Agatha Christie A World of Mystery
The Book of the British Library Exhibition
Edited by Martin Edwards and Lucy Rowland, with a Foreword by Kenneth Branagh
Final cover TBC
Hardback £40
ISBN 978 0 7123 6966 4 352 pages, 264 x 206 mm 200+ colour illustrations Publishing October 2026
Martin Edwards is series consultant for British Library Crime Classics. He is a CWA Diamond Dagger Awardwinning crime writer and president of the Detection Club.
Lucy Rowland works in the Eccles Centre of the British Library and is the Lead Curator for the Agatha Christie Exhibition.
Agatha Christie is the undisputed Queen of Crime; her popularity has remained undiminished since her death 50 years ago. Granted unprecedented access to the Christie Archive, and drawing on the perspectives, experiences and knowledge of a cast of characters from stage, screen and theatre production, writers of crime fiction and Christie experts, this book presents a once-in-ageneration opportunity to delve into the author’s life and work.
From the houses in which she lived to her friends and family, her work in a dispensary in the First World War to her travels in the Middle East, and from real-life events to famous literary icons, the book and the exhibition it accompanies will provide an eclectic tour of Christie’s influences to reveal what inspired her and how she, in turn, inspired a literary movement.
Comprehensively illustrated throughout, the book will include images of first editions of the novels, original notebooks, scripts, and letters to publishers and agents; family photographs, and personal objects such as her typewriter, passports and travel itineraries. Notable contributors include Lucy Foley, Kate Mosse, G T Karber, John Curran, Zoe Wannamaker, Brian Fenty and Caroline Crampton.
Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups
A Collection of Dark Stories by Modern Authors
Edited by Terri Windling
Hardback £18.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5569 8
336 pages, 210 x 149 mm 15 black line illustrations
TITLE DELAYED - DATE TBC
Terri Windling is a writer, editor and folklorist. She has published over 40 books, receiving many fantasy awards and other honours. She has edited fantasy fiction since the 1980s, working with major writers in the field. Terri is a contributor to The Oxford Companion on Fairy Tales, gives talks on aspects of fantasy at The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic (University of Glasgow) and sits on the Advisory Board for The Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction (University of Chichester).
Most people think of fairy tales as stories intended for children, but this is a relatively recent idea. For thousands of years, such tales were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike; and the earliest printed fairy tales in Europe were published for adult readers. These older versions were sensual, bawdy, unflinchingly violent and morally complex. It was largely during the Victorian era that tales were turned into children’s stories, a trend reinforced by Walt Disney’s animation. The banishment of fairy tales to the nursery abruptly changed in the 1970s for two primary reasons: feminist fairy-tale scholars began digging into the history of the stories and Angela Carter published her ground-breaking collection: The Bloody Chamber (1979). This set off a whole literary movement of writers re-working classic tales in wild, witty and wonderful ways.
Terri Windling gathers together some of the best adult fairy tale re-tellings published in the last five decades: 15 stories in a range of moods and styles, dark and bright; horrific and funny; sensual, stark and startling. Authors include Angela Carter, Christopher Barzak, Patricia A McKillip, Amal ElMohtar, Nalo Hopkinson, Tanith Lee, Emma Donoghue and Susanna Clarke.
Wuthering Heights
A Novel in Two Volumes
The British Library First Edition Facsimile
Emily Brontë
Two-volume facsimile in a presentation box with a facsimile of Emily’s personal copy of Poems, and two loose-leaf poems reproduced from her personal notebooks
£125
ISBN 978 0 7123 6901 5
Approx. 900 pages, (box) 266 x 167 mm
Colour facsimile reproduction
Publishing September 2026
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) wrote just the single novel Wuthering Heights, which was accepted for joint publication with her sister’s novel, Agnes Grey, by Thomas Newby. Critics were initially hostile, describing it as too savage and clumsy in construction. Since then it has gained recognition as one of the finest novels in English.
Emily Brontë’s disturbing tale of obsessive love and revenge has haunted readers since its first publication in 1847. To commemorate the enduring appeal of, and fascination with, this classic novel, the British Library is presenting a facsimile of the first edition copy held in its archives. Two volumes are combined in a sumptuous cloth-bound clamshell box with a facsimile of a particularly special item from the collections. This is Emily’s own copy of Poems, a collection she published with her sisters in 1846, prior to the success of Wuthering Heights. The unique quality of this copy is revealed in the author’s handwritten notes throughout. It is signed and dated by her on the title page.
Brontë fans will now be able to own facsimile first editions of the two creative works Emily published during her short life – essentially her complete works – faithfully reproduced and presented together in a gorgeous box with gold foil details. The collection is rounded off with facsimiles of looseleaf pages from her two manuscript poetry notebooks (also held in the Library collections) that show earlier versions of a couple of poems that were selected to appear in Poems.
