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On the eve of his wedding to Evelyn Cheyne, who he met and fell in love with during the course of The Unicorn Murders, former spy Kenwood Blake is summoned to Devon by spymaster Sir Henry Merrivale, and asked to take part in an undercover operation. Despite being assured he'll be back in London in time for the wedding the following morning, Blake is unconvinced.Once in Torquay, he is sent to investigate Paul Hogenauer, a local scientist of German heritage, who has been dabbling in spiritualism and the occult - a man Merrivale and Devon's Chief Constable Colonel Charters suspect of anti-British espionage. But, on entering his house, he finds Hogenauer dead in a chair in his sitting room, showing all the signs of strychnine poisoning.When he finds Hogenauer's friend and confidant Dr Keppel dead in his hotel room in Bristol, also apparently from strychnine poisoning, he has a seemingly impossible mystery to unravel. Can he solve the clues, bring the killer to justice and still get to the church in time to get married in the morning?

'Come to-night', I heard the old man say, 'come to me to-night into the Wood of the Dead'.Join Weird Walk for a new journey into the ghostly and bizarre, striking out from the shelter of the inn for the places where the path begins to fade, from the sublime wilderness of mountains, coasts and ravines to forbidden, ancient tracts of woodland.Featuring disorientating classics from John Buchan and Algernon Blackwood alongside modern, thrilling (and sometimes violent) warnings to the intrepid from Lisa Tuttle and Dorothy K. Haynes, The Wayfarer's Weird leads you towards fae dangers, down lost tracks in time and deep into the liminal spaces of Britain and beyond.

The diplomat Sir George Ramsden is returning to Britain from France with the mysterious "unicorn" in tow. The legendary thief Flamande has declared that he will be on the same flight as Ramsden, in disguise, and that the unicorn will be his. His arch-rival and head of the Srete Nationale, Gasquet, has assured the public that he too will be on the plane to thwart his nemesis.Meanwhile, holidaying in Paris, the ex-spy Kenwood Blake runs into Evelyn Cheyne and is swept into a perilous chase ending at the Chateau de l'Ile on a stormy night. Here, Ramsden's plane has made an emergency landing, and Henry Merrivale has joined the party. When the castle is cut off by the flooding river, the stage is set for a battle of wits between two masters of disguise in Flamande and Gasquet, as a bizarre and seemingly impossible murder among the party casts suspicion in every direction and the mystery of the unicorn is revealed.Carter Dickson's brilliantly intricate mystery was first published in Britain in 1936; it remains a testament to his unique talent for wrangling audacious levels of devilishness into a masterpiece.

As it came closer Dick felt that shuddering faintness, which often affected him in the presence of cats, come over him, and he stamped and clapped his hands. At this it turned tail quickly: a sort of dark shadow streaked the garden-wall for a moment, and it vanished.A mother cat takes revenge for the death of its kitten, a ferocious feline creeps into a princess's bedchamber at night to drain her blood, a young woman grows whiskers beneath the light of a full moon and frolics on the lawn...Aloof and haughty, slinking and sometimes sinister, cats are a mainstay of weird fiction for good reason: for all that we love them, they're unknowable, unpredictable and a little uncanny. And so, cats loom large in this collection that ranges from the sinister stories of Victorian greats such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu through to twentieth-century tales from renowned authors Dorothy L Sayers, E F Benson and Gans T Field.

Trouble is brewing once more for the Hoggetts and their friend Chief Inspector Macdonald in Lunesdale, deep in the Lancashire fell country. The treacherous slopes and still waters of a quarry pool have become the backdrop for strange happenings by night, and after an architect surveying the area is nearly hoisted into the cold waters by an unseen assailant, the suspicions of local farmers become a matter for the CID. Lorac's authentic writing of the Lunesdale countryside is paired with a twisting plot in this classic of lake district crime fiction, first published in 1949.

Impossible crime stories have delighted readers since the invention of detective fiction as puzzle-lovers sought more cerebral entertainment. Following on from Miraculous Mysteries, CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards brings together a whole new casebook of mystifying locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. Featuring more great stories by John Dickson Carr, Julian Symons and Margery Allingham alongside newly rediscovered writers, this selection of stories will bring you more insight into one of the most celebrated and dazzling sub-genres of detective fiction.

