore under the reluctant protection of private detective Tess Monaghan, she becomes prime suspect in a murder enquiry.

New state’s attorney Luisa Brant investigates a murder in Wilde Lake, Maryland, a planned utopian community striving for racial and economic equality. However the case brings up painful memories and dilemmas around her brother’s involvement in a 1980s murder case.

A murder investigation brings Englishman Jon Reed to Amsterdam in this thriller. With local detective Ronald Van Hijn he is drawn into an underworld of drugs, violence and sex in an investigation that uncovers secrets about the Nazi holocaust and Reed's own Jewish identity.

Set in France, this psychological thriller is told through the voices of an extraordinary boy, locked in a coma after falling off a cliff, and the doctor treating him. Gradually the truth about Louis, his shocking accident and what happened to his parents is revealed. Slightly off-mint.

Hired by the FBI because of her specialist knowledge of stage magic, Jessica Blackwood investigates a serial killer who uses illusionist’s tricks to add drama and misdirection to his crimes. Slightly off-mint.

Having rebuilt her life after an abusive relationship, Lindsey now feels she is being watched or followed. Her ex-husband has been released from prison recently but is it him stalking her and her daughter?

Alice Shipley has moved to Tangier with her husband John, but finds the streets bewildering and the heat oppressive. The arrival of her old friend Lucy gives her the confidence to explore the city, but then John disappears.

The murder of a man who was supposed to have already been killed by his wife, Lena, twelve years previously begins the investigation for DI Francis Sadler in this fast-paced thriller. When Lena goes missing, her sister Kat follows the trail.

Against a backdrop of a bygone America an ageing actor reflects on the experiences that shaped him. Memories blend with visions of his late father as an airman; and his father’s girlfriend, with whom he would become tragically involved. Foreword by Patti Smith. American-cut pages and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge. Slightly off-mint

The Imperial Assassin novels follow the adventures of the military scout Silus after he is recruited into the Arcani, an elite group of spies and killers, in the troubled Roman Empire of the early 3rd century AD. The four titles included in this set are: Emperor's Sword (Read more...) Emperor's Knife (Read more...) Emperor's Axe (Read more...) Emperor’s Spear (Read more...)

Karin Slaughter’s tough, visceral thrillers pit Special Agent Will Trent and other detectives against a range of brutal killers across the prosperous suburbs and stark housing projects of Atlanta, Georgia. The three titles included in this set are: Cop Town (Read more...) Triptych (Read more...) Fractured (Read more...)

The three titles included in this set are: Rebellion's Message (Read more...) Dark Queen Rising (Read more...) The Almanack (Read more...)

The story of a group of boys marooned on a tropical island after a plane crash, Lord of the Flies, the first novel by William Golding (1911–1993), was published in 1954 and is now a modern classic. For all its adventure and excitement, the book is a profound exploration of the human potential for evil: at first, the boys elect leaders and organize themselves, but very soon rivalry, fear and violence erupt and a descent into savagery begins.

A journalist with a record of tracking down killers, Jack McEvoy is now a suspect in the murder of Tina Portrero, a woman he barely knew. Disturbed by the nature of her death he begins investigating it, and finds himself on the trail of a serial killer.

Published in 1907, Conrad’s compelling tale of anarchy, espionage and violence is set in the seedy back streets of Victorian London where Adolf Verloc, a shopkeeper who is also a secret agent, is assigned the task of blowing up the Greenwich Observatory.

Jim was first mate on the Patna, when the ship and passengers were abandoned by the crew in the Red Sea. Accused of cowardice, Jim immerses himself in work on a remote colonial trading post yet, despite the locals’ high regard for him, the guilt of the Patna remains.

A study of conflict between father and daughter, this is the story of Catherine, the plain, obedient daughter of Dr August Sloper of Washington Square, New York. When Morris Townsend, a handsome man-about-town, proposes to Catherine, her father forbids the marriage, believing Townsend to be after his daughter’s inheritance.

Written in the 1890s and early 1900s, these 14 stories offer a realistic portrayal of the life of Russia’s downtrodden masses, and established Gorky’s reputation as both a writer and a revolutionary voice.

Following the death of Sir Charles Baskerville – purportedly killed by a monstrous ghostly hound – Sherlock Holmes and Watson pursue the mystery across wild and desolate Dartmoor.

Some years before the story begins, Anne Elliot had been engaged to Frederick Wentworth, a naval officer, but was persuaded by an aunt to break it off. They meet again, Anne still in love with Wentworth, but unable to declare her feelings or deny them by accepting another man’s proposal.

Franz Kafka’s strange tale of Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous bug, is open to many interpretations – probably as many as it has readers. Metamorphosis was written in 1912. Translated from the German, with a short introduction, by William Aaltonen.

Thomas De Quincey's powerful autobiographical study describes his addiction to opium and its psychological effects: childhood experience is turned into dreams that are at first euphoric, but become horrific as his dependence on the drug deepens. Published in 1822, the book brought De Quincey literary fame and became an important influence on later writers.

