HarperCollins Publishers

Agatha Christie's famous Miss Marple mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets — a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate-mail causes only a minor stir. But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs Symmington, commits suicide. Her final note said 'I can't go on'. Only Miss Marple questions the coroner's verdict of suicide. Was this the work of a poison-pen? Or of a poisoner?

When the Parson declares rather carelessly: Anyone who murdered Colonel Prothero would be doing the world at large a service!, he does not realise his words will come back to haunt him. From several potential murderers, Miss Marple must find the real killer.

Poirot is faced with four mystifying cases — «Murder in the Mews», «The Incredible Theft», «Dead Mans Mirror» and «Triangle at Rhodes». How can a woman holding a gun in her right hand shoot herself in the left temple? And what is the link between a ghost and some missing top secret plans?

The new-look series of Hercule Poirot books for the 21st century. Thirteen guests for dinner. It was to be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, who choked on his cocktail, went into convulsions and died. But when his martini glass was sent for chemical analysis, there was no trace of poison — just as Poirot had predicted. Even more troubling for the great detective, there was absolutely no motive...

The new-look series of Miss Marple books for the 21st century. The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn, including Jane Marple, are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette which reads: A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.p.m. A childish practical joke? Or a hoax intended to scare poor Letitia Blacklock? Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, a crowd begins to gather at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out...

The new-look series of Hercule Poirot books for the 21st century. Mrs McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion fell immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes revealed traces of the victims blood and hair. Yet something was amiss: Bentley just didnt look like a murderer. Poirot believed he could save the man from the gallows — what he didnt realise was that his own life was now in great danger...

A full-cast dramatisation of Agatha Christies novel featuring Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot.

The new-look series of Miss Marple books for the 21st century. First, the mystery man in the church with a bullet-wound... then, the riddle of a dead mans buried treasure... the curious conduct oif a caretaker after a fatal riding accident... the corpse and a tape-measure... the girl framed for theft... and the suspect accused of stabbing his wife with a dagger. Six gripping cases with one thing in common — the astonishing deductive powers of Miss Marple. Also includes two non-Marple mysteries, «The Dressmakers Doll» and «In a Glass Darkly».

The owner of a seaside villa is plagued by strange feelings about its past... Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernise the house, she only succeeded in dredging up its past. Worse, she felt an irrational sense of terror every time she climbed the stairs! In fear, Gwenda turned to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Between them, they were to solve a «perfect» crime committed many years before.

Sir George and Lady Stubbs hit upon the idea of staging a mock murder mystery. Ariadne Oliver, a well known crime writer, agrees to organize their murder hunt. Despite weeks of planning, Ariadne calls in Hercule Poirot, as instinctively she senses that something sinister is about to happen.

A new signature edition of Agatha Christies thriller, featuring the recurring character of Colonel Race from «Death on the Nile», «Cards on the Table» and «The Man in the Brown Suit». Six people sit down to dinner at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary — in solemn memory of Rosemary Barton who died at the same table exactly one year previously. No one present on that fateful night would ever forget the womans face, contorted beyond recognition — or what they remembered about her astonishing life.

For the first time in A-format paperback, J.R.R. Tolkiens novella about the adventures of a bewitched toy dog While on holiday in 1925, four-year-old Michael Tolkien lost his beloved toy dog on the beach at Filey in Yorkshire. To console him, his father, J.R.R.Tolkien, improvised a story about Rover, a real dog who is magically transformed into a toy and is forced to seek out the wizard who wronged him in order to be returned to normal. This charming tale, peopled by a sand-sorcerer and a terrible dragon, by the king of the sea and the Man-in-the-Moon, went through several drafts over the years. Now, more than 70 years on, the adventures of Rover — or, for reasons that become clear in the story, Roverandom — are published in A-format for the first time. Rich in wit and wordplay, «Roverandom» is edited and introduced by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond and includes Tolkiens own delightful illustrations.