"If Carolus Deene catches so much as a whiff of murder he will be on the scent with all the persistence and gusto of a dachshund in search of truffles."While Senior History Master of Queen's School, Newminster, Carolus Deene has a troubling hobby as a criminologist and sometime sleuth. Even more troublingly, he has jaundice. But with the papers shouting of the crimewave sweeping the seaside resorts of England, sending him to the coast to recover is too risky for the Headmaster he will be much further from trouble in the inland spa resort of Buddington.But before long Buddington is rocked by a twisted double-murder two elderly women found dead on the same night at the same time, each with a white lily by their side. Perhaps things are looking up for the curious Deene?First published in 1960, Leo Bruce's classic mystery hums with his trademark wit and comedic flair, centred around an intelligent puzzle and a memorable cast of Buddington's best.

“I’m minded of the way a fire spreads in dry bracken when we burn it off the fellside: tongues of flame this way and that – ’tis human tongues and words that’s creeping like flames in brushwood.”It all began up at High Gimmerdale with the sheep-stealing, a hateful act in the shepherding lands around the bend in the Lune river – the Crook o’ Lune. Then came the fire at Aikengill house and with the leaping of the flames, death, disorder and dangerous gossip came to the quiet moorlands. Visiting his friends, the Hoggetts, while searching for some farmland to buy up ahead of his retirement, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald’s trip becomes a busman’s holiday when he is drawn to investigate the deadly blaze and the deep-rooted motives behind the rising spate of crimes. Renowned for its authentic characters and settings based partly on the author’s own experiences of life in the Lune valley, E.C.R. Lorac’s classic rural mystery returns to print for the first time since 1953.

The British Library Women Writers series is a curated collection of novels by female authors who enjoyed broad, popular appeal in their day. In a century during which the role of women in society changed radically, their fictional heroines highlight women's experience of life inside and outside the home through the decades in these rich, insightful and evocative stories. The Women Writers Christmas Collection of Short Stories explores the joys and disappointments, pressures and preparations of this time of year from a female perspective. In keeping with the spirit of the series, the stories are plucked from different decades of the twentieth century and penned by familiar as well as forgotten authors writing for both books and popular magazines. The selection includes the festive run-up as well as post-Christmas traditions. From the delightful consequences of decorating the tree by Stella Gibbons, to an interesting encounter set at 30,000 feet on a Christmas Day flight by Muriel Spark, and a pantomime with a twist by Margery Sharpe, these stories are sure to fortify you over the Christmas period.

When two newlyweds discover that a corpse has been buried in the basement of their new home, a gruelling case begins to trace the identity of the victim. With all avenues of investigation approaching exhaustion, a tenuous piece of evidence offers a chance for Chief Inspector Moresby and leads him to the amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham, who has recently been providing cover work in a school south of London. Desperate for evidence of any kind on the basement case, Moresby begins to sift through the manuscript of a satirical novel Sheringham had been writing about his colleagues at the school, convinced that amongst the colourful cast of teachers hides the victim - and perhaps their murderer. A novel pairing dark humour and intelligent detection work, this 1932 'whowasdunin?' mystery is an example of a celebrated Golden Age author's most inventive work.

Fired up by the accounts of exploring parties in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers of the weird and supernatural began to construct a literary Arctic and Antarctic in which terrors lay undiscovered in the ice and gateways to bizarre hidden worlds were waiting. From James Hogg's lurid North Pole narrative of life amongst polar bears in 'The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon' to tales of mad science and ghostly visitations among the wind-blown expanse of the southern continent, this new collection showcases a wealth of neglected material and an overlooked niche of literature obsessed with the limits of human experience.Pulp tales of alien forces emerging from the ice and a battle between hunter and invisible man-eating duck creature drift alongside modern horror from indigenous Arctic voices to show the extent and endurance of the lure of these sublime landscapes.

Sharing your home with an unwanted guest can be murder.Elderly Mrs. Rampage lives alone in a large London house full of the antiques and heirlooms she's collected over the years. But she's struggling to cope, and as her only daughter lives thousands of miles away, she is persuaded to advertise for a housekeeper and companion. Reluctantly, she accepts the courteous and capable Mrs. Roach into No 5 to help her.With few possessions of her own, Mrs. Roach is in desperate need of a place to stay, but she soon has her own ideas about how things should be run in the house. And as Mrs. Rampage grows increasingly protective of her knick-knacks, and pushes at the boundaries of her new companion's personal privacy, the pair's initially amicable relationship soon turns sour. Before long, both women are thoroughly miserable, but stuck in unhappy coexistence with nowhere else to go. When Mrs. Roach digs in and makes it her duty to stay, the lives of both women become entangled in catastrophic circumstances.

