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CRW Publishing
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Julius Caesar's exciting plot, brilliant rhetoric and searching characterisation have made it one of Shakespeare's most popular plays with both readers and theatre-goers. When it seems that Julius Caesar may assume supreme power, a plot to destroy him is hatched by those determined to preserve the threatened Republic. But the different motives of the conspirators soon become apparent when high principles clash with malice and political realism. As the nation plunges into bloody civil war, this taut drama explores the violent consequences of betrayal and murder. |
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Published in 1922, the eleven Tales of the Jazz Age feature the flappers and lost young men of the period as well as a great variety of characters and scenes. Among them, the critically acclaimed novella May Day contrasts drunken debutantes with a mob of war veterans battling socialists in the streets, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, filmed with Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, is a fantasy about a man who ages in reverse, and A Diamond as Big as the Ritz is a surreal fable of excess. |
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The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies, and feminists have been divided in their responses. The central relationship, in which Petruchio boisterously 'tames' a rebellious Kate, has often appeared problematic. In the theatre, it has been treated in a diversity of ways, so that Kate's apparent capitulation varies between the ironic and the sincere. But the play remains one of Shakespeare's most popular dramas, and has been memorably staged and filmed as the musical Kiss Me Kate, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. |
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Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself. |
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Brighton Rock was published in 1938, and made into a film in 2010. The novel is a murder thriller set in 1930s Brighton. Greene's iconic tale of the razor-wielding Pinkie is gripping and terrifying, an unputdownable read. |
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One of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal created a new thriller genre. It is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who in, the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the OAS, to assassinate General de Gaulle. |
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Hammett's 1930 detective novel is widely regarded as the first and finest novel of the hard-boiled private detective. Sam Spade has a cold detachment, keen eye for detail and an unflinching determination to achieve his own justice. Regarded by many as the greatest crime novel of the 20th century, it has been ranked in the top 100 of English-language novels. The Maltese Falcon has been filmed several times, most famously by John Huston with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. |
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Trollope's witty, satirical story of a quiet cathedral town shaken by scandal — as the traditional values of Septimus Harding are attacked by zealous reformers and ruthless newspapers — is a drama of conscience that pits individual integrity against worldly ambition. In The Warden Anthony Trollope brought the fictional county of Barsetshire to life, peopled by a cast of brilliantly realised characters that have made him among the supreme chroniclers of the minutiae of Victorian England. It is the first book in The Chronicles of Barsetshire, and its sequel is Barchester Towers, also available in The Collector's Library. |
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This is the story of Dorothy and her little dog Toto, who are carried away from Kansas by a cyclone and transported to the wonderful world of Oz. She meets three companions — the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion — and the three journey to the Emerald City of Oz to ask the Wizard of Oz to give them their hearts' desires, which in Dorothy's case is to return home to Kansas. On their way to Oz and while fulfilling the tasks that the surprising Wizard asks of them they encounter witches, winged monkeys, the Deadly Desert, fighting trees and magic shoes. This edition is evocatively illustrated with the original drawings of W. W. Denslow which have been sensitively re-coloured by Barbara Frith, one of Britain's leading colourists. |
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'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there', begins L. P. Hartley's tale of nostalgia, the reawakening of lost memories and sexual awareness. It is 1952. Leo, now in his sixties, comes upon an old diary describing one long, hot summer with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, where he acted as a messenger between Ted, a local farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the Hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire. This haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society. |
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Peter Pan is a fantasy of extraordinary imagination, and a national treasure. It has everything — airborne children, mocking mermaids, bloodthirsty pirates, and a homicidal crocodile with a nasty tick. In this novelization of the original play, J.M. Barrie brings the cast and the action of the drama brilliantly to life on the page. We travel to the surreal world of Neverland, and meet the true characters of the story, as Barrie created them: Wendy Darling and Captain Hook, Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily, and above all, the enchanting, boastful boy who refuses to grow up. |