Pre-empting novels such as the Booker Prize-winning «Time's Arrow» by as much as twenty years, Counter-Clock world is a story of racial tensions told against the background of the year 1998 in which time flows in reverse as people are born old only to grow younger and younger.

The fourth volume that contains the early myths and legends which led to the writing of Tolkiens epic tale of war, «The Silmarillion». In this fourth volume of «The History of Middle-earth», the shaping of the chronological and geographical structure of the legends of Middle-earth and Valinor is spread before us. We are introduced to the hitherto unknown Ambarkanta or Shape of the World, the only account ever given of the nature of the imagined Universe, ccompanied by maps and diagrams of the world before and after the cataclyusms of «The War of the Gods» and the «Downfall of Numenor». The first map of Beleriend is also reproduced and discussed. In «The Annals of Valinor» and «The Annals of Beleriend» we are shown how the chronology of the First Age was moulded: and the tale is told of Aelfwine, the Englishman who voyaged into the True West and came to Tol Eressea, Lonely Isle, where he learned the ancient history of Elves and Men. Also included are the original Silmarillion of 1926, and the Quenta Noldorinwa of 1930 — the only version of the myths and legends of the First Age that J. R. R. Tolkien completed to their end.

This is the seventh volume of «The History of Middle-earth». The story reaches the beginning of «The Lord of the Rings» and ends at the point where the author halted in the story as the «Company of the Ring», still lacking Legolas and Gimli, stood before the tomb of Balin in the «Mines of Moria».

This takes up the story of the writing of «The Lord of the Rings» with the Battle of Helms Deep and the drowning of Isengard by the Ents. It is the next volume in a series which looks at the ideas behind the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The third volume that contains the early myths and legends which led to the writing of Tolkiens epic tale of war, «The Silmarillion». This, the third volume of «The History of Middle-earth», gives us a priviledged insight into the creation of the mythology of Middle-earth, through the alliterative verse tales of two of the most crucial stories in Tolkiens world — those of Turien and Luthien. The first of the poems is the unpublished «Lay of The Children of Hurin», narrating on a grand scale the tragedy of Turin Turambar. The second is the moving «Lay of Leithian», the chief source of the tale of Beren and Luthien in «The Silmarillion», telling of the Quest of the Silmaril and the encounter with Morgoth in his subterranean fortress. Accompanying the poems are commentaries on the evolution of the history of the Elder Days. Also included is the notable criticism of «The Lay of The Leithian» by CS Lewis, who read the poem in 1929.

The first of two companion volumes which documents the later writing of «The Silmarillion», Tolkiens epic tale of war. After the «The Lord of the Rings» was at last achieved, J. R. R. Tolkien turned his attention once again to the «Matter of the Elder Days». The text of the «Annals of Aman», the «Blessed Land in the far West», is given in full; while in writings hitherto unknown is seen the nature of the problems that Tolkien explored in his later years, as new and radical ideas, portending upheaval in the old narratives, emerged at the heart of the mythology, and as the destinies of Men and Elves, mortals and immortals, ecame of central significance, together with a vastly enlarged perception of the evil of Melkor, the «Shadow upon Arda». The second part of this history of the later Silmarillion is concerned with developments in the legends of Beleriand after the completion of «The Lord of the Rings».

In this volume Christopher Tolkien completes his account of the writing of «The Lord of the Rings», beginning with Sams rescue of Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol and ending with an unpublished Epilogue in which years after the tale ends, Sam attempts to answer his childrens questions. The book also includes «The Notion Club Papers», a semi-fictional discussion between a group of Oxford Dons of the possibilities of travel in space and time and the legend of Atlantis.