John Travers has been hanged for the murder of his mother-in-law Helga, but to those who knew him something is amiss. Driven by justice and a sense of uncanny forces at work, John’s friend Doctor Toogood recounts a haunting tale of love and jealousy under the fell influence of a shadowy and implacable evil. First published in 1927, this novel by husband-and-wife writing duo Rosalie and Edward Synton (real surname Corse-Scott) has been lost for nearly a century and returns now from the Library collections to deliver its occult thrills anew.

When a counterfeit currency racket comes to light on the French Riviera, Detective Inspector Meredith is sent speeding southwards - out of the London murk to the warmth and glitter of the Mediterranean. Along with Inspector Blampignon - an amiable policeman from Nice - Meredith must trace the whereabouts of Chalky Cobbett, crook and forger.Soon their interest centres on the Villa Paloma, the residence of Nesta Hedderwick, an eccentric Englishwoman, and her bohemian house guests - among them her niece, an artist, and a playboy. Before long, it becomes evident that more than one of the occupants of the Villa Paloma has something to hide, and the stage is set for murder.This classic crime novel from 1952 evokes all the sunlit glamour of life on the Riviera, and combines deft plotting with a dash of humour. This is the first edition to have been published in more than sixty years and follows the rediscovery of Bude's long-neglected detective writing by the British Library.

Winner of the 2026 British Book Design and Production Awards - Scholarly, Academic and Reference Book categoryPages from some of the most celebrated and exquisite medieval manuscripts in the British Library provide the inspiration for twenty-one practical art and calligraphy projects. Seven classic scripts are explored in turn by expert Patricia Lovett. She explains their characteristics, origins and development and creates exemplar diagrams to show basic letter shapes and the quill strokes required to produce them. Each chapter ends with three complementary projects based on aspects of the manuscripts’ design and layout shown in preceding pages; these range from simple to more technical.Manuscripts from the British Library, Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Getty Museum have been selected, and projects are illustrated with step-by-step photographs and beautiful images of the finished works.A substantial Part II provides vital guidance on specialist tools and materials, as well as practical techniques, such as cutting quills, mixing inks and paints, and preparing pigments and shell gold.

'Mr. Anthony Berkeley deserves all gratitude for his energetic efforts to escape from the thraldom of formula... If you are hard-boiled and disillusioned about detectives, you will find this tale very refreshing.' - Dorothy L. SayersAt a costume party with the dubious theme of 'famous murderers and their victims', the know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham is settled in for an evening of beer, small talk and analysing his companions. One guest in particular has caught his attention for her theatrics, and his theory that she might have several enemies among the partygoers proves true when she is found hanging from the 'decorative' gallows on the roof terrace.Noticing a key detail which could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle with the scene and unwittingly casts himself into jeopardy as the uncommonly thorough police investigation circles closer and closer to the truth. Tightly paced and cleverly defying the conventions of the classic detective story, this 1933 novel remains a milestone of the inverted mystery subgenre.

"Much more than a ghost story... One might say that Fox is haunted by the spirit of the place and time of which she writes, and she is able to reproduce in a remarkable way that sense of foreboding and mystery that all of us have experienced." The ArgusWhere once a Romano-British settlement sprawled across the hills in the north of England, there lies a modern town. Caught in a tense struggle between the growth of the university and industrial expansion, its fate veers towards the uncanny when a discovery is made beneath the old town hall. Into the possession of the university comes the skeleton of a woman, found buried along with a mysterious tablet bearing a cryptic message, and as the ratcheting tension between the townspeople is compounded by an unseasonal heat and sightings of a shadowlike figure haunting the streets, the vengeful grip of a long-buried curse pushes the town towards a night of flames and carnage.

The reputation of early-twentieth century British writer Algernon Blackwood currently resides with his two novellas `The Willows' (1907) and `The Wendigo' (1910), and with good reason. They are perfectly crafted horror tales that convey feelings of mystical otherness; they hint at the possibility that there are forces which lie beyond the confines of our everyday understanding of the world and which may, given the right circumstances, manifest to humans. In `The Willows', `unearthly' creatures are responsible for arousing `some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything' the protagonists have ever known. In `The Wendigo', fear of the titular monster from Native American folklore is used to create a discombobulating atmosphere of dread. In both novellas, as in many other of Blackwood's fictions, wild landscapes (a desolate island, a labyrinthine forest) act as more than enhancing backdrops to the action - they become essential elements to the generation of anxiety and metaphysical awe. Both stories have become staples of the weird literary tradition, of which Blackwood was undoubtedly a modern master. Blackwood's slow and measured prose, deeply psychological and descriptive, grants his fiction an intrinsic cumulative effect. It both builds up to potent climaxes and brilliantly chronicles the aftermath of horrific encounters. His poignant narrative pace, sparse use of action and marked interest in how the mind filters perceptions, rather than on objective physical descriptions, makes Blackwood truly unique. Only a handful of other stories in horror fiction manage to conjure up the type of uncanny ambience found in `The Willows' and `The Wendigo'. This is why they are included in this collection.

