A unique collection of Dickens stories, rarely seen in print, establishing him as one of the masters of the detective genre Charles Dickens was one of the great pioneers of detective fiction. While the larger-than-life characters in his novels have settled themselves in the public imagination, his detectives have had a profound effect on the development of crime fiction, and Dickens is now seen as the first major publicist for the police detective. Here, Peter Haining has assembled a fasci...

Over a century after the début of the intrepid hunter explorer Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines (1885), he remains one of the great heroes of literature. The most famous of H. Rider Haggard's dozen novels about him — including Allan Quatermain and Allan and the Ice Gods — have been regularly reprinted for new generations of readers. But there is also a novelette, Allan's Wife, and four short stories of his adventures which have never been collected in one volume. Peter Haining at l...

Fergus Hume was renowned as the bestselling mystery writer of Victorian times after his first book, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, broke all records. In 1901 he returned to form with this ingenious tale, selected to represent Hume’s prolific output by Collins’ Detective Club panel in 1930.Cicero Gramp was, according to himself, a ‘professor of elocution and eloquence’ – to anyone else he was no more than an engaging and extremely craft vagabond. Hence it was that he found himself awa...

Of all the airplanes that defended Britain during World War Two, none inspired as much affection as the Spitfire, the plane that became a symbol of courage and determination during the Battle of Britain. Today, over sixty years later, it is still one of the world's most loved planes. This splendidly illustrated tribute to the fighter and the men who flew her is essential reading. It brings together a fascinating collection of writings from Allied aces such as Air Vice Marshal James Johnson...

An absolute must-have for Sherlock Holmes fans, this collection is a treasure trove of little-known pieces and rarities featuring the world's most famous detective, gathered by expert Peter Haining.Collated with extensive notes and background material, the collection includes twelve unmissable works by Arthur Conan Doyle, ranging from short stories and plays to parodies, poems and commentaries.Haining's appendices add some very rare material, including a revealing interview...

Expanded and with great new stories, this is the biggest and best anthology of ghostly hauntings ever. Over 40 tales of visitation by the undead - from vengeful and violent spirits, set on causing harm to innocent people tucked up in their homes, to rarer and more kindly ghosts, returning from the grave to reach out across the other side. Yet others entertain desires of a more sinister bent, including the erotic. This new edition includes a selection of favourite haunted house tales chosen...

This giant collection includes a huge range of 20th-century first-hand accounts of hauntings, such as the American troops who repeatedly saw the ghosts of a dead platoon of men while on patrol in Vietnam; and the witnessed haunting of a house near Tintagel in Cornwall that led actress Kate Winslet to pull out of buying the property.It covers the full spectrum of credible hauntings, from poltergeists (the noisy, dangerous and frightening spirits that are usually associated with pube...

Over 25 short story masterpieces from writers such as Louis de Bernières and Ian Rankin - modern literary tales to chill the blood.This spine-chilling new anthology of 20th and 21st century tales by big name writers is in the best traditions of literary ghost stories. It is just a little over a hundred years ago that the most famous literary ghost story, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, was published and in the intervening years a great many other distinguishe...

Following on from the hilarious collection of typos, gaffes and howlers in Portico’s A Steroid Hit the Earth, comes Wrotten English – a fabulously funny collection of literary blunders from classic, and not-so classic, works of literature. This book is an anthology of side-splitting authors' errors, publishers' boobs, printers' devils, terrible titles, comical clangers and all manner of literary lunacy dating back since the invention of the printing press.Painstak...

Some doors are better left closed . . .In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it has been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever.A young American woman, Apryl, arrives at Barrington House. She's been left an apartment by her mysterious Great Aunt Lillian who died in strange cir...

22 November 1963: Dallas, Texas. US President John F Kennedy is assassinated as his motorcade passes through the city's streets. The assassin is soon captured, and revealed to be disaffected Communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald. Did Oswald act alone, or did he have help? Is the Bilderberg Group simply a group of international financiers concerned with promoting democracy throughout the world, or is there a more sinister power at work? And what really happened to Princess Diana's Mercede...

True Irish Ghost Stories gathers a striking range of supernatural testimony, folklore, and psychical anecdote into a volume that illuminates Ireland's haunted imaginative landscape. Moving from ancestral houses and lonely roads to apparitions, banshees, poltergeists, and prophetic dreams, the collection blends oral tradition, documentary curiosity, and Gothic atmosphere. Its significance lies not only in the chill of individual narratives, but in the way they preserve a cultural archive of...