CRW Publishing

This is undoubtedly the greatest love story ever written, spawning a host of imitators on stage and screen, including Leonard Bernstein's smash musical West Side Story and Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet filmed in 1968. A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together the two lovers must be prepared to risk everything. Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Romeo and Juliet is a dazzling combination of passion and hatred, bawdy comedy and high tragedy.

An anthology that brings together «The Frog Who Became an Emperor from China», «The Thee Billy Goats Gruff from Norway», and «Pinocchio» from Italy as well as the classic stories of Aesop, Andersen, the Grimm Brothers, Charles Perrault and Oscar Wilde, among many others.

The short story is the perfect format for traditional ghost stories. They have their roots in folklore, but in modern form they can be traced back to the romanticised writers of the Gothic tradition. Authors include Charles Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, F. Marion Crawford, Elizabeth Gaskell and H. H. Munro (Saki). Perhaps the finest exponent of the genre was M. R. James whose sly, academic tales are well represented in this collection, as well as those of Le Fanu, whom James acknowledged as his inspiration. This is a book to be relished by the fireside, with the curtains drawn against ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

The world's greatest ghost stories emanate from the British Isles — the superb, donnish tales of M.R. James and those of the wilder and more exotic Celtic imaginations of such writers as Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker — and they are brought together in this handsome boxed set. It includes Charles Dicken's famous tales of the supernatural, as well as stories from other great literary figures such as Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, E.F. Benson, John Buchan and Sir Walter Scott. This box will make a handsome gift for those who appreciate the macabre, the unearthly and the plain scary, and this limited edition offers a considerable saving over the purchase of the four books individually.

Our Christmas traditions owe much to the festivities described in A Christmas Carol. In this beautiful boxed set, Dickens' magical novella is joined by two further Christmas stories that he wrote for Household Words — The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. This volume, together with the perennial childhood classics Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass and The Wizard of Oz comprise this collection which is the perfect Christmas gift for children and adults alike. All three books are fully illustrated.

'All grown-ups were once children — although few of them remember it'. A pilot forced to crash land in the Sahara desert encounters a little prince who is visiting the earth from his own small planet with its three volcanoes and a beautiful flower. Through this meeting, the aviator comes to discover many of life's universal truths which illuminate the human condition with all its foibles, cunning and eccentricities. This wonderful and remarkable book will enchant both children and adults alike. It is a strange and wonderful parable for all ages, championing the beauty and wisdom of childhood which fades when one becomes 'a grown up'. Antoine De Saint-Exupery's book has been translated into over 180 languages and sold over 80 million copies. Its magic is in its charm, its simplicity and its truths which speak to people of many nations and generations.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes contains Conan Doyle's last twelve stories about his great fictional detective. Compared with earlier collections these tales are darker, exploring such themes as treachery, mutilation and the terrible consequences of infidelity, and containing such gothic touches as a blood-sucking vampire and crypts at midnight.

This classic adventure, set in nineteenth-century France and Italy, tells the story of Edmund Dants, a young man falsely imprisoned who eventually finds himself in a position of power and able to seek his revenge against those who plotted against him. Eventually he begins to question his obsessive search for revenge.

Crime and Punishment is the story of a brutal double murder and its aftermath. Raskolnikov, a poor student, kills a pawnbroker and her sister, and then has to face up to the moral consequences of his actions. The novel is compelling and rewarding, full of meaning and symbolism, and raises profound questions about the individual and society, and the nature of free will.

The Great Gatsby has long been celebrated as the archetypal American novel, and its influence on later writers from J.D. Salinger to John OHara cannot be overestimated. Fitzgerald looks deeply into himself and his milieu to create the story of James Gatz, a self-educated nobody from Kentucky who has amassed a fortune and adopted the persona of Jay Gatsby, an Oxford-educated man about town, for the sole purpose of winning back the heart of Daisy, the woman he loved in his youth. Daisy is now married to Tom Buchanan a brutal, ignorant racist who embodies the corruption that can come with unlimited wealth. As Gatsby, Daisy and Tom play out the drama in a small Long Island town, Fitzgerald makes it clear that life is meaningless when it is based on money and glamour at the expense of the solid American values of self-reliance and hard work.

Madame Bovary is the story of a beautiful young woman who marries a luckless country doctor. She tries to escape the narrow confines of her life through a series of passionate affairs, hoping to find in other men the romantic ideal she always dreamed about. Flaubert's daring description of adultery and sinfulness caused a national scandal when it was first published, and this masterpiece of realist literature has lost none of its impact today.

Oliver Twist is one of Dickens's most popular novels, with many famous film, television and musical adaptations. It is a classic story of good against evil, packed with humour and pathos, drama and suspense, in which the orphaned Oliver is brought up in a harsh workhouse, and then taken in and exploited by the criminal Fagin, before being eventually rescued and taken in by a loving family.

