Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in Classics

This collection features unabridged recordings of the final three novels in E.F. Benson’s beloved Mapp and Lucia series. Narrated by Prunella Scales and Lisa Daniely, this collection brings to life E.F. Benson’s comic tales of marriage, mishaps and mayhem.

This collection features unabridged recordings of the first three novels in E.F. Benson’s beloved Mapp and Lucia series. Narrated by Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales, this collection brings to life E.F. Benson’s comic tales of marriage, mishaps and mayhem.

The White Company is a motley group of English mercenaries, fighting under the leadership of Sir Nigel Loring. Bound by an unquestioning respect for social order, patriotism and a lust for adventure, the company makes its way to France to fight in the local wars. With assiduous attention to historical detail, Conan Doyle paints a convincing picture of the chivalric life and manners of the 14th century.

'You don’t mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.

Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a new wife, Jennifer, at 33, seizes the opportunity to lead an independent life. Quickly she secures the lease of Rose Cottage and turns her attention to her own interests. While Jennifer is desperate to experience life on her own terms within her reduced financial means, her neighbour, Alice, is pre-occupied with ensuring her position as head of her brother's household is never challenged.

Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength, and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life.

The book opens with Neville celebrating her 43rd birthday and contemplating middle age now that her children are grown. Her mother, in her 60s, seeks answers to her melancholy in Freudianism. Her sister, Nan, a writer who has hitherto led a single and carefree life in London, experiences the loss of love and with it her plan for the future. And Neville's principled daughter, Gerda, who is determined not to follow her mother's generation into the institute of marriage, finds herself at an impasse with the man she loves.

Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) 'killer plant' in fiction, film and video games. Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's giant wisteria and H.G. Wells' hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit's wandering creepers. Every strain of vegetable threat can be found within this new collection.

The Tree of Heaven follows the fortunes of the Harrison family as the children grow up in the shadow of the First World War and Dorothy's brothers go off to the trenches, while she becomes involved with the suffrage movement, and later joins a version of the Women's Social and Political Union.

Nancy has spent her whole life on the vibrant and gritty streets of Victorian London, first as one of Fagin's child pickpockets and now on the arm of violent and mercurial Bill Sikes. Nancy does what she must to get by. She's attuned to the harsh realities of life, but also knows how to find moments of beauty amid the grime, even if it is only the scent and taste of an orange - its miraculous colour and form. When she embarks on a relationship with enigmatic gentleman Mr Rufus, it awakens emotions she's never felt before, and makes a better life feel possible for the first time.

Set in the reign of Queen Anne, Thackeray's novel follows the troubled progress of Henry Esmond Esq, a gentleman and an officer in Marlborough's army. Enamoured of the Jacobite Lady Castlewood and her wayward daughter Beatrix, he distinguishes himself in Marlborough's campaigns against Louis XIV, but comes to grief in an ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to depose George I in favour of the Old Pretender.

David Tompkins thinks it is a splendid idea to open a tea garden at his Kentish cottage. His wife, Germayne, is not so sure. The local villagers are divided on the matter, and not necessarily supportive, particularly Mr Perch at the Dolphin, who sees it as direct competition to Mrs Perch's own tea garden. It doesn’t bode well when the official opening coincides with a break in the beautiful weather.

From the once-popular yet unfairly neglected Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell comes a pair of novels that cleverly upholster the familiar furniture of the haunted house story. In An Uninhabited House, the hauntings are seen through the perspective of the solicitors who hold the deed of the property. In Fairy Water, Riddell again subverts the expectations of the audience, suggesting a complex moral character for her haunting spirit.

During her lifetime Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee, was referred to as 'the greatest of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction', and yet today she remains on the periphery of the genre. This collection of her uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was once considered among the best of the genre, and why she deserves to return to those ranks today.

The hero of Charlotte Brontë's first novel escapes a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous but manipulative Zoraide Reuter complicates his affections for a penniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school.

Tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in London. Soon friendship develops into love. Nevis finds herself caught in a whirl of circumstances over which she has no control.

A traditional psychological ghost story, ‘A Phantom Lover’ tells the story of an artist who is commissioned to paint eccentric couple Mr and Mrs Oke of Okehurst. But the Okes have a dark family history, and the fateful events of two centuries previous come back to haunt them.

Written in diary entries from a Polish scholar, this short story features a mysterious femme fatale, Medea, who is responsible for the deaths of five men, including her husbands. The scholar is soon cast under her spell from behind the grave.

‘A Wicked Voice’ reuses the theme of music from beyond the grave from Vernon Lee’s first ghost story, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’. Here, young composer Magnus is writing an opera, determined to go against the conventions of his predecessors, but he soon finds himself haunted by a voice beyond the grave which overpowers him and stops him writing.

Written in 1881, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’ is Vernon Lee’s first ghost story. Set in Florence, the story regales the story of young painter Julian Winthrop who becomes transfixed by a piece of music. He traces this haunting back to one of his previous paintings.