Recommendations based on "Christmas and Other Horrors: A winter solstice anthology"

A stunning collection of all 80 exquisite Little Black Classics from PenguinThis spectacular box set of the 80 books in the Little Black Classics series showcases the many wonderful and varied writers in Penguin Black Classics. From India to Greece, Denmark to Iran, the United States to Britain, this assortment of books will transport readers back in time to the furthest corners of the globe. With a choice of fiction, poetry, essays and maxims, by the likes of Chekhov, Balzac, Ovid, Austen, Sappho and Dante, it won't be difficult to find a book to suit your mood. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of the Penguin Classics list - from drama to poetry, from fiction to history, with books taken from around the world and across numerous centuries.The Little Black Classics Box Set includes:· The Atheist's Mass (Honoré de Balzac)· The Beautifull Cassandra (Jane Austen)· The Communist Manifesto (Fredrich Engels and Karl Marx)· Cruel Alexis (Virgil)· The Dhammapada (Anon)· The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon (Aesop)· The Eve of St Agnes (John Keats)· The Fall of Icarus (Ovid)· The Figure in the Carpet (Henry James)· The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows (Rudyard Kipling)· Gooseberries (Anton Chekhov)· The Great Fire of London (Samuel Pepys)· The Great Winglebury Duel (Charles Dickens)· How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher's Dog (Johann Peter Hebel)· How Much Land Does A Man Need? (Leo Tolstoy)· How To Use Your Enemies (Baltasar Gracián)· How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing (Michel de Montaigne)· I Hate and I Love (Catullus)· Il Duro (D. H. Lawrence)· It was snowing butterflies (Charles Darwin)· Jason and Medea (Apollonius of Rhodes)· Kasyan from the Beautiful Mountains (Ivan Turgenev)· Leonardo da Vinci (Giorgio Vasari)· The Life of a Stupid Man (Ryunosuke Akutagawa)· Lips Too Chilled (Matsuo Basho)· Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime (Oscar Wilde)· The Madness of Cambyses (Herodotus· The Maldive Shark (Herman Melville)· The Meek One (Fyodor Dostoyevsky· Mrs Rosie and the Priest (Giovanni Boccaccio)· My Dearest Father (Wolfgang Mozart)· The Night is Darkening Round Me (Emily Brontë)· The nightingales are drunk (Hafez)· The Nose (Nikolay Gogol)· Olalla (Robert Louis Stevenson)· The Old Man in the Moon (Shen Fu), Miss Brill (Katherine Mansfield)· The Old Nure's Story (Elizabeth Gaskell)· On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (Thomas De Quincey)· On the Beach at Night Alone (Walt Whitman)· The Reckoning (Edith Wharton)· Remember, Body… (C. P. Cavafy)· The Robber Bridegroom (Brothers Grimm)· The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue (Anon)· Sindbad the Sailor· Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)· Socrates' Defence (Plato)· Speaking of Siva (Anon)· The Steel Flea (Nikolai Leskov)· The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe)· The Terrors of the Night (Thomas Nashe)· The Tinder Box (Hans Christian Andersen)· Three Tang Dynasty Poets (Wang Wei)· Trimalchio's Feast (Petronius)· To-morrow (Joseph Conrad), Of Street Piemen (Henry Mayhew)· Traffic (John Ruskin)· Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls (Marco Polo)· The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe (Richard Hakluyt)· The Wife of Bath (Geoffrey Chaucer)· The Woman Much Missed (Thomas Hardy)· The Yellow Wall-paper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)· Wailing Ghosts (Pu Songling)· Well, they are gone, and here must I remain (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

The short fiction of a writer who helped to shape the course of American literature. With a determined commitment to the history of his native land, Nathaniel Hawthorne revealed, more incisively than any writer of his generation, the nature of a distinctly American consciousness. The pieces collected here deal with essentially American matters: the Puritan past, the Indians, the Revolution. But Hawthorne was highly - often wickedly - unorthodox in his account of life in early America, and his precisely constructed plots quickly engage the reader's imagination. Written in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s, these works are informed by themes that reappear in Hawthorne's longer works: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance. And, as Michael J. Colacurcio points out in his excellent introduction, they are themes that are now deeply embedded in the American literary tradition.