First published in 1936, this classic country-house mystery has enjoyed renewed success as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. Now, with an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award–winning crime writer and President of the Detection Club, Martin Edwards, The Santa Klaus Murder is given a third life as a beautiful hardback special edition – making this cosy whodunnit the perfect Christmas gift for any lover of ingenious puzzles.At the Melbury family’s Christmas gathering at their country house, Flaxmere, the formidable family patriarch Sir Osmond Melbury is discovered dead by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus. Almost everyone present has something to gain from Sir Osmond’s death. As private accusations and long-standing resentments surface, the Chief Constable of Haulmshire begins his investigation, ruefully observing that he knows the family too well for his own good but perhaps not as well as he thought. Amid mistrust, hatred, and half hidden truths, one startling fact comes to light: there was not one Santa Klaus at Flaxmere, but two.

This seasonal compendium collects together poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. Like Charles Dickens's ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new--from John Donne's Elizabethan hymn over the baby Jesus to Benjamin Zephaniah's "Talking Turkeys," from Thomas Tusser counting the cost of a Tudor feast to P. G. Wodehouse's wry story about Christmas on a diet. Enjoy a Christmas Day as described by Samuel Pepys, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, or Nancy Mitford. Venture out into the snow in the company of Jane Austen, Henry James, and Dickens's Mr. Pickwick. Entertain the children with the seasonal tales of Dylan Thomas, Kenneth Grahame, and Oscar Wilde.

Cats were illustrated in medieval manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, often in exquisite detail and frequently accompanied by their natural prey, mice. Medieval cats were viewed as treasured pets, as fearsome mousers, as canny characters in fables, as associates of the Devil and as magical creatures. Featuring an array of fascinating illustrations from the British Library's rich medieval collection, Cats in Medieval Manuscripts includes anecdotes about cats - both real and imaginary - to provide a fascinating picture of the life of the cat and its relationship with humans in the medieval world.

The desire to cultivate indoor plants is shared by all of us. Houseplants are more than mere decoration: they improve our moods, can be used to treat ailments, and reflect our ever-evolving relationship with nature. Sarah Gerrard-Jones masterfully explores the psychology behind our attraction to houseplants, and the benefits of keeping plants in our homes, from the healing qualities of biophilic design to the philosophy of care.Practical sections provide fundamental advice on looking after plants and nurturing them back to life, and she also advises on buying plants and the perils of mass production, so that we can all acquire and grow houseplants sustainably.

"A perfect pocket-sized olfactory guide to all things perfume – inhaled at a single sitting!" – Richard E. GrantPerfume is intoxicating: a wearable scent journey, a cultural touchpoint, a piece of art and design, and a deep expression of individuality. From its ancient, ceremonial roots to the starry allure of modern celebrity fragrances, perfume has defined what an era's personality, mood and concept of luxury smell like, while even the lingering trail of someone's signature scent can be enough to send our minds reeling back through our memories.From chronicling perfume's hazy beginnings and profiling the figures who have acted as aromatic muses, to covering olfactory psychology and how to find your signature scent, Alice du Parcq takes us on an opulent adventure through the mysterious world of perfume.