Mapping Britain’s Railways
The Design History of a Nation on Track
Mark Ovenden and Andrew Smithers
Final cover TBC Hardback £25
ISBN 978 0 7123 5589 6 176 pages, 240 x 220 mm 200+ colour maps and artworks Publishing August 2026
Mark Ovenden is a world-famous, and bestselling, authority on transport mapping. Mark has a broadcast career spanning 40 years and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Andrew Smithers has been the designer of Britain’s National Rail map in its multiple forms since 2009 as well as other maps for Network Rail. Andrew runs the popular website Project Mapping.
Featuring hundreds of bold, brightly coloured map images from the British Library and private collections, this book traces the evolution of schematic railway mapping from the 1820s, before Britain’s huge train network was even built, through to the modern era’s digital mapping. The volume features the work of celebrated designers and artists including Harry Beck, Margaret Calvert, Gerry Barney, George Dow, Reginald Montague Lander and Bernard Slatter, and reproduces beautiful graphics and cartography originally published by Bartholomews, Bradshaws and Stanfords on both national and regional scales. Brimming with fascinating, stylish and previously unseen images, Mapping Britain’s Railways shows why designing comprehensible diagrams for complex systems is key to helping passengers find their way and how the most aesthetically pleasing become artworks in their own right.
The authors have an unparalleled pedigree of involvement in collecting, promoting and creating railway maps over several decades.
A History of Roads in 100 Maps
Jeremy Black
The History of Roads in 100 Maps
Jeremy Black
Hardback £40
ISBN 978 0 7123 6936 7
288 pages, 280 x 220 mm
140 colour and b/w illustrations
Publishing October 2026
Jeremy Black is an internationally acclaimed historian and Professor of History at Exeter University. He is the author of some 200 books, including most recently for the British Library, The History of Railways in 100 Maps (2024).
The major form of travel throughout history has been roadways. And while humanity has traversed these roadways on foot, by horse or in mechanical vehicles, there is the common theme of a particular route; a right of way differentiating the roadway from adjoining countryside. This book provides the first unique survey of the mapping of roads, exploring the development of these most essential of societies’ arteries.
Taking as its principal research source one of the world’s greatest historical map collections at the British Library, this volume commences with Konrad Peutinger’s celebrated map of 4th Century Roman roads but, as the print revolution develops, we are soon transported along pilgrim routes, across conqueror’s maps, along early Modern post-roads and via the beautiful cartography of Japan’s 1666 Tōkaidō map. A History of Roads in 100 Maps also explores the early maps of Automobile Clubs, heralding the dramatic revolution motorised transport brought to roads, and concludes with a similarly seismic shift, a century later, as the birth of the information superhighway reinvented the road map for ever.
Tara of the Kings
Ancient Irish Myths and Legends Retold
Gerry Smyth
TARA of the KINGS
Ancient Irish Myths and Legends Retold
Final cover TBC
Hardback £30
ISBN 978 0 7123 6951 0 352 pages, 234 x 156 mm 150+ colour illustrations Publishing October 2026
Gerry Smyth is originally from Dublin but is now a resident of Hoylake in the north west of England, acting as Professor of Irish Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He has published widely on various aspects of Irish music and literature. He is the author of Serpent, Siren, Maelstrom & Myth: Sea Stories and Folktales from Around the World, a mythology collection published by the British Library in 2023. Gerry is also a playwright, actor, composer and musician.
Irish mythology comprises a rich and diverse body of stories accumulated over thousands of years in a variety of oral and literary forms. The stories reach back into pre-history, telling of the island’s ‘original’ inhabitants and their relationships with a series of invading races throughout what is assumed to be the neolithic, bronze and iron age periods. Preserved in memory by professional castes of druids and bards, the stories began to be written down towards the end of the first millennium by monkish clerics keen to establish a narrative of Irish history culminating in Christian hegemony.
This new collection re-tells stories from the canon as simply and as accessibly as possible to win a new audience for this wonderful tradition. These stories will be accompanied by commentaries which introduce readers to some of the historical and literary issues attending the survival of the stories, all beautifully illustrated with images from the printed collections of the British Library.
Also available
Hotcockles and Twittle-Twattle
Words in Dr Johnson’s Dictionary That We Don’t Know
Edited by Liz Drury, with an Introduction by Joseph Drury
H OTCOC K LE S
TWITTL E - TWATTLE &
EDITED BY LIZ DRURY WORDS IN Dr Johnson’s Dictionary THAT WE DON’T K NOW
Final cover TBC
Hardback £12.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6916 9
144 pages, 198 x 129 mm 70 engravings Publishing September 2026
Liz Drury is an experienced editor, mainly working for Yale University.
Joseph Drury is Associate Professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, and a literary scholar of 18th century Britain.
Have you ever loaned a bedpresser (a heavy lazy fellow) a muckender (handkerchief)? Or felt your mind skimbleskamble (wander) in the company of an abecedarian (one who teaches the alphabet)?
