Alma Books Lady Susan, Sanditon and The Watsons Остен Джейн

A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have become part of our collective imagination, these stories - concerned with ghosts, obscure scientific experiments and other unexplained phenomena - are now unjustly neglected

A dazzling collection of early stories and later fragments which throw an entirely new light on Jane Austen. In particular, they reveal a precociously brilliant genius with a talent for broad comedy and even farce. Most of the pieces in this collection are very funny indeed, and several - including the novella Lady Susan and the unfinished novel Sandition are also neglected masterpieces. Other material includes the celebrated History of England, poems, prayers, the Plan of a Novel, etc. The volume is arranged in two parts, with the mature stories in Part 1 edited for easy reading, and the juvenilia collected by Austen herself presented exactly as she wrote them in Part 2. It includes everything she wrote apart from letters and the six famous novels, and is the final volume in the complete Everyman edition of her works now available in seven uniform volumes

While he is now mostly associated with his Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle was also celebrated for the many masterful tales he wrote outside of that cycle. In this collection, first published in 1922, he compiled various pieces of short fiction which fall into the categories of horror and detective fiction, two genres for which he has become a byword • These eclectic, captivating tales – dealing with topics such as mysterious jungles in the sky, seventeenth-century torture techniques, a bloodthirsty Brazilian cat and a train mysteriously disappearing between two stations – showcase Arthur Conan Doyle at his creative best • Contains: ‘The Horror of the Heights’, ‘The Leather Funnel’, ‘The New Catacomb’, ‘The Case of Lady Sannox’, ‘The Terror of Blue John Gap’, ‘The Brazilian Cat’, ‘The Lost Special’, ‘The Beetle-Hunter’, ‘The Man with the Watches’, ‘The Japanned Box’, ‘The Black Doctor’, ‘The Jew’s Breastplate’ and ‘The Nightmare Room’

Described by Herman Melville as being “as deep as Dante”, ‘Young Goodman Brown’ is set during the Salem witch trials and features the sort of narrative ambiguities and troubling uncertainties over the reality of events that Hawthorne was known for, leading readers to ponder what they have read long after the last page has been turned • Rich in allegory and symbolism, and suffused with darkness, tragedy, satire and the supernatural, the tales in this collection, written by a master of the short-story genre, delve into the conflict between good and evil, explore the concept of Original Sin and bring to life the moralistic and superstitious early days of the New England colonies • Contains: ‘The Gentle Boy’, ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineux’, ‘Roger Malvin’s Burial’, ‘The Canterbury Pilgrims’, ‘The Seven Vagabonds’, ‘The Grey Champion’, ‘Young Goodman Brown’, ‘Wakefield’, ‘The White Old Maid’, ‘The Ambitious Guest’, ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’, ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’, ‘Dr Heidegger’s Experiment’, ‘The Man of Adamant’ and ‘The Great Carbuncle’

Tales of Adventure and Medical Life, one of the collections Arthur Conan Doyle published at the end of his career, anthologizes some of his best short fiction outside of the Sherlock Holmes canon. As well as various tales of escapades in Egypt, London and the far-flung regions of northern Scotland, he included stories which deal with a subject that, as a physician himself, he had a unique perspective on: the medical profession • London surgeons and country doctors, male and female, are described as they deal with business and sentimental issues and encounter incredible situations – both comic and tragic. Conan Doyle displays his dazzling storytelling talents while providing a fascinating glimpse into his profession and times • Contains: ‘The Debut of Bimbashi Joyce’, ‘The Surgeon of Gaster Fell’, ‘Borrowed Scene’, ‘The Man from Archangel’, ‘The Great Brown-Pericord Motor’, ‘The Sealed Room’, ‘A Physiologist’s Wife’, ‘Behind the Times’, ‘His First Operation’, ‘The Third Generation’, ‘The Curse of Eve’, ‘A Medical Document’, ‘The Surgeon Talks’, ‘The Doctors of Holyland’, ‘Crabbe’s Practice’

A carriage transporting ten passengers fleeing from Rouen is stopped at a village inn by Prussian soldiers, who decide to detain them until one of their party, the prostitute Boule de Suif, consents to sleep with their officer. When Boule de Suif refuses to do so on account of her principles and patriotic sentiments, the solidarity initially manifested by her fellow travellers becomes increasingly tested as the deadlock continues, and the strained relationship between her and her “respectable” counterparts gradually worsens • A scathing satire of bourgeois prejudice and hypocrisy and a compelling snapshot of France during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, ‘Boule de Suif’ – here presented with five other major stories by the author of Bel-Ami – was declared a masterpiece by Flaubert and is widely considered to be Maupassant’s finest short story

A Village Romeo and Juliet is a bitter-sweet tragedy telling the tale of two young lovers kept apart by a family feud. Inspired by the story of two real-life sweethearts and set in rural Switzerland, it evokes the overwhelming beauty of young love and nature, but is ultimately pessimistic about the possibility of such beauty surviving in the real world • Although it attracted controversy when it was first published in 1856, Keller’s timeless novella has now rightfully entered the canon of world literature and is widely considered as one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century poetic realism

A gripping chronicle of the personal and political rivalries from the birth of Queen Victoria to the unification of Germany during the decades leading up to WW1 from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie • 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. How did it all begin? • With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionised the British Navy and brought forth the battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding and tensions, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative

China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism • But, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese

Fear and loathing on the 2020 campaign trail • '26 February, White House Briefing Room • The coronavirus feels like it is changing everything. Suddenly it's not just a public health emergency; it has the potential to upend this whole election...' • In UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others, BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel presents a diary of an election like we've never quite seen before • Experience life as a reporter on the campaign trail, as the election heats up and a global pandemic slowly sweeps in. As American lives are lost at a devastating rate, the presidential race becomes a battle for the very soul of the nation - challenging not just the Trump presidency, but the very institutions of American democracy itself

The famous D-Day landings of 6 June 1944 marked the beginning of Operation Overlord, the battle for the liberation of Europe. Military historian Sir Max Hastings’ acclaimed account overturns many traditional legends in this memorable study • Drawing together the eyewitness accounts of survivors from both sides, plus a wealth of previously untapped sources and documents, Overlord provides a brilliant, controversial perspective on the devastating battle for Normandy