Other books that might interest you

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  The Metamorphosis

  Franz Kafka

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  The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a novella that explores various themes including alienation and identity through the unexpected transformation of its main character, Gregor Samsa. Gregor wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into a giant vermin: a dung beetle. The story explores Gregor's struggle to adapt to his new physical form and the implications this sudden metamorphosis holds for his family, shedding a strange light on certain societal expectations and familial responsibilities at that time.

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  Hop Frog - From their pens to...

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan.   
  He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe.  His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education.  His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut short by lack of money and he enlisted as a private in the army claiming he was 22, it is more probable he was 18. After 2 years he obtained a discharge in order to take up an appointment at the military academy, West Point, where he failed to become an officer. 
  Poe had released his 1st poetry volume in 1827 and after his 3rd turned to prose and placing short stories in several magazines and journals.  At age 26 he obtained a licence to marry his cousin.  She was a mere 13 but they stayed together until her death from tuberculosis 11 years after. 
  In January 1845 ‘The Raven’ was published and became an instant classic.  Thereafter followed the prose works for which he is now so rightly famed as a master of the mysterious and the macabre. 
  Edgar Allan Poe died at the tragically early age of 40 on 7th October 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as ‘congestion of the brain’ or ‘cerebral inflammation’, common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism but the actual cause of death remains a mystery. 
  Poe is also one of a number of authors credited with inventing the detective genre with his Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin.  He featured in three stories including the legendary ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and by sheer deduction, logic and a touch of Gallic arrogance revealed what was hidden to the rest of us.

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  Frankenstein

  Mary Shelley

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  Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a groundbreaking Gothic novel and one of the foundational works of science fiction: a haunting story of creation, ambition, loneliness, and responsibility.
  
  Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist consumed by the desire to unlock the secrets of life, succeeds in creating a living being from dead matter. Horrified by the creature he has made, he abandons it. Rejected by its creator and by society, the creature becomes both victim and threat, longing for affection yet driven toward violence by isolation and despair.
  
  First published in 1818, Frankenstein is far more than a tale of horror. It explores the ethical limits of science, the consequences of unchecked ambition, and the human need for love and recognition. Through its layered narrative and emotional complexity, Shelley asks who is truly monstrous: the created being, or the creator who refuses responsibility.
  
  A masterpiece of Gothic and Romantic literature, this novel remains deeply modern in its questions about knowledge, power, prejudice, and what it means to be human.

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  Helen and Arthur - or Miss...

  Caroline Lee Hentz

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  Two children raised in the same southern household grow up to marry the wrong people, and the injury is repaired by an act nobody expects. Caroline Lee Hentz wrote enormously popular domestic novels in the 1850s, and this is her most sustained. The domestic detail — servants, kitchens, illnesses, money — is more interesting now than the plot it supports. Fifty-eight plates by painters including Eastman Johnson and James McNeill Whistler follow the novel's rooms and kitchens, its spinning wheels, sofas and household work.

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  To Build a Fire

  Jack London

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  In the frozen wilderness of the Yukon, the line between survival and surrender is razor-thin. Jack London's To Build a Fire is more than a story; it is a stark, unforgettable confrontation with the raw power of nature and the frailty of human pride.
  Here, the biting cold isn't just a setting—it's an unyielding adversary, testing the limits of determination and the cost of hubris. The tale whispers of isolation so profound that silence becomes deafening, and of choices so crucial that a single misstep can spell the difference between life and death.
  Through prose as sharp as the frostbitten air, London paints a brutal, awe-inspiring portrait of man versus nature. Yet beneath the surface lies something deeper: an exploration of the delicate balance between human ingenuity and the primal forces of the wild. To Build a Fire dares readers to reflect on their own resilience—and their vulnerability—when faced with an indifferent universe.
  This is a story not merely to read, but to experience: a chilling reminder that nature does not forgive, and survival is earned one breath at a time.

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  The Hollow Needle - Further...

  Maurice Leblanc

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  Arsène Lupin against a secret hidden in the chalk of the Normandy coast, and a schoolboy detective who works it out first. Leblanc built the puzzle on a real cliff at Étretat and on documents about the French crown treasure; the solution is the best he ever devised. This edition adds 57 plates of painting, among them Boudin, Gauguin and Corot, plus two restored and coloured illustrations, in Alexander Teixeira de Mattos's translation.

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