With the publication of all 2,300 pages of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary in 1755, the English language irrevocably changed. Suddenly words were standardised: listed with fixed grammar, spelling, and neat applications. But hidden inside these two colossal volumes is a smaller, forgotten dictionary of words that have since fallen out of vogue. From the hilarious to the arcane, Liz Drury has compiled the best words from Johnson’s dictionary that have (justly or unjustly) been forgotten.
Inspired by the British Library’s first edition of Johnson’s dictionary, this playful and engaging lexicon is the perfect gift for any wordsmith looking to play the Dictionary Game or simply expand their vocabulary with a touch of Enlightenment.
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
Art, Word, War
Edited with a new Afterword by Claire
New Edition
Hardback £35
ISBN 978 0 7123 6965 7
432 pages, 280 x 220 mm
140 colour illustrations
Publishing August 2026
Claire Breay is Head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library. In 2018 she curated the blockbuster Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition.
Joanna Story is Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester.
Breay
and Joanna Story
In 2018, the British Library staged a landmark exhibition, the largest ever to deal exclusively with Anglo-Saxon England. Presenting over 180 objects, the exhibition and its book were a critical and commercial success and led the way for a reappraisal of AngloSaxon culture. This expanded edition of the bestselling exhibition book includes new retrospective material on the influence of this exhibition and subsequent discoveries in the field.
The Anglo-Saxon period stretches from the arrival of Germanic groups on British shores in the early 5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. During these centuries, the English language was used and written down for the first time, pagan populations were converted to Christianity, and the foundations of the kingdom of England were laid.
This richly illustrated book presents Anglo-Saxon England as the home of a highly sophisticated artistic and political culture, deeply connected with its continental neighbours. Leading specialists in early medieval history, literature and culture engage with the unique, original evidence from which we can piece together the story of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
The Little Book of Fairies
Carolyne Larrington
Hardback £12.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5574 2 96 pages, 190 x 150 mm 40+ colour illustrations Publishing March 2026
Carolyne Larrington is emerita professor of medieval European literature at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Trolls and Dragons in the Little Books series. Other recent books include All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones and The Norse Myths that Shape the Way We Think
In our modern age fairies are diminutive, winged spirits associated with the innocence of childhood or the brooding heroes of popular romantasy novels. But fairies have taken many guises. To the early Britons they were fallen angels or relegated pagan gods, denizens of a strange world parallel to our own. In whispered tales, they can be found orchestrating shipwrecks, kidnapping musicians for their secret revels, and luring human lovers into the greenwood with their seductive beauty and beguiling promises.
Their changeability has made them mainstays of the fantasy genre: at once capricious and ethereal, wielding arcane laws to reward and exploit human nature, and doling out blessings and curses in equal measure. From protective fairy godmothers to uncanny fairy changelings, and from Tam Lin to Tinker Bell, this shimmering guide unravels the plentiful tales of the faerie folk.
The Little Book of Unicorns
Juliette Wood
Hardback £12.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5579 7
96 pages, 190 x 150 mm 40+ colour illustrations
Publishing April 2026
Juliette Wood is a professional folklorist and Celtic scholar. She has been President of The Folklore Society and currently teaches at Cardiff University. In addition to TV and radio work on folklore topics and popular medievalism, she has written about Celtic fairy tradition, mythical beasts and the Holy Grail.
The unicorn was an elusive creature originally thought to exist at the edge of the known world. Classical scripts, travellers’ tales and theological speculation created fanciful descriptions of its appearance and behaviour, but the graceful white horse with a single spiral horn remains its most enduring and beloved form.
Rare and precious, the unicorn grew in cultural significance. To the Western medieval world, it became a sacred symbol of religious and courtly love; its horn acquired powerful healing qualities. Elsewhere in the world, the unicorn legend reappears in tales of similar mythical creatures, embodied in the auspicious Chinese qilin and the karkadann of Islamic poetry. In the 21st century we have created our own unicorns – in fantasy literature and gaming – with their own lore, and the ‘animal that never was’ shows no sign of disappearing.
The Philosophy of Perfume
Alice du Parcq
Final cover TBC Hardback £12.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6931 2 112 pages, 200 x 130 mm 30+ colour illustrations Publishing October 2026
Alice du Parcq is a multi-awardwinning fragrance writer and journalist published in leading media titles, including Vogue, Glamour, Sunday Times Style and The Telegraph. She also works as a perfume presenter, public speaker and host. She has built a loyal following of 30,000 perfume lovers across Instagram and Substack, sharing fragrance knowledge and insight. Since 2021 she has run ‘Desert Island Sprit’, an Instagram Live Show discussing favourite perfumes with guest experts and celebrities.
Perfume is intoxicating: a wearable scent journey, a cultural touchpoint, a piece of art and design, and a deep expression of individuality. You can be nine or ninety, tall or small, wearing simple rosewater or a rare ambergris-infused concoction and your scent will still be your own. From its ancient, ceremonial roots to the starry allure of modern celebrity fragrances, perfume has long been associated with the almost-alchemical power to transform and bewitch. Perfumes have defined what an era’s luxury, femininity and allure smell like, while even a lingering scent of someone’s signature perfume can be enough to send our minds reeling back through our memories. Nowadays, perfume has found an active online community of connoisseurs ready to scour the earth for niche, gate-kept and unattainable scents.