Wuthering Heights First Edition Facsimile (1847) in a two-volume edition, with Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846)Step into the wild, windswept world of the Yorkshire moors with this exquisite first edition facsimile of Wuthering Heights, faithfully reproduced from the British Library’s original 1847 copy of Emily Brontë’s enduring masterpiece.Published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights is one of the most powerful and unconventional novels in English literature — a haunting tale of passion, obsession and revenge that has captivated readers for nearly two centuries. This sumptuous facsimile captures the novel as it was first presented to Victorian readers, preserving the typography, layout and character of the original. Housed in a luxurious foiled cloth-bound clamshell presentation box, this collector’s set brings together:• A two-volume first edition facsimile of Wuthering Heights (1847), with covers typical of the era• A first edition facsimile of Emily Brontë’s own copy of Poems (1846), the ground-breaking poetry collection she published alongside her sisters Charlotte and Anne prior to the success of Wuthering Heights, reproduced with handwritten notes and signed and dated by her on the title page. Emily’s copy was rebound by a later owner and bears the date of 1864 on the spine. As this edition is intended to be a faithful facsimile, we have reproduced the book exactly as it survives today, including this historical peculiarity.• Facsimile looseleaf pages from Emily’s two manuscript poetry notebooks (also held in the Library collections) that show earlier versions of a couple of poems that appear in Poems.• The set is completed with an introductory booklet by two lead curators at the British Library.Brontë fans will now be able to own facsimile first editions of the two creative works Emily published during her short life – in effect her complete works – presented together in a gorgeous box with gold foil details. Each element has been created directly from the originals held in the British Library’s collections, ensuring exceptional fidelity to the source material.An essential acquisition for Brontë enthusiasts, collectors of classic literature, scholars, and lovers of fine bookmaking, this facsimile set is as striking on the shelf as it is moving to read.

At Firenze, the reclusive artist Adrian Delafield's Florentine enclave in St John's Wood, the whispers of an impending tragedy are growing louder. The tension between the fanatical zealot of a housekeeper Miss Trimming and Delafield's sister Virgilia is just shy of fever pitch, when a cold morning at the house finds Trimming and Adrian sprawled at either end of the staircase upstairs, an injury; downstairs, death.The windows and doors were all locked from the inside, and yet Inspector Julian Rivers, trained to see the malice behind deadly accident, suspects that a murderer had a hand in the fell deed. But if this is true, Rivers is faced with both the inexplicable puzzle of motive, and the task of untangling an impossible crime in Carnac's compelling and twisting 1956 mystery exploring the demands of kinship, art-world secrets and religious mania.

The stars gave light enough for me to discern the figure as that of a man, but I could scarcely discover more. “Dark night, this,” I said. “Darker below,” he muttered, as though to himself; “darker, darker, darker.”Yorkshire: a land entwined with a distinctive tradition of uncanny literature and folklore, home to twilit towns thronging with restless ghosts, woods alive with the whispers of fairies and vast moorlands stalked by boggarts and barghests after dark.Exploring Yorkshire’s position as a heartland of British supernatural fiction, the stories and poems gathered here trace its weird literary heritage from medieval tales of shapeshifting spirits to the Gothic worlds of the Brontë sisters, and from wartime hauntings to modern folk horror. Including local legends from rare sources and unsettling stories from Arthur Machen, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Andrew Michael Hurley and many more, this collection offers glimpses of a stranger England hidden among the shadows of the dales.

On holiday in Keldstone visiting his nephew, Jim, blanket manufacturer Athelstan Digby agrees to look after the old bookshop on the ground floor of his lodgings while his hosts are away. On the first day of his tenure, a vicar, a chauffeur and an out-of-town stranger enquire after The Life and Death of Mr. Badman by John Bunyan. When a copy mysteriously arrives at the shop in a bundle of books brought in by a young scamp, and is subsequently stolen, Digby moves to investigate the significance of the book along with his nephew, and the two are soon embroiled in a case in which the stakes have risen from antiquarian book-pinching to ruthless murder.First published in a limited run in 1934, this exceedingly rare and fast-paced bibliomystery set against the landscapes of Yorkshire is long overdue its return to print.

Howling down the tunnels comes a new collection showcasing the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks, many of which are republished here for the first time since their original departure.Waiting beyond the barrier are ghostly travelling companions bent on disturbing the commutes of the living, a subway car disappearing into a different dimension without a trace, and a man's greatest fears realized on the ghost train of a carnival. An express ticket to unforgettable journeys into the supernatural, from the open railways of Europe and America to the pressing dark of the tube.

A remarkable blood-soaked stranger upends the lives of two Lake District ramblers; a lonely tavern offers its guests something much more disturbing than a post-walk pint; a night hike on the Fens takes a terrifying turn when the fog rolls in. From the darkly humorous to the chillingly sinister, tales of the haunted trail are as old as time. We have always travelled on foot and our worst fears have often accompanied us. Whether walking for pleasure or necessity, the ramblers of these classic stories trip across unseen boundaries, plotting routes towards the numinous, the uncanny and the plain evil. Featuring fifteen pieces from an intrepid band of writers including Robert Aickman, Charlotte Riddell, M. R. James and many more, this new anthology is a haunting trail mate, guiding you into the wild unknown.