HarperCollins Publishers

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.

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! “I’m dreaming”, thought Shasta. “I could have sworn that horse spoke”. Bree, the talking horse, has been kidnapped from Narnia, and longs to return. Shasta, on the verge of being sold into slavery, decides to run away with him. Before they know it, they are on a wild and dangerous journey together, through strange cities, eerie tombs and harsh deserts… This is the third 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! Eustace found himself standing on the picture frame. In front of him was not glass, but real sea. When Lucy, Edmund and their awful cousin Eustace are suddenly swept into the picture of a sailing ship, they find themselves in the magical kingdom of Narnia, and on a voyage of discovery to the End of the World. This is the fifth adventure in the exciting Chronicles of Narnia

Agatha Christie’s audacious mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder. Helplessly, she stared out of her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman’s throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses… and no corpse.

A typist uncovers a man’s body from behind the sofa… As instructed, stenographer Sheila Webb let herself into the house at 19 Wilbraham Crescent. It was then that she made a grisly discovery: the body of a dead man sprawled across the living room floor. What intrigued Poirot about the case was the time factor. Although in a state of shock, Sheila clearly remembered having heard a cuckoo clock strike three o’clock. Yet, the four other clocks in the living room all showed the time as 4.13. Even more strangely, only one of these clocks belonged to the owner of the house…

A perplexed girl thinks she might have killed someone… Three single girls shared the same London flat. The first worked as a secretary; the second was an artist; the third who came to Poirot for help, disappeared convinced she was a murderer. Now there were rumours of revolvers, flick-knives and blood stains. But, without hard evidence, it would take all Poirot’s tenacity to establish whether the third girl was guilty innocent or insane…

Best selling international author, Isabel Allende tackles her homeland head-on in this staggering, epic romance. ‘Portrait in Sepia’ is both a magnificent historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile and a marvellous family saga peopled by characters from ‘Daughter of Fortune’ and ‘The House of the Spirits’, two of Allende's most celebrated novels. As a young girl, Aurora del Valle suffered a brutal trauma that has shaped her character and erased from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by terrible nightmares. When she finds herself alone at the end of an unhappy love affair, she decides to explore the mystery of her past, to discover what it was, exactly, all those years ago, that had such a devastating effect on her young life. Richly detailed, epic in scope, this engrossing story of the dark power of hidden secrets is intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.

First published by Michael Joseph in 1984, under a pseudonym, as ‘The Diary of a Good Neighbour’ and ‘If the Old Could…’, now published as ‘The Diaries of Jane Somers’, this is in many ways classic Lessing. As resonant with social and political themes as ‘The Golden Notebook’, Lessing returns to the realism of her early fiction with the wisdom and experience of maturity. The diaries introduce us to Jane, an intelligent and beautiful magazine editor concerned with success, clothes and comfort. But her real inadequacy is highlighted when first her husband, then her mother, die from cancer and Jane feels strangely removed. In an attempt to fill this void, she befriends ninety-something Maudie, whose poverty and squalor contrast so radically with the glamour and luxury of the magazine world. The two gradually come to depend on each other – Maudie delighting Jane with tales of London in the 1920s and Jane trying to care for the rapidly deteriorating old woman. ‘The Diary of Jane Somers’ contrasts the helplessness of the elderly with that of the young as Jane is forced to care for her nineteen-year-old drop-out niece Kate who is struggling with an emotional breakdown. Jane realises that she understands young people as little as she so recently did the old.

An elderly widow is murdered at a clifftop seaside house… What is the connection between a failed suicide attempt, a wrongful accusation of theft against a schoolgirl, and the romantic life of a famous tennis player? To the casual observer, apparently nothing. But when a houseparty gathers at Gull’s Point, the seaside home of an elderly widow, earlier events come to a dramatic head. It’s all part of a carefully paid plan – for murder…

From the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007, a collection of some of her finest short stories. For more than four decades, Doris Lessing’s work has observed the passion and confusion of human relations, holding a mirror up to our selves in her unflinching dissection of the everyday. From the magnificent ‘To Room Nineteen’, a study of a dry, controlled middle-class marriage ‘grounded in intelligence’, to the shocking ‘A Woman on the Roof’, where a workman becomes obsessed with a pretty sunbather, this superb collection of stories written over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s bears stunning witness to Doris Lessing’s perspective on the human condition.

War in Cuba isn't Ben Tyler's concern. Still, sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898 — right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship Maine — may not be the smartest thing the recently prison-sprung horse wrangler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it. Now Tyler's sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad. But he's not dying until he gets the money he's owed from a two-timing American sugar baron. And there's one smart, pistol-hot lady at the rich man's side who could help Ben get everything he's got rightfully coming...even when the whole damn island's going straight to hell.

Psycho mama's boy Teddy Magyk has a serious jones for the Miami cop who put him away for raping a senior citizen — but he wants to hit Vincent Mora where it really hurts before killing him. So when a beautiful Puerto Rican hooker takes a swan dive from an Atlantic City high-rise and Vincent naturally shows up to investigate the questionable death of his «special friend», Teddy figures he's got his prey just where he wants him. But the A.C. dazzle is blinding the Magic Man to a couple of very hard truths: Vincent Mora doesn't forgive and forget ... and he doesn't die easy.