Superb gift edition, featuring a bumper collection of Blyton's short stories of magic, mystery and adventure.

This is another of Blyton's books that is set during the war years. A family living without Dad who is away at war, goes to spend a holiday near a beach. They meet Ben, a rather strange boy, who loves to pretend to be a smuggler.

A legendary figure among the 'Auden generation' of young writers in the 1930s, Edward Upward continuted writing into his late nineties. This selection of his best short stories spans a literary career of almost eight decades, and was published to celebrate his centenary in 2003. Beginning in 1928 with the fantastical world of Mortmere in The Railway Accident, the stories continue through the era of political engagement in the Thirties to the reflective and poignant studies of old age that have underpinned his revival in the past decade. Together they represent a lifetime of achievement in modern literature.

You will love these riveting and action-filled short stories by the great-grandson of Governor Morris of New York. Excerpt: Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a half-circle of the deadliest, double-damned, orchid-haunted black morass, with a solid wall of insects that bite, rising out of it...