‘In a little while we were speeding through the streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with which books had long ago made us familiar. It was like meeting an old friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the street corner; we knew the genuine vast palace of the Louvre as well as we knew its picture; when we passed by the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it was or to remind us that on its site once stood the grim Bastille, that grave of human hopes and happiness...’

This is a brand new selection of Mark Twain’s views on Europe and the Europeans, taken from several volumes of travelogues recounting his journeys across the continent with wit, vivacity and humour. Few fellow travellers, locals or ideologies are left unscathed. Uproariously funny at times and often cutting with his remarks, Twain always seems to pull it back from the brink and err on the side humour rather than offence. Throughout France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, the food, the language, the customs and the people, no subject escapes analysis of the most amusing kind.

In addition, On Europe provides a captivating snapshot into life late nineteenth-century Europe – Twain’s writing documents the political zeitgeist of a changing era. The author also takes the opportunity to lambast fellow travel writers, lampooning their overwrought style and grandiose emotional outpourings. Following the age-old tradition of new-world travellers returning to the old world, Twain’s account features the usual blend of awe and disillusionment which met Americans in equal measure when confronted with lands so steeped in history and legend and yet now in the grip of modernity.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 120

Publication Date: 29-03-2013

Dickens is famous for his moralising and the entreaties within his fiction to help the poor, and characters such as the Cratchit family, or little Joe in Bleak House have become iconic figures in our recollections of the nineteenth century's working class struggles.

This collection includes articles such as ‘A Poor man and his beer’ and ‘Walk in the Workhouse’ based directly upon Dickens' own involvement and experience of walking round the more derelict areas of London and England to meet the poor firsthand and report their plights to the reading population, as well as considering Dickens' own charitable work, such as his involvement in setting up a refuge for prostitutes, as defended in his article ‘A Home for Homeless Women’. In contrast to his personal nostalgia for the innocence of childhood, Dickens tirelessly argued against those who hearkened back to the good old days, instead flying the flag for evolution and development.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 120

Publication Date: 29-03-2013

The special thing that Merrick could do, and which no one else seems to have done, is to reproduce the atmosphere of low-class theatrical life: the smell of greasepaint and fish and chips, the sordid rivalries, the comfortless Sunday journeys, the lugging of suitcases through the back streets of unfamiliar towns and the trudging up and down the Strand on worn-out boot-soles, the agents' offices where women in dyed frocks sit waiting their turn, the forlorn collection of press cuttings, the manager who bolts in the middle of the tour with all the takings. – George Orwell

Set in British theatre-land in the very early twentieth century, The Position of Peggy Harper tells of Christopher Tatham’s quest as an actor for a secure wage and fame. Tatham lurches from bit part to bit part, always hoping for the longed-for leading-man role, relying on the kindness of relations to keep him housed and clothed. A chance encounter with the enchanting Peggy Harper seems to pre-empt a change of fortune. Will they both attain the success they crave?

Toasting engagements with ginger-beer, living hand-to-mouth, Merrick’s seedy world makes for grim reading and when Peggy turns out to be as fame-hungry, vain and vacant as she first appears, Christopher’s lot looks unlikely to improve.

In an age in which fame and celebrity are widely courted and craved, The Position of Peggy Harper still makes for an intriguing and, potentially, cautionary tale.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 240

Publication Date: 26-04-2013

This utterly charming tale relates the story of King Mortimer, a royal plagued by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who only finds comfort and ease by surrounding himself with the number 5 — be it 5 knights, 5 moats or 5 points on his crown. One day he awakens to find that he has grown a sixth finger! Woe is he! His wizard is quick to suggest a remedy, but not one without risk. In a state of crisis, he takes advice from far and wide on how to achieve this cure. In turn, a jester, a gypsy, a professor and others present plans increasingly unlikely and complex. Driven to despair, epiphany is at last reached — perhaps his condition is not half so bad... Beautifully illustrated in full color and with wonderful rhyming verse, The King's 6th Finger will appeal to all ages.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 42

Dimensions: 255 x 255 mm

Publication Date: 18-06-2013

On the unexplained is a brand new selection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings on all things supernatural taken from Edge of the Unknown.

Best known for the creation of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had many more strings to his bow. He was a political campaigner (most memorably in his defence of the Boer War); he believed in the existence of fairies; he played amateur sleuth, taking up closed cases to prove miscarriage of justice. Perhaps most intriguing of all though was the fact that, following the deaths of a number of his family, Conan Doyle began to take an interest in what was then termed ’spiritualism’ (trying to prove the existence of life beyond the grave), he became a member of the paranormal association The Ghost Sense Club and he also joined the British Society of Psychical Research.

An account of séances, automatic writing, trips to haunted country houses and in-depth philosophical analysis of the thinking behind the supernatural, this book is a must have for the Conan Doyle enthusiast or the intrigued reader alike. Conan Doyle’s famous spat with Houdini is represented with a chapter eulogising Houdini, apparently still not quite willing to let go the suspicion that the magician was blessed with special powers.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 140

Publication Date: 27-09-2013

Pages: 448

Dimensions: 126 x 198 x 32 mm

Dickens reputation was enhanced and strengthened with Oliver Twist. The novel conatins many classic Dickensian themes - grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity. Oliver Twist features some of the author's most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself, the tyrannical Bumble, the diabolical Fagin, the menacing Bill Sykes, Nancy and 'The Artful Dodger'. Introduction and notes by Ella Westland, University of Exeter.

Pages: 400

Pages: 672

Publication Date: 05-04-2009

This fine new collection of poetry, Owen Marshall's second, is rich in the themes and preoccupations that have made his short stories and novels so admired. Here are wise, elegiac poems on love and loss, longing and regret, and ageing; beautifully observed, affectionate poems about New Zealand countryside, where 'clear cold barking comes from miles away' ; sly and sharply witty poems about human frailty - 'Death's an old joke, the Russian said / but comes to each of us as a surprise' ; poems that look back to a distant past whose inhabitants were 'much the same as you and me' - all expressed in language that is superbly balanced and finely judged.

Pages: 144

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-04-2010

In his novels Dickens presents a series of unrivalled portraits of women, young and old. From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, these girls and women speak to us today, making us laugh and sometimes cry. The popular British actress Miriam Margolyes will be touring the world in 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens birth, with a one-woman show about Dickens' women, and this book accompanies the show by building on the script and expanding to include many more of the female characters Dickens described and analysed so astutely in his novels. The countries to be visited are Australia, New Zealand, the USA and India. 'Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.'

Pages: 120

Dimensions: 122 x 190 x 13 mm

Publication Date: 01-11-2011