The ​Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Angela Carter - Nights ​at the Circus
It's ​1899 and all of Europe is agape at the arrival of the new century. The world crackles with possibilities and people dance to the irresistible rhythms of money, sex, love and freedom. Swinging above them all is a showbiz sensation: a fierce, vulgar, pant-droppingly sexy trapeze artist called Fevvers.

Angela Carter - Black ​Venus
A ​collection of short stories: 'BLACK VENUS' displays the superbly witchy Angela Carter at her best. Her fabulous fables all speak for themselves in tones so commanding you feel this must be Baudelaire's mistress, ageing, remembering, still spreading syphilis, or Lizzie Borden restless in the fatal and hot Massachusetts summer. Whatever her subject Miss Carter writes like a dream - sometimes a nightmare. And as the voices call out, the images blaze, one is saved from an excess of fantasy by earthy realism, a sudden bark of humour' .

Roald Dahl - The ​Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl
Roald ​Dahl's parents were Norwegian, but he was born in Llandaff, Glamorgan, in 1916 and educated at Rapton School. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he enlisted in the RAF at Nairobi. He was severely wounded after joining a fighter squadron in Lybia, but later saw service as a fighter pilot in Greece and Syria. In 1942 he went to Washington as Assistant Air Attaché, which was where he started to write, and then was transferred to Intelligence, ending the war as a wing commander. His first twelve short stories, based on his wartime experiences, were originally published in leading American magazines and afterwards as a book, _Over to You_. All of his highly acclaimed stories have been widely translated and have become bestsellers all over the world. Anglia Television dramatized a selection of his short stories under the title _Tales of the Unexpected_. Among his other publications are two volumes of autobiography, _Boy_ and _Going Solo_, his much-praised novel, _My Uncle Oswald_, and _Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories_, of which he was editor. During the last year of his life he compiled a book of anecdotes and recipes with his wife, Felicity, which was published by Penguin in 1996 as _Roald Dahl's Cookbook_ He is one of the most successful and well known of all children's writers all over the world. These include _James and the Giant Peach_, _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_, _The Magic Finger_, _Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator_, _Fantastic Mr Fox_, _The Twits_, _The Witches_, winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award, _The BFG_ and _Matilda_. Roald Dahl died in November in 1990. _The Times_ described him as 'one of the most widely read and influential writers of our generation' and wrote in its obituary: 'Children loved his stories and made him their favourite ... They will be classics of the future.' In 2000 Roald Dahl was voted the nation's favourite author in the World Book Day poll.

Jane Austen - Persuasion
At ​twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, "Persuasion" is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.

Angela Carter - The ​Magic Toyshop
This ​crazy world whirled about her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds were mechanical and the few human figures went masked... She was in the night again, and the doll was herself. One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the rural home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she has never met: gentle Aunt Margaret, mute since her wedding day; and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the pleasure garden. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip, who loves only the puppets he creates in his workshop, which are life-sized - and uncannily life-like. The Magic Toyshop established Angela Carter as one of the most imaginative and original writers of the twentieth century.

Jane Austen - Northanger ​Abbey
Harper ​Collins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Catherine's feelings to the highest point of ecstasy.' Considered the most light-hearted and satirical of Austen's novels, Northanger Abbey tells the story of an unlikely young heroine Catherine Morland. While staying in Bath, Catherine meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor who invite her to their family estate, Northanger Abbey. A fan of Gothic Romance novels, naive Catherine is soon letting her imagination run wild in the atmospheric abbey, fuelled by her friendship with the vivacious Isabella Thorpe. It is only when the realities of life set in around her that Catherine's fantastical world is shattered. A coming-of-age novel, Austen expertly parodies the Gothic romance novels of her time and reveals much about her unsentimental view of love and marriage in the eighteenth century.

Ian McEwan - In ​Between the Sheets
Call ​them transcripts of dreams or deadly accurate maps of the tremor zones of the psyche, the seven stories in this collection engage and implicate us in the most fearful ways imaginable.

Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen ​(angol)
Banana ​Yoshimoto's novels have made her a sensation in Japan and all over the world, and Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine of Kitchen, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, she is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who was once his father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale that recalls early Marguerite Duras. Kitchen and its companion story, "Moonlight Shadow," are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.