In The Philosophy of Perfume, fragrance writer and journalist, Alice du Parcq, takes us on an opulent journey through the mysterious world of perfume. The book includes chapters on perfume’s history, the figures who have acted as perfume’s great muses, the psychology of scent, the obsessive search for ever-rarer ingredients, notes on dissecting scents, the most iconic bottle designs and how to find your perfect scent.
The Philosophy of Sheds
Alex Johnson
Whether static or rotating, on wheels or afloat, sheds remain a beacon of ergonomic simplicity. Maybe it’s nostalgia for the ancient huts from which humanity evolved, or the sense of calm produced by shutting yourself away in one, but we have always found contentment in our sheds. They are repositories for our inner lives: cheap, multifunctional spaces ready to be filled with our passions, tools and ideas.
Proud shedworker Alex Johnson takes us on a tour of such microarchitecture and details some of the big ideas these huts have birthed, from inventions and philosophies to literature and art.
Hardback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5584 1
112 pages, 200 x 130 mm
30+ mono illustrations
Publishing May 2026
The Philosophy of Vinyl
Travis Elborough
This book celebrates all the rituals of records: the sleeves, all the rites of needles, fluff and cleaning cloths. There are enough nuggets of technical information to satisfy hi-fi enthusiasts and plenty of quirky trivia on classic records, labels, recording studios, pressing plants and cover artwork to delight the novice and anyone filled with the nostalgia of a youth spent carefully turning the disc to play the other side.
It will send readers back to their records with renewed love and affection, and find fresh ways to revel in their 45s, EPs, 12-inches and LPs.
Hardback £12.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6980 0
112 pages, 200 x 130 mm
30+ mono illustrations
Publishing September 2026
The Golden Age of Classic Crime Quiz Book
300 Questions, Puzzles and Mysteries Inspired by the Best of Detective Fiction
Kate Jackson
Final cover TBC
Flexibound £14.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6921 3
224 pages, 216 x 143 mm 40+ colour illustrations
Publishing October 2026
Kate Jackson is the creator and expert behind crossexaminingcrime.com. She is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and her book How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel was shortlisted for the H R F Keating award for Best Biographical or Critical Book Related to Crime Fiction 2023.
You may know your Marple from your Maigret, your Christie from your Chandler and your Wimsey from your Wexford, but just how much of a real classic crime expert are you?
This beautifully illustrated and painstakingly researched book will tax your grey cells to the limit with 50 quizzes made up of questions all about the writers, detectives and – of course – the victims from over 100 years of literature and on big and small screens. Rounds include Unusual Murder Methods (boiling, jellyfish, ice!), Agatha Christie’s Deadliest Rooms (you’ll be dying to find out) and European Crime Fiction (featuring Wallander, Wahlöö and Warsaw). There are multiple-choice quizzes, picture rounds and enough bonus questions to keep even the most rabid reader and sofa sleuth challenged and entertained.
Also available
The Classic Crime Companion
Martin Edwards
Final cover TBC
Hardback £24.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6995 4
320 pages, 234 x 156 mm 45+ colour illustrations
Publishing September 2026
Martin Edwards is series consultant for British Library Crime Classics. He is a CWA Diamond Dagger Awardwinning crime writer and president of the Detection Club.
This brand-new guide is a muchexpanded, revised and updated edition of The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books – winner of the Macavity award from Mystery Readers International for best book about the crime genre and shortlisted for four other awards in Britain and the US. Now drawing on 125 works of vintage crime, acclaimed author and editor Martin Edwards tells the story of how crime developed as a literary genre in Britain during the first half of the 20th century.
Over the past ten years, there has been a massive increase in enthusiasm for vintage crime fiction and a corresponding desire to learn more about it. And as the Crime Classics series demonstrates, the scope of vintage mysteries is incredibly diverse. The main aim of detective stories is to entertain, but the best cast a light on human behaviour and display literary accomplishment as well as ambition. And there is another reason why millions of modern readers appreciate classic crime fiction. Even unpretentious detective stories, written for unashamedly commercial reasons, can give us clues to the lives that people lived in the past, and help us better to understand a long-vanished world.
New Edition
The Santa Klaus Murder
Mavis Doriel Hay
Final cover TBC
Hardback £14.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6946 6 282 pages, 216 x 138 mm Publishing October 2026
Mavis Doriel Hay (1894–1979) was a novelist of the golden age of British crime fiction. Her three detective novels were published in the 1930s and are now rare and highly collectable books. She was an expert on rural handicraft and wrote several books on the subject.
Also available
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 longstanding 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 halfhidden truths, one startling fact comes to light: there was not one Santa Klaus at Flaxmere, but two.
