Macmillan Collector S Library imprint: 91 books

Blend the wild and fevered Irish imagination with a wonderful facility for recounting a dark, compelling tale, add a dash of the supernatural, and you have a potent brew of spine-tingling tales. This anthology of the best ghost stories from Ireland and Irish writers includes contributions from such...

Throughout his illustrious writing career, Charles Dickens often turned his hand to fashioning short pieces of ghostly fiction. Even in his first successful work, The Pickwick Papers, you will find five ghost stories, all of which are included in this collection. Dickens began the tradition of 'the...

The Merchant of Venice is most associated not with its titular hero, Antonio, but with the complex, unforgettable figure of the money-lender, Shylock. It is Shylock who finances Antonio's friend Bassanio in his pursuit of the beautiful Portia, and who demands a gruesome bond from the wealthy merchant....

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language, a grizzled old sailor stops a man on his way to a wedding and tells a terrifying story. He speaks of how he doomed the crew of his ship by shooting dead an albatross, awakened the wrath of ocean...

The First World War was one of the deadliest conflicts in modern history and produced horrors undreamed of by the young men who cheerfully volunteered for a war that was supposed to be over by Christmas. Whether in the patriotic enthusiasm of Rupert Brooke, the disillusionment of Charles Hamilton...

It is 1625 and France is under threat. D’Artagnan, a young nobleman, sets off to Paris to seek his fortune as a member of the King's Guard and befriends three musketeers - the mysterious Athos, ambitious and romantic Aramis, and bumbling Porthos. Together the friends must use all their guile and...

Folk tales and fairy stories from all over the world are collected together in this gorgeous international anthology which brings together 'The Frog Who Became an Emperor' from China, 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' from Norway, and 'Pinocchio' from Italy as well as the classic stories of Aesop, Andersen,...

Three years after his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, Sherlock Holmes returns to 221B Baker Street, to the astonishment of Dr Watson and the delight of readers worldwide. From kidnapped heirs to murder by harpoon, Holmes and Watson have their work cut out for them in these brilliant later...

English gentleman Rudolf Rassendyll arrives in the country of Ruritania on the eve of King Rudolf the Fifth’s coronation. That night, the king is abducted and held prisoner in a castle in the small town of Zenda. Rassendyll, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the monarch, is persuaded to impersonate...

This collection of Poe's work contains some of the most exciting and haunting stories ever written. They range from the poetic to the mysterious to the darkly comic, yet all possess the genius for the grotesque that defines Poe's writing. They are peopled with neurotics and social outcasts, obsessed...

Faithfully supported by his chronicler, Dr Watson, Sherlock Holmes pits his wits against 'Napoleon of Crime' Professor Moriarty, assists European royalty threatened by disgrace, helps to solve the mysterious death of a young woman due to be married, and investigates intrigues that have defeated the...

This mesmerising, macabre collection contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, including 'The Raven', 'Annabel Lee' and 'Lenore', and a selection of his very best stories, along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems explore the...

Hans Christian Andersen was the profoundly imaginative writer and storyteller who revolutionized literature for children. He gave us the now standard versions of some traditional fairy tales - with an anarchic twist - but many of his most famous tales sprang directly from his imagination. The thirty...

Thomas Hardy saw himself, first and foremost, as a poet, and he wrote poetry throughout his prolific and acclaimed novel-writing years before announcing in 1896 that he would no longer write novels, much to the astonishment of his worldwide readership. Instead he went on to publish eight masterful...