Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson with a collection of her finest, creepiest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best. This selection includes 'The Lottery', Jackson's masterpiece and one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century. 'An amazing writer ...

If you haven't read her you have missed out on something marvellous' Neil Gaiman

Down at the Front, on a cold winter's night in 1914, amidst the worst war the world had ever seen, an inexplicable silence spread from man to man. Belief was in the air. Then the soldiers ceased fire and the magic of Christmas took hold .

. . Carol Ann Duffy's brilliant poem celebrates the miraculous truce between the trenches, when enemy shook hands with enemy, shared songs, swapped gifts, even played football, and peace found a place in No Man's Land.

With gorgeous colour illustrations by D...

Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Haversham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-m...

Boston, mid-17th century: Hester Prynne, dignified and silent, is led through prison doors to her public shaming by her censorious Puritan neighbors. Holding her illegitimate child to her breast and bearing a bright scarlet letter "A" embroidered on her bodice, Hester must now struggle to create a new life for herself and her child in this harsh and unforgiving community. When her missing spouse reappears and takes up residence in town under an assumed identity, the stage is set for an explos...