Famously controversial, DH Lawrence’s novel is a reflection on mankind's relation to nature, expressed through the story of an aristocratic woman’s sexual involvement with her gamekeeper.

Set in a Nottinghamshire mining village, Lawrence's autobiographical novel centres on the relationship between Paul Morel and his mother – an attachment that becomes a struggle as Paul is attracted first to Miriam, a shy country girl, then to Clara, a married woman.

In the final years of the Trojan War, the Achaeans, led by Agamemnon and joined eventually by a reluctant Achilles, are fighting to reclaim Helen from Hector of Troy. This great epic is presented in Samuel Butler’s 1898 prose translation, with black and white illustrations based on Greek vase painting.

In the aftermath of the Trojan War, Odysseus makes his ten-year journey from Troy to Ithaca, overcoming the Cyclops, the Sirens and the Shades of the Dead, only to meet suitors vying for his wife's hand at home in Ithaca. This edition presents Alexander Pope’s classic translation, with illustrations after John Flaxman.

This selection of the finest works by the Lebanese-born American poet Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) begins with the 26 fables of ‘The Prophet’ (1923), and presents seven more works in their entirety, including ‘Jesus, Son of Man’, ‘Sand and Foam’, and Gibran’s final prose poem, ‘The Earth Gods’.

Four of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, the tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, are presented here in texts from the 1890s Temple Shakespeare, with the original glossaries and notes by Israel Gollancz. There is a substantial, new introduction by Dr Catherine MS Alexander and illustrations based on those of an 1833 edition.

In this first of a fantasy trilogy, six mysterious strangers arrive in the city of Darien, at the heart of a dying empire. Twelve families compete for the throne, which will soon be made vacant by murder or civil war.

The Emperor of Shiang rules amid an uneasy peace, until a bloody event leads to chaos and violence. Meanwhile, four of his swordsmen have been sent to rival city Darien to hunt down an ageing traitor.

Acclaimed by HP Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin, Lord Dunsany was a leading pioneer of fantasy fiction. This collection of his finest tales includes the complete Time and the Gods and The Last Book of Wonder.

Hapless blood donors, gamblers, hustlers, a death row inmate and a down-trodden divorce lawyer – the people and crimes of Ford County, Mississippi are the subjects of these seven page-turners from one of America’s greatest storytellers.

One night in Prague, Helen Franklin is given an old manuscript by a friend. The personal testimonies within its pages range from 17th century England to wartime Czechoslovakia, and tell of a mysterious woman in black bearing an unforgettable message. Slightly off-mint.

In 1870s Boston, Edward Moody has reputedly been capturing dead souls in his photographs, but a new image shocks him. He recognises the daughter of an escaped slave he befriended, then has some revelatory experiences in the Louisiana bayous.

In this conclusion to the Last Kingdom series, Vikings and Saxons are battling for control of England. Warrior lord Uhtred is forced from his Northumbrian fortress to London, where he will be central to the struggle for the empty throne.

Amid the tension of a divided Sixties Berlin, reluctant MI6 agent Joe Wilderness must organize a prisoner exchange with the Russians, but there’s also the matter of a lucrative side-deal involving 10,000 bottles of Bordeaux. Off-mint.

Sally, Beth, Margaret and Rachel meet when they become sales assistants at the newly opened Harpers Emporium on Oxford Street in 1911. Rich with historic detail, the story records their growing friendship as they manage their work at the store and the demands of their personal lives.

While training for the Women’s Timber Corps in Cornwall in 1942, Gracie grows close to Rosie and newly married Lou. Their friendship is tested when Lou’s husband is reported missing, Rosie meets an American GI and Gracie falls in love with a German POW.

In a seedy lodging house in bomb-blasted, post-war London, Molly Allgood looks back on her career as a young actress at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, and her controversial affair with one of Ireland’s leading playwrights, John Millington Synge.

In 1942, as the Japanese invasion of the Pacific progresses, a handful of Allied ships take up a last stand in the Java Sea. Badly injured and with his ship heavily damaged, Captain Nick Everard is under pressure to save his crew, but escape routes are blocked.

Fighting the war defines the Everard family – Paul is serving aboard a submarine attacking Axis supply lines, but his concern is for his father Nick, who is facing the Japanese in the Far East, and Nick’s half-brother Jack, on a high-risk operation to destroy a German naval base.

Seven prisoners escape from a concentration camp, so the commandant prepares crosses for their punishment: as they strive to reach asylum the prisoners encounter a cross-range of ordinary Germans. Published in 1942, this novel highlighted the horrors of the Nazi regime, which the author had escaped.

Sisters Pearl and Stasha are just 12 years old when they arrive at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944. There, as part of the experimental population of twins presided over by the 'Angel of Death' Josef Mengele, their almost symbiotic bond is fractured by the unspeakable horrors they endure.

WF Morris joined Britain’s volunteer army in 1914 and fought as an officer on the Somme. His novel draws on that experience to tell the story of a subaltern who deserts after accidentally killing an officer: only courage will rescue him from no-man’s-land. First published 1930.