Joanne Harris - Jigs ​& Reels
Take ​your partners, please. Suburban witches, defiant old ladies, ageing monsters, suicidal Lottery winners, wolf men, dolphin women and middle-aged manufacturers of erotic leatherwear: in these twenty-two short stories from the author of Holy Fools and Five Quarters of the Orange, the miraculous goes hand-in-hand with the mundane, the sour with the sweet, and the beautiful, the grotesque, the seductive and the disturbing are never more than one step away. Jigs & Reels is Joanne Harris’s first collection of short stories. As she says in her foreword, a good short story can startle, ignite, and illuminate…giving you vivid, anarchic glimpses into different worlds, different people. Here, she proves she is as good as her word by creating an eclectic selection of tales for our times that will delight, surprise, entertain and horrify in equal measure. Sly, funny, sometimes provocative but always personal, Jigs & Reels shows a side to Joanne Harris you have never seen before. So go on, be tempted. After all, it's only dancing.

E. M. Forster - Howards ​End
"Only ​connect," Forster's key aphorism, informs this novel about an English country house, Howards End, and its influence on the lives of the wealthy and materialistic Wilcoxes; the cultures, idealistic Schlegel sisters; and the poor bank clerk Leonard Bast. Bringing together people from different classes and nations by way of sympathetic insight and understanding, Howards End eloquently adresses the question "Who shall inherit England?" (Lionel Trilling)

Anthony Burgess - A ​Clockwork Orange
Fifteen-year-old ​Alex and his three friends start an evening's mayhem by hitting an old man, tearing up his books and stripping him of money and clothes. Or rather Alex and his three droogs tolchock an old veck, razrez his books, pull off his outer platties and take a malenky bit of cutter. For Alex's confessions are written in 'nadsat' - a teenage argot of a not-too-distant future. Because of his delinquent excesses, Alex is jailed and made subject to 'Ludovico's Technique', a chilling experiment in Reclamation Treatment... Horror farce? Social Prophecy? Penetrating study of human choice between good and evil? A Clockwork Orange is all three, dazzling proof of Anthony Burgess's vast talents.

James Joyce - Dubliners
'There ​was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.' From a child coming to terms with the death of a priest to a young woman torn between leading an uneventful life in Dublin and fleeing Ireland with her lover, these fifteen stories bring to life the day-to-day existence of ordinary Dubliners in the early years of the twentieth century. With brutal realism, Joyce lays bare the struggles and desires of the Irish middle classes in a compelling and unique exploration of human experience.

Sherman Alexie - Rick Bass - Ha ​azt mondjuk: Phoenix, Arizona / A Disznószemű legendája
Sorozatunk ​olyan vállalkozás, amely két nyelven szól, angolul és magyarul - és kettős célt is szolgál: az egyre többet használt angol nyelv szépirodalmi szintű bemutatása mellett tőlünk távolabb eső, izgalmas, sokszínű kultúrákkal is szeretné megismertetni a magyar olvasót - angol nyelven írt kortárs szerzők novelláin keresztül, egyszerre szolgálva a tanulást és az olvasás örömét. Sherman Alexie a legígéretesebb fiatal indián írók egyike. 1966-ban született, Spokane, illetve Coeur d'Alene indián szülőktől egy rezervátumban. Egész gyerekkorát végigbetegeskedte, ennek köszönhette korai olvasási szenvedélyét. Tanulmányait a Washington State University-n fejezte be, 1991-ben és 1992-ben költészetéért ösztöndíjat kapott. Addigra mintegy 300 verset, esszét, prózai írást publikált. Számos antológiában szerepelt, díjakat nyert, zenével és filmmel is foglalkozik. Egy novelláskötet és két regény áll mögötte. Írásaiban a mai Amerika rezervátumon élő indiánjainak életébe pillanthatunk be. Rick Bass 1958-as, texasi születésű szerző, eredetileg olajkutató mérnök. Jelenleg Montanában él családjával egy farmon, szinte teljesen elzárva a világtól. Tizenkét könyv szerzője, részint prózai írások, részint esszégyűjtemények kerültek ki a keze alól. Számos prominens folyóiratban publikál, és jónéhány mérvadó antológiába válogatták be, köztük a Best American Short Stories-ba. Első, 1998-ba kiadott regényét (Where the Sea Used to Be) tizenkét éven át írta, egyébként vérbeli novellaíró, aki előszerettel ír a természetről.