The second of two companion volumes which documents the later writing of «The Silmarillion», Tolkiens epic tale of war. In «The War of the Jewels» Christopher Tolkien takes up his account of the later history of «The Silmarillion» from the point where it was left in Morgoths Ring. The story now returns to Middle-earth, and the ruinous conflict of the High Elves and the Men who were their allies with the power fothe Dark Lord. With the publication in this book of all J.R.R. Tolkiens later narrative writing concerned with the last centuries of the First Age, the long history of «The Silmarillion», from its beginning in «The Book of Lost Tales», is completed; and the enigmatic state of the work at his death can be understood. This book contains the full text of the Grey Annals, the primary record of «The War of the Jewels», and a major story of Middle-earth now published for the first time: the tale of the disaster that overtook the forest people of Brethil when Hurin the Steadfast came among them after his release from long years of captivity in Angband, the fortress of Morgoth.

An extraordinary blend of fantasy and realism, this is classic Lessing. Penniless, rambling and incoherent, a man is found wandering at night on London’s Embankment. Taken to hospital and heavily sedated, he tells the doctors of his incredible fantastical voyage, adrift on the ocean, landing on unknown shores, flying on the back of a huge white bird. Identified as Charles Walker, a Cambridge Classics professor, he is visited by family and friends, each revealing clues to the nature of his breakdown: both his young wife, Felicity, and his mistress, Constance, have been troubled by his cold detachment; his fellow dons are bewildered by Watkins’s recent anti-social outburst and anarchistic theories on the futility of education. As the doctors try to cure him, Watkins begins a fierce battle to hold on to his magnificent inner world, as it gradually acquires a greater reality than the everyday… An extraordinary blend of fantasy and realism, ‘Briefing for a Descent into Hell’ is one of Doris Lessing’s most brilliantly achieved novels; it links her early work, which explored the nature of subjectivity, with her later experiments in science fiction. Its stunning indictment of the tyranny of society – one of the perennial themes of Lessing’s writing – is powerful, disturbing and, as always, magnificently rendered.

Doris Lessing tackles the 1960s and their legacy head-on in one of her most involving, most personal, most political novels. It’s the morning of the 1960s and it’s suppertime at Freedom Hall, the most welcoming household in North London. Frances Lennox stands at her stove, bringing another feast to readiness before ladling it out to the youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table – here are her two sons, smarting at their upbringing but beginning to absorb their mother’s lessons. Around them are ranged their schoolfriends and girlfriends and ex-friends and new friends fresh off the street. The feast begins. Wine and talk flow. Everything is being changed and being challenged. But what is being tolerated? And where will it end? Over there in the corner is Frances’ ex-husband, Comrade Johnny, who delivers his rousing tirades, then laps up the adolescent adulation before disappearing into the night to evade the clutches of his responsibilities. Upstairs sits Johnny’s exiled mother, funding all, but finding she can embrace only one lost little girl – Sylvia, who has to travel to Africa, to newly independent Zimlia, to find out who she is and what she wants. And, yes, what of the Africans, what will they tolerate? These are the people dreaming the 1960s into being and the people who on the morning after all that dreaming, woke to find they were the ones taxed with clearing up and making good.

The Narnia Chronicles, first published in 1950, have been and remain some of the most enduringly popular children’s books ever published. The best known, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has been translated into 29 languages! “To my side, all true Narnians! Would you wait till your new masters have killed you one by one?” A false Aslan is commanding all Narnians to work for the cruel Calormenes and striking terror into every heart. Jill and Eustace find themselves called into Narnia once more, this time to aid King Tirian in the mightiest of all battles… This is the seventh adventure in the exciting Chronicles of Narnia.

The Narnia Chronicles, first published in 1950, have been and remain some of the most enduringly popular children’s books ever published. The best known, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has been translated into 29 languages! “We’ve got to go north”, said Edmund, “and reach the ruins of a giant city”. Prince Rilian, Caspian’s beloved son, has mysteriously disappeared, and Jill and Eustace are brought into Narnia by Aslan, the great Lion, to find him. But an evil enchantress has dire plans for the prince, and for Narnia… This is the sixth adventure in the exciting Chronicles of Narnia.