Discover the captivating treasures buried in the British Library's archives. Largely inaccessible to the public until now, these enduring crime classics were written in the golden age of detective fiction. With an introduction by Martin Edwards and featuring the Dickson Carr short story "The Shadow of the Goat" We are thrilled to welcome John Dickson Carr into the Crime Classics series with his first novel, a brooding locked room mystery in the gathering dusk of the French capital. In the smoke-wreathed gloom of a Parisian salon, Inspector Bencolin has summoned his allies to discuss a peculiar case. A would-be murderer, imprisoned for his attempt to kill his wife, has escaped and is known to have visited a plastic surgeon. His whereabouts remain a mystery, though with his former wife poised to marry another, Bencolin predicts his return. Sure enough, the Inspector's worst suspicions are realized when the beheaded body of the new suitor is discovered in a locked room of the salon, with no apparent exit. Bencolin sets off into the Parisian night to unravel the dumbfounding mystery and track down the sadistic killer. Penned during the golden age of mysteries, this thrilling investigation brings a detective face to face with the darkest parts of Paris. And after the thrilling conclusion of the locked room mystery, sit back and enjoy the short story "The Shadow of the Goat", also included in this exclusive British Library crime classic.

A captivating literary portrait of London explored at night by some of the city’s most iconic writers throughout history “Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night,” wrote the poet Rupert Brooke. Before the age of electricity, the nighttime city was a very different place to the one we know today – home to the lost, the vagrant and the noctambulant. Matthew Beaumont recounts an alternative history of London by focusing on those of its denizens who surface on the streets when the sun’s down. If nightwalking is a matter of “going astray” in the streets of the metropolis after dark, then nightwalkers represent some of the most suggestive and revealing guides to the neglected and forgotten aspects of the city. In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations and the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others. In each case, the city is revealed as a place divided between work and pleasure, the affluent and the indigent, where the entitled and the desperate jostle in the streets. With a foreword and afterword by Will Self, Nightwalking is a fascinating literary exploration of the writers who traverse the city at night and the people they meet.

From critically acclaimed Director and Screenwriter, Ana Lily Amirpour comes the graphic novel spin-off of her 96% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes feature-length debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night! Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps and other sordid souls, is a bastion of depravity and hopelessness where a lonely vampire, The Girl, stalks the town's most unsavory inhabitants. Collects the first two standalone stories.

A brief, poetic story about an alien city—and a metallic doom! (You can tell Kuttner was reading Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith at the time he wrote it.)

Detective Henri Bencolin, the prefect of police, is called in to solve the grisly murder of the Duc de Saligny at a fashionable Parisian gambling house

A luminous and unforgettable first novel by an astonishing new voice in fiction, hailed by Esquire magazine as “one of America’s best young writers.” Samson Greene, a young and popular professor at Columbia, is found wandering in the Nevada desert. When his wife, Anna, comes to bring him home, she finds a man who remembers nothing, not even his own name. The removal of a small brain tumor saves his life, but his memories beyond the age of twelve are permanently lost. Here is the story of a keenly intelligent, sensitive man returned to a life in which everything is strange and new. An emigrant from his own life, set free from all that once defined him, Samson Greene believes he has nothing left to lose. So, when a charismatic scientist asks him to participate in a bold experiment, he agrees. Launched into a turbulent journey that takes him to the furthest extremes of solitude and intimacy, what he gains is nothing short of the revelation of what it means to be human.

A young interfaith chaplain is joined on her hospital rounds one night by an unusual companion: a rough-and-tumble dog who may or may not be a ghost. As she tends to the souls of her patients—young and old, living last moments or navigating fundamentally altered lives—their stories provide unexpected healing for her own heartbreak. Balancing wonder and mystery with pragmatism and humor, Ellen Cooney (A Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances) returns to Coffee House Press with a generous, intelligent novel that grants the most challenging moments of the human experience a shimmer of light and magical possibility.

Katharine Hilbery, torn between her duty to her family and her desire for intellectual independence, finds herself entangled in a hesitant courtship with Ralph Denham, a persistent suitor who challenges her ideals. Meanwhile, her friend Mary, dedicated to women's suffrage and social reform, grapples with her feelings for Cyril Alardyce, a promising young lawyer whose commitment to social justice mirrors her own. Published in 1919, Night and Day is Virginia Woolf's exploration of the societal constraints faced by women and the evolving dynamics of relationships amidst shifting cultural landscapes. Departing from the experimental techniques of her later works, this novel offers a more conventional narrative structure while still showcasing Woolf's keen insight into human emotions and societal norms. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.

A gentle, dreamlike tale about heading home in the night. A mother rabbit carries her young bunny home through the dark, quiet streets. The lights are on in many of the animal neighborsê windows, so the bunny can see, hear and smell whatês happening inside: a pie being pulled out of the oven, a party, a goodbye hug. When they reach home, the father rabbit tucks the bunny into bed. But the bunny continues to wonder about the neighborsê activities. –Are the party guests saying goodnight?” Will the one saying goodbye –take the last train home?” Until finally, the tired bunny falls asleep. The perfect story for the end of the day.