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The Collector's Colour Library takes the favourite illustrated titles of The Collector's Library and presents them in full colour. Original colour illustrations are faithfully reproduced, and where illustrations and decorations were originally black-and-white they have been sensitively coloured by Barbara Frith, one of Britain's most accomplished colourists. One of the most celebrated works of classic literature for children, The Wind in the Willows follows Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger from one adventure to the next — in gipsy caravans, stolen sports cars, to prison and back to the Wild Wood. A story of animal cunning and human camaraderie, this remains a timeless tale more than 100 years after its publication. There are sixteen full colour pictures by Arthur Rackham. Barbara Frith has coloured the chapter headings. |
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The Three Musketeers follows the career of an impoverished young gentleman, D'Artagnan, who sets off to Paris to seek fortune as a member of the King's guard. Once there, he meets Porthos, Athos and Aramis, the musketeers of the book's title, and embarks on a daring and exciting series of adventures. France is under threat, and the friends must use all their guile and ingenuity to outwit the dastardly schemes of Cardinal Richelieu and the glamorous spy, Milady. This edition is abridged. |
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Tom has to spend the summer at his aunt's, and it seems as if nothing good will ever happen again. Then he hears the grandfather clock strike thirteen — and everything changes. Outside the door is a garden — a garden that shouldn't exist. Are the children there ghosts, or is it Tom who is the ghost? This Carnegie-Medal-winning modern classic is magically timeless, and has never been out of print. For the 70th anniversary celebration of the Medal, a panel named it one of the top ten Medal-winning works, and the British public elected it the nation's second-favourite. This edition includes all of Susan Einzig's evocative illustrations from the first edition of the book. |
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This phantasmagoric study in terror is set in Second World War London. Arthur Rowe's mind is hamstrung by guilt — a Graham Greene speciality — and he stands aside from the war until he happens to guess both the true and the false weight of the cake at a charity fete. From that moment he is the quarry of malign and shadowy forces from which he tries to escape with a mind that is out of focus. The action plays out as bombs pound the city, and who is friend and who foe becomes increasingly uncertain. |
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From the moment Joseph the carpenter carves a puppet that can walk and talk, this wildly inventive fantasy takes Pinocchio through countless adventures, in the course of which his nose grows whenever he tells a lie, he is turned into a donkey, and is swallowed by a dogfish, before he gains real happiness. The story of the wooden puppet who learns goodness and becomes a real boy is famous the world over, and has been familiar for over a century. |
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'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up. Cassandra Mortmain lives with her Bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. |
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Lady Audley's Secret is, perhaps, the most famous of the Victorian 'sensation' novels. When beautiful young Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley, her fortune and her future look secure. But Lady Audley's past is shrouded in mystery, and to Sir Michael's nephew Robert, she is not all that she seems. When his good friend George Talboys suddenly disappears, Robert is determined to find him, and to unearth the truth. His quest reveals a tangled story of lies and deception, crime and intrigue, whose sensational twists turn the conventional picture of Victorian womanhood on its head. Can Robert's darkest suspicions really be true? |
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David Stuart Davies has edited four other immensely popular anthologies for the Collector's Library. This volume includes some of the greatest classic crime short stories ever written. It contains locked rooms, barely decipherable codes, and straightforward murders written by masters of the genre: Arthur Conan Doyle, R. Austin Freeman, G.K. Chesterton, Edgar Wallace, John Dickson Carr, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Arnold Bennett, among others. |
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To celebrate the first ten successful years of The Collector's Library, this everlasting literary diary has been specially commissioned from Rosemary Gray. It contains apposite quotes for each day from books in the series, and throughout contains illustrations taken from the best-loved titles. Because each day is dated, but not named, it is suitable for use in any calendar year — or perhaps as a birthday and anniversary book. It is uniform in size with the rest of The Collector's Library, and will make an elegant and handy keepsake. |
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