Anna Wulf is a young novelist with writer's block. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. In fear of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks.

Introduction by Anne Perry Includes newly commissioned endnotes In 1887, a young Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet, creating an international icon in the quick-witted sleuth Sherlock Holmes. In this very first Holmes mystery, the detective introduces himself to Dr. John H. Watson with the puzzling line ?You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,? and so begins Watson?s, and the world?s, fascination with this enigmatic character....

Judith Hearne, a Catholic middle-aged spinster, moves into yet another bed-sit in Belfast. A socially isolated woman of modest means, she teaches piano to a handful of students to pass the day. Her only social activity is tea with the O'Neill family, who secretly dread her weekly visits. Judith soon meets wealthy James Madden and fantasises about marrying this lively, debonair man. But Madden sees her in an entirely different light, as a potential...

The ever-popular novelist and story-teller Robert Graves wrote fascinating and durable stories, here collected in a single volume by the poet's daughter Lucia Graves.

Gobbolino's mother was a witch's cat, so naturally little Gobbolino was expected to be one as well. But who ever heard of a witch's cat with blue eyes and one white paw, who preferred sitting by the fire rather than on the end of a broomstick?

Partly autobiographical, this is first of the internationally acclaimed trilogy by Judith Kerr telling the unforgettable story of a Jewish family fleeing from Germany at the start of the Second World War.

Read the story of Jim Jarvis, the boy whose plight inspired Dr Barnardo to found his famous children's homes. Now published into the 'Essential Modern Classics' list.

Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the hostility of the villagers.

Time is running out Mrs Frisby. She must move her family of mice before the farmer destroys their home. But her youngest son is so ill she is convinced he won't survive the move. Help comes in the unexpected form of some super-intelligent rats.