Sky High
Michael Gilbert
For the villagers of Brimberley, the worst thing looming on the horizon is the chance of being outshone by the rival village choir – that is, until Brimberley’s lead tenor is blown up in his home by an explosion that rocks the whole community. The motorcycling choir leader Liz enlists her son and a retired general to help investigate the shocking murder.
First published in 1955, this classic village mystery showcases Gilbert’s clever plotting, sharp humour, and ability to blow the reader’s expectations sky high.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5594 0
256 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing January 2026
The Double Turn
Carol Carnac
At the reclusive painter Adrian Delafield’s home, tension has been simmering away and two tenants have been found sprawled at either end of the staircase – one seriously injured, the other dead. The windows and doors were all secured from the inside, and yet Inspector Julian Rivers suspects a murder – a seemingly impossible crime.
Exploring art-world secrets, religious mania and family ties, this rare mystery novel by one of the great writers of classic British detective fiction makes its longawaited return to print.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6900 8
240 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing February 2026
Airing in a Closed Carriage
Joseph Shearing
When Tyler meets his end from an overdose of arsenic – the drug which he prescribed himself as a kind of panacea – his wife May is dragged into a trial coloured by the public’s hunger to paint her as a beguiling murderess.
Based on the real-life trial of Florence Maybrick in 1899, this novel unfolds the gripping tale of a case clouded by sensation, its unsolved mysteries and the untold story of the human being at its heart. First published in 1943 and filmed as The Mark of Cain in 1947, this edition marks the return of a classic.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6910 7 496 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing March 2026
Jack on the Gallows Tree
Leo Bruce
Senior History Master Carolus Deene has a troubling hobby as a criminologist and sometime sleuth. Even more troublingly, he has jaundice. But with the papers shouting of a crimewave sweeping the seaside resorts of England, sending him to the coast to recover is too risky for the Headmaster – he will be far away from trouble in the inland spa resort of Buddington.
But before long Buddington is rocked when two elderly women are found dead on the same night each with a white lily by their side. Perhaps things are looking up for the curious Deene?
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6920 6 256 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing April 2026
The Unicorn Murders
Carter Dickson
A legendary thief and his arch-rival in the Sûreté Nationale compete to take ownership of the mysterious ‘unicorn’. When a storm forces an emergency landing, they take refuge at the Chateau de l’Ile, where ex-spy Kenwood Blake and Henry Merrivale get caught up in events. Cut off by floodwaters, the guests are drawn into a deadly battle of wits, as an apparently impossible murder reveals the true secret of the unicorn.
Carter Dickson’s brilliantly intricate mystery remains a testament to his unique talent for wrangling audacious levels of devilishness into a masterpiece.
Paperback
£10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6930 5
256 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing May 2026
Puzzles
of the Parish
Short
Tales of Ministers, Murder and Mystery
Edited by Martin Edwards
A pernicious parson outwits the thieves of a priceless chalice from the parish treasury. A beloved vicar contemplates a perfect crime when a blackmailer comes knocking.
Gathered here in this new collection are some of the greatest mystery tales in which the tendrils of crime steal into the churchyard, featuring clergymen and nuns as victims, amateur sleuths and perpetrators of the devil’s work. This anthology delivers cosy brainteasers and fiendishly fashioned stories with a sting in the tail.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6940 4
288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing June 2026
The Magic-Lantern Murders
Carter Dickson
A fiendish, twisty-turny serving of ‘impossible crime’ that sees the return of characters Kenwood Blake, Evelyn Cheyne and Sir Henry Merrivale from The Unicorn Murders, this novel sees ex-secret agent Blake’s wedding plans interrupted as he is summoned by spymaster Merrivale to Devon to take part in an undercover operation – the starting point for a breathtaking chase around the West Country. Ideal for those who love John Dickson Carr and Christianna Brand, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6955 8 304 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing July 2026
The Party at No 5
Shelley Smith
A tense, chilling story of two women trapped in a toxic, interdependent relationship that culminates in murder. This is the first novel by Shelley Smith, one of the great ‘lost’ authors of the 1940s and 1950s, in the series. Her writing stands out for its vivid yet nuanced characterisation, her mastery of plotting and her evocation of English suburban life. It’s perfect for those who love a mix of crime and psychological suspense, such as Josephine Tey’s To Love and Be Wise and Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone as well as None of This is True by Lisa Jewell and The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6970 1 240 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing August 2026
Eat, Drink and Be Murdered
A Food and Drink Anthology
Edited by Martin Edwards
This mouth-watering feast of short stories includes tales of mushroom murders, brown bread spread with bacillus botulinus, and tales in which the identity of killers is proved by a purchase of fillet steak or an inexpert knowledge of fine wines. This new collection, which includes an introduction by Martin Edwards, features some of the greatest mystery tales from the golden age of detective fiction to be based around food and drink. It includes stories from the likes of Dorothy L Sayers, Michael Gilbert and E C Bentley, and is sure to leave readers hungry and wanting more.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6985 5
352 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing September 2026
Call a Hearse
A Lost Christmas Murder Mystery
Jonathan Stagge
There are just a few days to go till Christmas in snowy upstate New York and Dr Hugh Westlake is looking forward to enjoying the festive season with his daughter when a young woman arrives at his surgery. Asking for sleeping pills, she recounts that she’s being stalked by a New York City taxi – the same car that drove two of her friends to their deaths. And so begins the ultimate Christmas murder mystery, ideal for those who love festive crime stories such as Envious Casca by Georgette Heyer, The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie.