A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and Prejudice shows how the headstrong Elizabeth Bennett and the aristocratic Mr Darcy must have their pride humbled and their prejudices dissolved before they can acknowledge their love for each other.

The Scarlet Letter is the story of three New England settlers at odds with the Puritan society in which they live. Roger Chillingworth, an ageing scholar, arrives in New England after two years' separation from his wife Hester to find her on trial for adultery. She refuses to reveal her lover's identity and is condemned to wear a scarlet letter 'A' sewn on to her clothes. Roger resolves to discover the man's identity, and over the next seven years the participants in the love triangle suffer the consequences of betrayal, cowardice and humiliation, before moving towards redemption at the novel's climax.

To the Lighthouse, considered by many to be Virginia Woolf's finest novel, is a remarkably original work, showing the thoughts and actions of the members of a family and their guests on two separate occasions ten years apart. The setting is Mr and Mrs Ramsay's house on a Scottish island, where they traditionally take their summer holidays, overlooking a bay with a lighthouse. As a modernist author Woolf explored the ways in which fiction could represent reality, and To the Lighthouse can be seen as an experimental work that pushes the limits of what we know about the world and ourselves. It is one of the most beautifully crafted of all novels written in the English language.

One of the most irrepressible and exuberant characters in the history of literature, Tom Sawyer explodes onto the page in a whirl of bad behaviour and incredible adventures. Whether he is heaving clods of earth at his brother, faking a gangrenous toe, or trying to convince the world that he is dead, Tom's infectious energy and good humor shine through. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is Mark Twain's joyful and nostalgic recollection of tall tales from his own boyhood by the Mississippi some 'thirty or forty years ago', an instant success on first publication in 1876 and a delight to children of all ages ever since.

Vanity Fair is among the richest and most entertaining of novels, a sparkling and witty story of English society during the Napoleonic Wars. A piercing satire of the Victorian middle classes, it was hugely popular from the moment of its first publication in 1847. The narrative follows two contrasting young women, the flighty and enterprising Becky Sharp and her more upright counterpart Amelia Sedley. Their adventures take them from Miss Pinkerton's Academy in Chiswick to the glamour of high society in both London and Paris. Along the way, Thackeray treats the reader to 'a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting' together with 'cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling'. The result is one of the true classics of nineteenth-century literature.

When Mole tires of spring-cleaning his home, he takes a stroll to the riverbank. There he meets a new friend, Ratty, who introduces him to the delightful world of the river and all its residents. Beyond the river, which has now lured Mole away from home, lies the Wild Wood, where the reclusive Badger has made his home. The three animals become firm friends that winter when Ratty and Mole take refuge from the snow in Badgers house. Together they have many thrilling adventures with the irrepressible Mr Toad, who, try as he might, simply cannot help getting into trouble.

In The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence challenges the customary limitations of language and convention to carry into the structure of his prose the fascination with boundaries and space that characterise the entire novel. Condemned and suppressed on its first publication for its open treatment of sexuality and its 'unpatriotic' spirit, the novel chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of Ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail.

Ten years after the supposed death of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, Arthur Conan Doyle was to bow to popular pressure and the large fees offered by publishers to revive the detective's career. To the astonishment of Dr Watson and the delight of his readers Holmes returns to Baker Street, explains how he escaped death at the Falls and is ready to commence detective work once more. Doyle provided a rich and fascinating set of mysteries to challenge his sleuth in this collection. As before, Watson is the superb narrator and his magic remains unchanged and undimmed. In His Last Bow, the final story of this collection, we are told how Sherlock Holmes is brought out of retirement to help the Government fight the German threat at the approach of the First World War. It is the last time that Holmes and Watson work together. As well as his witty and illuminating Afterword to this edition, David Stuart Davies, the illustrious editor of Sherlock magazine, has provided a fascinating chronology of the Sherlock Holmes Stories.

Part of the «Collector's Library» series, this title includes an Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list.

Each volume in the «Collector's Library» series has a specially commissioned Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword for this edition of «The Tenant of Wildfell Hall» is by Kathryn White, an established expert on the Bronte family and former Librarian of The Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth on the Yorkshire Moors.

Part of the «Collector's Library» series, this book's Afterword is by the well-known author, writer and journalist, Ned Halley. It features a brief biography of the author and a reading list.

Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword for this edition of is by David Stuart Davies.These fifteen short stories, chosen by David Stuart Davies, former Editor of Sherlock magazine, show the master detective Sherlock Holmes at his most ingenious. Faithfully supported by his chronicler, Dr Watson, Holmes pits his wits against 'the Napoleon of Crime', Professor Moriarty, assists European royalty threatened by disgrace, the mysterious death of a young woman due to be married and other intrigues that defeat the detectives of Scotland Yard.