A young girl, Liv, lives with her mother on a remote island in the Arctic Circle. Her only friend is an old man who beguiles her with tales of trolls, mermaids, and the huldra, a wild spirit who appears as an irresistably beautiful girl, to tempt young men to danger and death.

Shot through with the colours and flavours of the Parisian world and fertile French countryside, this title includes such short stories as "Bella-Vista", "The Tender Shoot" and "Le K-pi" that reverberate with the fine-spun desire, wit and psychological acuity.

Tells the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. This book features a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.

It's the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but behind closed doors things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

An essay on the nature of human revolt, this book makes a critique of communism, how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, and the resulting totalitarian regimes. It also questions two events held sacred by the left wing, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Is it possible to die a happy death? This title tells the story of a young Algerian, Mersault, who defies society's rules by committing a murder and escaping punishment, then experimenting with different ways of life and finally dying a happy man.

Explores the dilemma of being an outsider - even in one's own country - and of allegiance. This book evokes beautiful but harsh landscapes, whether the shimmering deserts of author's native Algeria or the wild, mysterious jungles of Brazil.

Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and other Professors. Outside, where land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized world but, fascinated by these savage outsiders, decides to escape.

Desiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams.

One night in the depths of winter, a bizarre and sinister stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in a remote English village. In this pioneering novella, Wells combines comedy, both farcical and satirical, and tragedy - to superbly unsettling effect.

At the village of Lympne, on the south coast of England, the failed playwright Mr Bedford meets the brilliant inventor Mr Cavor, and together they invade the moon. The First Men in the Moon is an inspired and imaginative fantasy of space travel and alien life, a satire of turn-of-the-century Britain

The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. This edition features a contextual introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and two essays Wells wrote just prior to the publication of his first book.

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or leastways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable - though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet.

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlow meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him.

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty.

PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away.

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.

LA PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble of your business...

It was in the pulp detective magazines of the 1930s that the author's definitive take on the hard-boiled detective story first appeared. This title includes stories that range from the well-thumbed pages of 'Black Mask' and 'Dime Detective Magazine', including 'The Man Who Liked Dogs', 'The Lady in the Lake' and 'Bay City Blues'.

The extraordinary bestselling author, who wrote three astonishing Victorian novels before moving to the 1940s with The Night Watch and The Little Stranger, now turns to the 1920s.