Final cover TBC
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6941 1
416 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing October 2026
Sweet Revenge
Susan Gilruth
From the moment that Liane Crauford and her husband arrive in the Cornish fishing village of Poltruan, it’s obvious something is wrong. And when Sandra Cazalet, the beautiful but spoilt stepdaughter of Liane’s friend, is found dead, everyone in Poltruan is a suspect. Thankfully, detective Hugh Gordon, who’s on holiday in the village, is on hand to start asking questions – aided by Liane. Can the unlikely duo unravel the mystery – or will their growing feelings for each other get in the way? Sweet Revenge is the first novel by Death in Ambush author Susan Gilruth.
Final cover TBC
Paperback
£10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6971 8
480 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing November 2026
When the Devil Was Sick
Carol Carnac
Clere House is a place rife with superstition, and every Lammas Night a meal is laid out there for a ghostly monk, thought to haunt the building. But this year at Lammastide, the phantom’s repast is accompanied by Mrs Saint Claire, owner of the property, falling to her death. Then another corpse is discovered at Clere House – that of a man in monk’s costume. The gripping, page-turning story draws on superstition and the supernatural, and is ideal for those who love country-house murder mysteries.
Final cover TBC
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6986 2
288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing December 2026
Chill Tidings
Dark Tales of the Christmas Season
Edited by Tanya Kirk
Final cover TBC
Hardback £14.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6956 5 224 pages, 210 x 149 mm Publishing October 2026
Tanya Kirk is Librarian at St John’s College, Cambridge. She has edited four volumes of ghostly Christmas stories for the Tales of the Weird series, and co-curated both the Terror and Wonder and Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibitions at the British Library.
In this gliterring new clothbound edition of the beloved Christmas chiller, the gifts are unwrapped, the feast has been consumed and the fire is well fed – but the ghosts are still hungry.
Chill Tidings ushers in a host of ghastly phantoms and otherworldly intruders bent on ruining, or partaking in, the most wonderful time of the year. With classic tales from Algernon Blackwood, Elizabeth Bowen, Charlotte Riddell and L P Hartley, jostling with rare pieces from the sleeping periodicals and literary magazines of the British Library collections, it’s time to open the door and let the real festivities begin.
Welcome to this beautiful new edition of the beloved collection of Christmas nightmares that have been scaring readers since 2020. With a new afterword by Tanya Kirk, this book celebrates the timeless tradition of cosying up during the cold winter nights whilst these dark tales send a chill down your spine.
Special Edition Hardback
Bird of Ill Omen
The Gothic Tales of Catherine Crowe
Edited by Ruth Heholt
During the Victorian era, Catherine Crowe became a household name on par with Dickens for her innovative retellings of ‘true’ ghost stories, in which she treated readers to glimpses of the ‘night side of nature’ – until her reputation was tarnished following a public breakdown. Seeking to restore Crowe’s place in the canon of strange and ghostly fiction, Ruth Heholt presents some of her best tales of ‘real’ phenomena, alongside her darker Gothic stories. Together, they demonstrate Crowe’s singular gifts as a master storyteller.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5599 5 288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing January 2026
The Black Fox
A Novel of the Eighteen-Seventies
Gerald
Heard, with an introduction by
Aaron Worth
When Canon Throcton is passed over for promotion to Dean of the Cathedral in favour of his rival, a faint knell of disorder rings out over the Close. Throcton nurses his pride with the invocation of a simple curse. A dark force answers the call – something bestial and immortal. Which drags pestilential vengeance and corruption to the very heart of the Cathedral.
First published in 1950, Heard’s classic novel of occult horror and religious turmoil in 1870s Britain remains a key text of midcentury weird fiction, a brooding masterpiece oozing with inexorable dread.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6905 3 288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing February 2026
The New Flesh
Tales of Shapeshifters and Strange Transformations
Edited by Mark Morris
Tracing the quintessential horror concept of the strange transformation from the Victorian era through to the modern day, horror writer, expert and enthusiast Mark Morris presents a thrilling selection of metamorphic tales. Including stories of bestial shapeshifters such as the tigermen, fox spirits and werewolves of world folklore, this collection also presents some of the weirder shifts of the horror genre, where a flatworm masquerades as a boy, a girl becomes one with a bridge, and a babe-in-arms and her beekeeper father come to reflect the creatures of the hives.
