THE HANDMAID'S TALE
by Margaret Atwood
Vintage Children's Classics
Published 4th August 2016
512 Pages
Find it on Penguin UK
'It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge'
Offred is a Handmaid. She has only one function: to breed. If she refuses to play her part she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. She may walk daily to the market and utter demure words to other Handmaid's, but her role is fixed, her freedom a forgotten concept.
Offred remembers her old life - love, family, a job, access to the news. It has all been taken away. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire.
Includes exclusive content: In The 'Backstory' you can read Margaret Atwood's account of how she came to write this landmark dystopian novel
'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph
THE BLOODY CHAMBER
by Angela Carter
Vintage Classics
Published 15th September 2016
240 Pages
Find it on Penguin UK
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HELEN SIMPSON
From familiar fairy tales and legends – Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves – Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.
SONNETS
by William Shakespear
Vintage Children's Classics
Published 4th August 2016
176 Pages
Find it on Penguin UK
‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom’
Sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare’s sonnets are the best ever written.
But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love.
Some of them are written to a young man, some of them to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery – why did Shakespeare write them, what was his sexuality? – each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive.
Includes exclusive content: In the 'Backstory' you can find a short, handy, funny guide to everything you might want to know about Shakespeare and his sonnets.
‘This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love’ Don Paterson, Guardian
THE NIGHT CIRCUS
by Erin Morgenstern
Vintage Children's Classics
Published 6th October 2016
656 Pages
Find it no Penguin UK
The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon iron gates reads:
Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn
As dusk shifts to twilight, tiny lights begin to flicker all over the tents, as though the whole circus is covered in fireflies. When the tents are aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign lights up:
Le Cirque des Rêves
The Circus of Dreams
The gates shudder and unlock, seemingly by their own volition.
They swing outward, inviting the crowd inside.
Now the circus is open
Now you may enter
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
by Susan Hill
Vintage Children's Classics
Published 8th January 2015
240 Pages
Find it on Penguin UK
‘I did not believe in ghosts’
Few attend Mrs Alice Drablow’s funeral, and not one blood relative amongst them. There are undertakers with shovels, of course, a local official who would rather be anywhere else, and one Mr Arthur Kipps, solicitor from London. He is to spend the night in Eel Marsh House, the place where the old recluse died amidst a sinking swamp, a blinding fog and a baleful mystery about which the townsfolk refuse to speak.
Young Mr Kipps expects a boring evening alone sorting out paperwork and searching for Mrs Drablow’s will. But when the high tide pens him in, what he finds – or rather what finds him – is something else entirely.
In the 'Backstory' discover more classic ghost stories and some real-life ones too...
THE DARK IS RISING
by Susan Cooper
Vintage Children's Classics
Published 1st August 2013
400 Pages
Find it on Penguin UK
'This night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining’
It’s Christmas-time in the Stanton family house: presents, carol singing, good cheer. But for eleven-year-old Will Stanton something sinister has begun, inching round his subconscious, shouting silent warnings he can’t decipher. Then on Midwinter Day Will wakes up to a different world – silent, covered in snow and ancient forest, a world of another time. A world where evil lurks.
Because Will is not the ordinary boy he always thought he was. He is the last of the Old Ones and the power to vanquish the evil magic of the Dark lies within him.
Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can read an interview with the author and discover the ancient beliefs that inspired the story.
THE SILVER SWORD
by Ian Serraillier
Vintage Children's Classics
Published 2nd August 2012
256 Pages
Find it on Penguin UK
'If you meet Ruth or Edek or Bronia, you must tell them I'm going to Switzerland to find their mother. Tell them to follow as soon as they can’
Having lost their parents in the chaos of war, Ruth, Edek and Bronia are left alone to fend for themselves and hide from the Nazis amid the rubble and ruins of their city. They meet a ragged orphan boy, Jan, who treasures a paperknife - a silver sword - which was entrusted to him by an escaped prisoner of war. The three children realise that the escapee was their father, the silver sword a message that he is alive and searching for them. Together with Jan they begin a dangerous journey across the battlefields of Europe to find their parents.
BACKSTORY: Read a letter from the author's daughter and find out about the amazing true stories that inspired The Silver Sword.