Angela Carter - A ​kínkamra és más történetek
Angela ​Carter mesét mond. Régen hallott tündérmeséket öltöztet új köntösbe, gyermekkorunkból ismerős figurákat elevenít meg, s a százszor elmondott történetek ismét felkeltik érdeklődésünket, mert a szerző új, gazdagabb értelmet ad nekik. Néha csak csavar egyet a mese fonalán, máskor teljesen új megvilágításba helyezi a történetet. Mestere a környezet költői ábrázolásának. Az erdők, melyekbe elvezeti olvasóját, igazi kelta erdők: sűrűek és titokzatosak, ahol az elővigyázatlan utazóval minden megtörténhet, ahol a mesék száműzött alakjai háborítatlanul élhetik világukat. Akár az ódon kastélyok vastag falai között, ahol az elmaradhatatlan varázstükrök minden titkok tudói. Ebbe a birodalomba vezet a fiatal és romlatlan lelkek útja, mert csak ide, ezekbe a sötét erdőkbe és ezekbe az ősöreg kastélyokba vihetik el a megváltást, hiszen ők a civilizációban már régen csak nevetség tárgyai.

Sylvia Plath - Johnny ​Panic and the Bible of Dreams
"What ​I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.... If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine."-- Sylvia Plath, from Notebooks, February 1956 Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imaginaton. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath.

Ádám Nádasdy - Background ​to English Pronunciation
This ​book is primarily intended for B.A. students in Hungarian higher education training to become teachers of English. It includes much less theory - i.e. much less "linguistics" - than a standard university textbook would, and much more practical material, thought to be helpful for the future teacher. As a practical textbook for Hungarian teacher trainees, it gives linguistic arguments only as background when necessary. It does not contain much of the phonological argumentation that is normally required at university level. The treatment is selective: it concentrates on the difficulties of Hungarian learners, while it often ignores things that are not important from a Hungarian point of view. The three main fields covered are _phonetics_, _phonology_, and _spelling_ (or "letter-to-sound rules"). These contribute about equally to a good pronunciation, and to good pronunciation teaching, therefore they are given about equal weight. There is less emphasis on phonetics proper than traditionally (i.e. less detail of articulation and methods to eliminate a foreign accent), while more than usual is spent on rules of phonology, and even more on letter-to-sound rules. The book uses the Gimson transcription, explaining the logic (and some of the limitations) of that system. There are twelve expositive chapters, serving as a syllabus of a one-term lecture course. "Questions for Revision" are provided at the end of each chapter, and a detailed Bibliography appears at the beginning of the volume. The book is based on British pronunciation (RP).

Angela Carter - Burning ​Your Boats
As ​well as her novels, Angela Carter published four wonderful collections of short stories during her lifetime, and cintributed to several anthologies. In _Burning Your Boats_ all her stories are gathered together in one essential, darkly erotic collection.

John Fowles - The ​Collector
Withdrawn, ​uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is to understand her captor, and so gain her freedom.

Eric Knight - Sam ​Small csodálatos élete
A ​szerző 1942-ben megjelent Sam Small csodálatos élete című elbeszéléskötetét - amellyel első nagy sikerét aratta az angolszász világban - nem kisebb személy ültette át magyarra, mint Szerb Antal. A lazán összefüggő novellafüzér főszereplője Sam Small, a potrohos, kissé együgyű, de a híres angol józan ésszel bőven megáldott, érző szívű, középkorú yorkshire-i kisember, aki faluja és megyéje nemzedékről nemzedékre szálló erényeit, a bátorságot, az igazságszeretetet, a türelmes kitartást testesíti meg. Szegény Sam Small a világ legjámborabb embere volna, két lábbal járna a földön - például fajulának ivójába -, és szépen szeretne éldegélni feltalálói jövedelméből kissé házsártos feleségével, ám a legkülönösebb dolgok esnek meg vele: hol felfedezi, hogy tud repülni, amivel fölforgatja egész New Yorkot; hol "skizoperén" módon meghasad - és megverekszik testté lett "jobbik énjével", mert felesége nem óhajt "bigámiában" élni; hol elcsór egy kuvasz szukát, amelyről kiderül, hogy képes lánnyá változni - az Amerikából éppen betoppanó feleség megrökönyödésére; hol pedig merő véletlenségből nyakon csíp két német kémet... Ezeket a népmesei elemeket őrző, népi anekdotákból táplálkozó elbeszéléseket ízes, vérbő humor és derűs, megértő emberszeretet jellemzi - kicsik és nagyok mulatáságra és okulására egyaránt. A könyv a szerző halálának ötvenedik évfordulójára jelenik meg.

Margaret Atwood - Alias ​Grace (angol)
In ​Alias Grace, bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since The Handmaid's Tale. She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or is she the victim of circumstances?