Exquisite and amusing miniatures regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fictionWith their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection from The Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems. Here a Taoist monk conjures up a magical pear tree, a scholar recounts his previous incarnations, a woman out-foxes the fox-spirit that possesses her, a child bride gives birth to a thimble-sized baby, a ghostly city appears out of nowhere and a heartless daughter-in-law is turned into a pig. In his tales of humans coupling with shape-shifting spirits, bizarre phenomena, haunted buildings and enchanted objects, Pu Songling pushes back the boundaries of human experience and enlightens as he entertains.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

George MacDonald occupied a major position in the intellectual life of his Victorian contemporaries. This volume brings together all eleven of his shorter fairy stories as well as his essay "The Fantastic Imagination". The subjects are those of traditional fantasy: good and wicked fairies, children embarking on elaborate quests, and journeys into unsettling dreamworlds. Within this familiar imaginative landscape, his children's stories were profoundly experimental, questioning the association of childhood with purity and innocence, and the need to separate fairy tale wonder from adult scepticism and disbelief.

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!An Instant #1 Indie Bestseller!The haunting tale of two brave children lost in a dark and dangerous forest is reimagined by literary legends Stephen King and Maurice Sendak in an all-new picture book.Let Stephen King, global bestselling and award-winning author of The Long Walk, and Maurice Sendak, beloved creator of the Caldecott Medal-winning Where the Wild Things Are," guide you into the most deliciously daring rendition of the classic Grimm fairy tale yet. But will you find your way back out? With a personal introduction from Stephen King, the beautiful book has been created in close collaboration with The Maurice Sendak Foundation. This stunning storybook makes the perfect gift for fans of King, Sendak, and the Brothers Grimm.

Now a Netflix animated series! The New York Times bestselling debut by Adam Gidwitz, the Newbery Honor-winning author of The Inquisitor's Tale.“A wonderful sense of humor and narrative voice … completely fresh and unique.” –Rick Riordan, #1 bestselling authorHansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into eight other classic Grimm (and Grimm-inspired) fairy tales. An irreverent, witty narrator leads us through encounters with witches, warlocks, dragons, and the devil himself. As the siblings roam a forest brimming with menacing foes, they learn the true story behind the famous tales, as well as how to take charge of their destinies and create their own happily ever after. Because once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome.For more awesome fairy tales by Adam Gidwitz look for In a Glass Grimmly and The Grimm Conclusion.

The most significant translation in one hundred years of one of the greatest works of world literature   From Ali Baba and the forty thieves to the voyages of Sinbad, the stories of The Arabian Nights are timeless and unforgettable. Published here in three volumes, this magnificent new edition brings these tales to life for modern readers in the first complete English translation since Richard Burton’s of the 1880s.   Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, and the next morning puts her to death. To end this brutal pattern, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king enchanting tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, of the Angel of Death and magical spirits, and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps—a sequence of stories that will last 1,001 nights, and that will save her own life.

For the first time in one volume, a complete collection of the acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes - regarded by many as Britain's No 1 living fiction writer.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The wolf thought to himself, "What a tender young creature! what a nice plump mouthful – she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both."' Collected by the German Grimm brothers, these folk tales have captured the imaginations of children and adults alike since they were first published in 1812. The best-known stories such as The Golden Goose, Hansel and Gretel, The Frog Prince, and Snow-White and Rose-Red remain as popular today as when first told, although there is an underlying darkness and violence to the original stories that has softened over time.

Stories by a visionary master of supernatural fictionIn volume two of the only annotated edition of M. R. James's complete writings currently available, Penguin Classics brings together tales from James's final two works, A Thin Ghost and Others and A Warning to the Curious. In these stories, James continues his fearsome transformation of the ghost story from its nineteenth-century heritage, drawing upon his deep knowledge of medieval history and biblical curiosa. This edition features a number of little-known tales that have rarely been assembled, including “The Fenstation Witch,” presented here for the first time in a corrected text, a new translation of “Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories,” and a number of James’s essays.Edited and with an introduction and notes by S. T. Joshi.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.