Arnold Bennett studied at London University, and was a solicitor's clerk in London, but quickly transferred to journalism, and in 1893 became assistant editor (editor in 1896) of the journal Woman. He published his first novel, The Man from the North, in 1898. In 1902 he moved to Paris for 10 years and from then on was engaged exclusively in writing. His claims to recognition as a novelist rest mainly on the early Anna of the Five Towns (1902), the more celebrated The Old Wives' Tale (1908), and the Clayhanger series - Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911), These Twain (1916), subsequently issued (1925) as The Clayhanger Family - all of which feature the ‘Five Towns’, centres of the pottery industry. He was an influential critic, and as Jacob Tonson on The New Age he was a discerning reviewer. His Journals were published posthumously.

Here are stories of ghosts and demons, vampires, werewolves, and ghouls-and even reanimated mummies! Spine-chilling tales of the supernatural to make your scalp tingle and your pulse race. Each tale is introduced with an intriguing account of its origin and sometimes the unbelievably strange but true facts upon which it is based.

In the wake of the unprecedented success of Sherlock Holmes, there were a whole slew of other detectives who popped up in the pages of the British popular magazines of the time, all hoping to cash in. And one of the great shining lights was MARTIN HEWITT, who actually appeared in The Strand, the same mag in which Holmes himself had originally made his debut, just a few years earlier.
Hewitt was a lawyer who discovered he had extraordinary deductive abilities. And so he decided to become a private detective, with offices close to the Strand, near Charing Cross station. Hewitt was a stout, clean-shaven man of medium height and cheerful countenance, but as the 1971 dustcover says "he shrewdly solved many crimes in a manner that would have done credit to the Great Detective himself."

Humorist and engraver, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. A wood engraver, he became assistant editor of the St Nicholas Magazine (1873). He first attracted notice by his stories for children, and is best known as author of the collection The Lady or the Tiger (1884). Other works include Mrs Cliff's Yacht (1896) and The Girl at Cobhurst (1898).

In The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), the best-known of his thrillers (made into a popular movie by Alfred Hitchcock), John Buchan introduces his most enduring hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an "ordinary fellow," is caught up in the dramatic and dangerous race against a plot to devastate the British war effort.
In this, the only critical edition available, Christopher Harvie's introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the equally fascinating story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold and, via The Thirty-Nine Steps, ended the war as spy-master and propaganda chief.

The Haunted Bookshop is quaint, delightful fiction that is simultaneously entertaining and thought provoking. Like its predecessor, Parnassus on Wheels, it is first and foremost a book for book lovers. The exuberant Roger Mifflin, the owner of a dusty, out-of-the way, used bookstore in Brooklyn, thrives on helping people discover new books and authors. His bookshop motto reads: "We have what you want, though you may not know you want it." Making money is secondary to him and his favorite pastime is talking and arguing, especially about books.

A Gothic mystery unfolds when a spinster arrives at the mansion she's rented for the summer. Plans for a restful vacation are soon interrupted by niece and nephew, ghosts and spirits, murder and mayhem. Rinehart's famous story mixes chilling suspense and romance with good humor to produce an absorbing and entertaining mystery.

If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in world literature would be assured by his short tales. "Billy Budd, Sailor," his last work, is the masterpiece in which he delivers the final summation in his "quarrel with God." It is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. Melville also explores this theme in "Bartelby the Scrivener," his famous story about a Wall Street law clerk who takes passive resistance to a comic--and ultimately disastrous--extreme; and in "Benito Cereno," his dazzling account of oppression and rebellion on a nineteenth-century slave ship.

This absurdist story is noted for its adept characterizations, melodramatic irony, and psychological intrigue. Adolf Verloc is a languid eastern European secret agent posing as a London shop owner with anarchist leanings who is ordered to dynamite Greenwich Observatory. The plot fails when Verloc's mentally retarded brother-in-law is accidently killed by the explosives. Verloc's wife Winnie murders Verloc in a fit of rage. She commits suicide after she is betrayed by Ossipon, one of her husband's anarchist associates.