Paperback
£10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6915 2
288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing March 2026
The Luck of the Town
Marion Fox, with an introduction by Douglas A Anderson
Where a Roman settlement once sprawled along the banks of a river in northern England, a town of brick and steel now stands. Caught in a 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. The skeleton of a woman buried with a tablet bearing a cryptic message is unearthed. And as the 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.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6925 1
288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing April 2026
Beasts with Five Fingers
Strange Tales of Disembodied Hands
Edited by Brian J Showers
Seeking to trace the origins of the haunted hand story and to showcase its influence on writers of weird fiction from the 1920s to the modern day, horror expert Brian J Showers presents a new collection of classics from the well-thumbed oeuvres of Sheridan Le Fanu and Guy de Maupassant through to miniature masterpieces from the hands of Jean Ray, Mark Valentine and many more. The collection features ghostly hands, hands possessed by demons and unexplained hands where no hands should be, so prepare to enter a world of nightmares run amok as the vice-grip of terror takes hold.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6935 0 288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing May 2026
Haunted Yorkshire
Ghostly Tales from God’s Own County
Edited by Elizabeth Dearnley
Along with its great swathes of natural moorland beauty and cities steeped in folklore and history, Yorkshire has a rich literary heritage, populated by innumerable phantoms, faeries and witches, as well as local legends like the barghest (a death-heralding ghostdog). Gathering the greatest stories of the weird and uncanny set among the breathtaking Dales, rugged coast and bustling towns of God’s Own County, Elizabeth Dearnley presents a new collection of chilling tales, with fresh research exploring examples of Yorkshire’s uniquely haunting influence on horror literature.
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6945 9 256 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing June 2026
Danse Macabre
Strange Stories from France
Edited by Mike Ashley
Spurned lovers return from the grave to haunt their partners, ghost ships materialise on the sea, men’s hands take on a life of their own… Welcome to the unsettling world of the French weird. The first Tales of the Weird collection to focus on tales in translation, it features chilling short stories from the likes of Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, George Langelaan, Alain Doremieux and Nathalie Henneberg, and is ideal for those who love our location-specific anthologies Phantoms of Kernow, Eerie East Anglia and Cornish Horrors.
Final cover TBC
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6960 2
352 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing July 2026
The Black Mirror
Winifred Duke, with an introduction by Johnny Mains
An eerie, time-slip tale of identical crimes across two different centuries – and of one man who exists in both eras. When a string of pearls is stolen from a hotel guest, suspicion falls on Ann, an 18-yearold maid. Two hundred years previously, a rich traveller stays at an inn in the same town, where she, too, is relieved of her pearls. And Patience, an 18-year-old serving girl, is blamed. Neither woman is guilty, but it will take some very strange occurrences to prove their innocence. Ideal for fans of creepy, dual-timeline mysteries.
Final cover TBC
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6975 6
352 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing August 2026
Fiendish Felines
Twisted Tales of Uncanny Cats
Edited by Janette Leaf
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. They 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 20th century tales from renowned authors Dorothy L Sayers, E F Benson and Gans T Field.
Final cover TBC
Paperback
£10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6906 0
384 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing September 2026
Terror Australis
Dark Tales from Down Under
Edited by James Doig
Tales of the Weird takes a trip to the southern hemisphere to experience the horrors of the New World, where age-old elements of the weird tale are moulded afresh to a harsh new environment. The haunted house is no longer a rambling manor, but a rundown homestead; the ancient wood, the lair of creatures from folklore, becomes the hot, fly-infested bush; and the windswept moor is the endless outback with its blood-red sands. Featuring stories by authors of both European and Aboriginal heritage, this is ideal for those who love contemporary Australian horror fiction by Angela Slatter.
Final cover TBC
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6961 9 352 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing October 2026
TERROR AUSTRALIS
DARK TALES FROM DOWN UNDER
EDITED BY JAMES DOIG
A Walk on the Weird Side
The Sinister Shorter Fiction of
Robert Westall
Edited by Fiona Cameron
The Unwelcome
Claude Seignolle
Known to those who grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s for his unsettling children’s novels such as The Scarecrows, The Creature in the Dark and The Machine Gunners, Robert Westall looms large over many a British childhood. But he was just as proficient and prolific when it came to short fiction – and sometimes a lot more terrifying. The new collection brings together several of his most chilling stories from long-forgotten collections such as The Haunting of Chas McGill, Ghosts and Journeys, and Demons and Shadows, ready to induce nightmares anew.
Final cover TBC
Paperback
£10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6976 3
352 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing November 2026
In France’s rural Sologne region a century ago, when witchcraft was just as acceptable to its people as any modern scientific advances, sixteen-year-old Jeanne is out of control – burning hayricks and playing her lovers off against each other with terrible consequences – but can she really be blamed when a sense of evil seems to linger around her family like mist over the local marsh? Might it be due to the statue her father unearthed while ploughing? Unpublished in English since the 1960s, this novel is perfect for lovers of Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley and Bluff by Francine Toon.
