Teenage is that time of life when you are too old for comics and too young for romantic stories. This set of 23 short stories will gladden a teenager’s heart and delight anyone whatever their age may be. Contains a mix of short, medium and long stories to suit the spare time you have. 23 stories strung together with finesse, grace and joy to bring fragrance, cheer, joy and hope back into your lives.

On 7 December 2006, in a Highgate Cemetery drenched with London rain, a Russian was buried within a stone’s throw of the grave of Karl Marx. He was Alexander Litvinenko, Sasha to his friends, a boy from the deep Russian provinces who rose through the ranks of the world’s most feared security service. Litvinenko was the man who denounced murder and corruption in the Russian government, fled from the wrath of the Kremlin, came to London and took the shilling of Moscow’s avowed enemy ... Now he was a martyr, condemned by foes unknown to an agonised death in a hospital bed thousands of miles from home. Martin Sixsmith draws on his long experience as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, and contact with key London-based Russians, to dissect Alexander Litvinenko’s murder. Myriad theories have been put forward since he died, but the story goes back to 2000 when hostilities were declared between the Kremlin and its political opponents. This is a war that has blown hot and cold for over seven years; a war that has pitted some of Russia’s strongest, richest men against the most powerful president Russia has had since Josef Stalin. The Litvinenko File is a gripping, powerful inside account of a shocking act of murder, when Russia’s war with itself spilled over onto the streets of London and made the world take notice.

Come along on a great pirate adventure with hand-picked literary classics and true stories about the legendary outlaws: History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (Captain Charles Johnson) The Book of Buried Treasure The Pirates' Own Book Treasure Island (R. L. Stevenson) Captain Blood (Rafael Sabatini) Sea Hawk (Sabatini) Blackbeard: Buccaneer (R. D. Paine) Pieces of Eight (Le Gallienne) Captain Singleton (Defoe) Gold-Bug (Edgar Allan Poe) Hearts of Three (Jack London) The Dark Frigate (C. B. Hawes) Isle of Pirate's Doom (Robert E. Howard) Swords of Red Brotherhood (Howard) Queen of Black Coast (Howard) Black Vulmea (Howard) Afloat and Ashore (James F. Cooper) Homeward Bound (Cooper) Red Rover (Cooper) Facing the Flag (Jules Verne) Pirate Gow (Daniel Defoe) The King of Pirates (Defoe) The Pirate (Walter Scott) Rose of Paradise (Howard Pyle) Captain Sharkey (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Pirate (Frederick Marryat) Three Cutters (Marryat) Madman and the Pirate (R. M. Ballantyne) The Offshore Pirate (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Martin Conisby's Vengeance (J. Farnol) Coral Island (Ballantyne) Pirate of Panama (W. M. Raine) Under the Waves (Ballantyne) Pirate City (Ballantyne) Gascoyne (Ballantyne) Captain Boldheart (Dickens) The Ways of the Buccaneers (J. Masefield) Master Key (L. Frank Baum) Black Bartlemy's Treasure (J. Farnol) A Man to His Mate (J. Allan Dunn) Tales of the Fish Patrol (Jack London) Barbarossa—King of the Corsairs (E. H. Currey) Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) Jim Davis (J. Masefield) Peter Pan and Wendy (J. M. Barrie) Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas) Ghost Pirates (W. H. Hodgson) The Pagan Madonna (H. MacGrath) A Pirate of the Caribbees (H. Collingwood) The Pirate Island (H. Collingwood) The Devil's Admiral (F. F. Moore) The Pirate of the Mediterranean (W. H. G. Kingston) The Black Buccaneer (Stephen W. Meader) The Third Officer (P. Westerman) Narrative of the Capture of the Ship Derby...

A collection of short stories, poems, and songs for children.

'Hear and attend and listen...' Rudyard Kipling is a supreme master of the short story in English and a poet of brilliant gifts. His energy and inventiveness poured themselves into every kind of tale, from the bleakest of fables to the richest of comedies, and he illuminated every aspect of human behaviour, of which he was a fascinated (and sometimes appalled) observer. This generous selection of stories and poems, first published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series, covers the full range of Kipling's career from the youthful volumes that brought him fame as the chronicler of British India, to the bittersweet fruits of age and bereavement in the aftermath of the First World War. It includes stories such as 'The Man who would be King', 'Mrs Bathurst', and 'Mary Postgate', and poems from Barrack-Room Ballads and other collections. In his introduction and notes Daniel Karlin addresses the controversial political engagement of Kipling's art, and the sources of its imaginative power.

This - as only Norman Collins can tell it - is the story of Stanley Pitts, a Contracts Filing Clerk in the Admiralty, a small man - small in stature, small in ambition and achievement, happy in his work and devoted to his hobby of photography. For Stan himself, his latest failure with the Civil Service Selection Board might not have mattered too much. But it mattered to his wife, Beryl. For Beryl is a social climber, mistress of the house in Kendal Terrace, Crocketts Green with its garden gnomes, its wall-to-wall carpeting, its ivory enamel kitchen fitments and its fridge full of Oven-Fresh Old Style Farm House Cornish Pasties; Beryl, mother of little Marleen with her flaxen ringlets, prospective winner of the Under-Twelves Ballroom Dancing Championship; Beryl, the South London suburban housewife in her Mexican housecoat with the Sun-God buttons. When Stan's tasteful photographic study of "Hoarfrost on Wimbledon Common" wins the Admiralty Division Photographic Competition on the very eve of his expected promotion, never has the future looked brighter for the inhabitants of No. 16. How then did Stan, with his pride in his job and his keen sense of duty, find his way into the dock of No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey? Why was the sentence such a savage one? What became of Beryl? And what part did Mr Cheevers, crime reporter of the Sunday Sun, play in all this? Norman Collins is a master story-teller. Its high comedy and almost unbearable suspense make it a brilliant and unforgettable novel.