Elena Richards – författare

Parties and Passions is a literary celebration. Love, betrayal, sadness, humour and more are explored in this collection of party stories by classic authors.Featuring tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Parties and Passions shows making merry doesn’t always go to plan. Joy and disappointment, murder and mix-ups: there’s a party for everyone here. Find stories of glamorous masked balls from Edgar Allan Poe and Alexandre Dumas, ghostly wedding celebrations dreamed up by Edith Nesbit and Washington Irving, and more occasions for dancing and music in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and Kate Chopin’s ‘Wiser Than a God’. Nothing happens as expected in Nella Larsen’s ‘The Wrong Man’ and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Bridal Party’, and calm gatherings descend into chaos in witty and ironic writing from Saki and Nathaniel Hawthorne.With an international range of much-loved writers from Akutagawa to Tolstoy, here is an eclectic collection of literary parties to suit every mood.The Great Gatsby, Mrs Dalloway and The Picture of Dorian Gray are also available in this Macmillan Collector’s Library series of gorgeous paperbacks featuring the greatest parties and the wildest passions in literature.

Parties and Passions is a literary celebration. Love, betrayal, sadness, humour and more are explored in this collection of party stories by classic authors.Featuring tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Parties and Passions shows making merry doesn’t always go to plan. Joy and disappointment, murder and mix-ups: there’s a party for everyone here. Find stories of glamorous masked balls from Edgar Allan Poe and Alexandre Dumas, ghostly wedding celebrations dreamed up by Edith Nesbit and Washington Irving, and more occasions for dancing and music in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and Kate Chopin’s ‘Wiser Than a God’. Nothing happens as expected in Nella Larsen’s ‘The Wrong Man’ and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Bridal Party’, and calm gatherings descend into chaos in witty and ironic writing from Saki and Nathaniel Hawthorne.With an international range of much-loved writers from Akutagawa to Tolstoy, here is an eclectic collection of literary parties to suit every mood.The Great Gatsby, Mrs Dalloway and The Picture of Dorian Gray are also available in this Macmillan Collector’s Library series of gorgeous paperbacks featuring the greatest parties and the wildest passions in literature.

Twenty-eight entertaining tales from Japanese folklore are featured here, and everything comes with a magical twist. Monkeys, badgers and other meddlesome creatures abound, as well as fortune tellers, malevolent spirits and mysterious paintings.A man who ardently desires eternal life is taught a lesson. A couple fall in love and find each other across the centuries. More unexpected time-slips happen in ‘Urashima Taro’, where a young fisherman ends up married to a princess and lives undersea for centuries. Spirits are all around us: in ‘The Laughing Dumpling’, an elderly woman outwits a demon with a taste for her cooking. Ghostly hauntings are visited on those who have done wrong, and famous tales like ‘The Marvellous Tea Kettle’ and ‘The Bamboo Cutter and the Moon Child’ (which inspired Studio Ghibli’s Princess Kaguya) remind us that the boundary between the magical and the everyday is only too fragile.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning pocket-sized classics. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.