Final cover TBC
Paperback £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6981 7
288 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing December 2026
SINISTER SHORTER FICTION OF ROBERT WESTALL
EDITED BY FIONA CAMERON
Shadows Over Cymru
Uncanny Stories of the Welsh Weird
Edited by Aaron Worth
Hardback £16.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6950 3 288 pages, 210 x 149 mm Publishing May 2026
Aaron Worth is professor of Rhetoric at Boston University. He introduced and edited the Tales of the Weird anthologies Randalls Round, The Night Wire, Out of the Past and Spores of Doom and was the author of Imperial Media, a study of how advances in media and technology shaped the British literary imagination in the late 19th century.
I looked down and saw the pure white mist tracking the outline of the river like a shroud… I saw under a grey sky a country that was still all mystery.
From the peaks of Eryri to hidden valleys and haunted mines, the storied landscapes of Wales have inspired centuries of myth and folklore. Over time, these tales of the unexplained and the Otherworld have formed a unique strain of weird fiction.
Delving into this rich vein of uncanny literature, Aaron Worth returns with twenty tales that tell of eerie encounters with ghosts, dragons, fairies, sin-eaters, Mabinogion -inspired sorcerers and primeval gods.
With classics by Dylan Thomas and Arthur Machen alongside rarities from Margiad Evans, Christianna Brand and many more, this volume invites you to tread the paths of a Cymru overcast by the shadow of the strange.
The Show Goes On
Strange Stories of Ramsey
Edited by Jeremy Dyson
Campbell
Final cover TBC
Hardback £16.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 6911 4
384 pages, 210 x 149 mm
Publishing September 2026
To celebrate the eightieth birthday of one of Britain’s greatest living horror writers, Jeremy Dyson (of The League of Gentlemen fame) selects his favourite short stories from all stages of his literary hero’s career. Ramsey Campbell is a huge influence on modern authors of weird fiction such as Adam Nevill, Grady Hendrix, Poppy Z Brite and Joe Hill – as well as Dyson himself – and the stories included here, which range from the 1970s to the 2000s, are every bit as terrifying as when they were first published.
Stories for Lovers
Margaret Atwood, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Taylor and many more
Paperback with flaps £10.99
ISBN 978 0 71235 553 7
224 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing January 2026
This new anthology brings together the creative minds of:
Margaret Atwood
Virginia Woolf
Elizabeth Taylor
E M Delafield
Ling Shuhua
Dorothy Parker
Malachi Whitaker
Richmal Crompton
Carol Shields and more
Fall head over heels with this collection of unconventional and heartfelt romances that will leave you longing for more. From icons of feminist literature to forgotten Chinese modernists, these women writers chart evolutions of love across lifetimes, from the first flush of youth to growing old together.
Women writers of the 20th century had a complex relationship with romantic fiction, at once limited and legitimised by the often denigrated category of ‘love story’. From sneaking out of the house to go on tentative first dates to honeymoon bliss and chance meetings on trains, the heady rush of falling in love infuses the stories in this collection. But there are few fairy-tale endings here: a woman shares the gothic tale of her first love, the rekindling of an old flame is complicated by the baggage of two lifetimes, and a musician conducts an extramarital affair with calculated precision.
The Spring House
Cynthia Asquith, with a Preface by Joanna Quinn
Paperback with flaps £10.99
ISBN 978 0 7123 5504 9 304 pages, 190 x 130 mm
Publishing June 2026
Cynthia Asquith (1887–1960) was an author and socialite, best known for her supernatural stories and close friendships with prominent authors such as D H Lawrence and J M Barrie. The Spring House was her first novel. She also wrote biographies and children’s books and edited a well-known anthology of supernatural stories called The Ghost Book. In 1910 she married Herbert Dixon Asquith, the son of Prime Minister H H Asquith.
It is 1915, and Miranda Gray is spending the war on the other side of the Atlantic to her Canadian husband. Staying with her eccentric relatives and young son at her family’s stately home, Star Cross, Miranda struggles to find her wartime role. Is she the stoic wife of a distant military man, the duty-bound nurse, the promiscuous society hostess, reluctant muse to a pacifist poet, a mother, a sister, a daughter, or some amalgamation of all? Gradually, as the war brings death and destruction to those closest to her, Miranda is offered a glimpse of something beyond these stilted roles – a chance at real love.
The Spring House artfully balances humour and devastation; at once a deftly written psychological portrait and a social document revealing the slow birth of the 20th century and the new woman. Republished for the first time since its original release in 1936, this edition features an original preface by Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre.
Also coming in October 2026, Stories for the 12 Days of Christmas
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Front cover: A 1939 studio shot of Agatha Christie by Angus McBean (Print courtesy: The Christie Archive Trust)
Specifications, prices and covers in this catalogue are subject to change prior to publication.
Catalogues of backlist Non-fiction and fiction in the British Library Crime Classics, Tales of the Weird, Gilded Nightmares and Women Writers series may be viewed alongside this catalogue online at issuu.com/bl_publishing