Handheld Fantasy Classics Series

Twelve stories comprise John Buchan's last collection of short stories, a classic of British interwar short fiction written from 1913 to 1927. Buchan's most popular character Richard Hannay battles an ancient curse in South Africa in `The Green Wildebeest' and Edward Leithen tags along in an assassins' war in `Sing a Song of Sixpence'. The Runagates Club features First World War spy and code-cracking thrillers `The Loathly Opposite' and `Dr Lartius'; tales of supernatural possession in deepest Wales, comfortable Oxfordshire and the House of Commons, in `The Wind in the Portico', Fullcircle' and `"Tendebant Manus"'; and stories of survival in the far North and in Depression-era Canada with `Skule Skerry' and `Ship to Tarshish'. There is farce too, in `The Frying-Pan and the Fire' and `"Divus" Johnston', and the riotous journalistic romp of `The Last Crusade' is the last word on fake news, for all eras. What makes The Runagates Club special is that Buchan designed it as a showcase to bring together the best of his magazine fiction. He repurposed these stories with new beginnings, framing them as after-dinner stories told over the port in a late 1920s private gentleman's dining-club. This is interwar storytelling at its very best, with a critical introduction by Kate Macdonald, a leading authority on Buchan’s writing.

Jan Jacob Slauerhoff’s 1934 novel Adrift in the Middle Kingdom is an epic sweep of narrative that takes the reader from 1920s Shanghai to a forgotten city beyond the Great Wall of China. Narrated by a Belfast ship’s radio operator who travels inland on a gun-runner’s mission, desperate to escape the sea. He moves through extraordinary settings of opium salons, the house of a Cantonese watch-mender, the siege of Shanghai, the great flood on the western plains, and the discovery of oil by the uncomprehending overlord in the hidden city of Chungking. The fantasy ending transforms the novel from travelogue and adventure into existential meditation. But running like a thread of darkness through the story is opium, from poppy head harvesting to death through addiction. This translation by David McKay, winner of the 2018 Vondel Prize, is the first English edition of Slauerhoff’s most accessible and enthralling novel. The Introduction is by Slauerhoff expert Arie Pos and Wendy Gan of the University of Hong Kong.

“A book for anyone who has heard the horns of Elfin in the distance at twilight.” – Neil Gaiman In Kingdoms of Elfin Sylvia Townsend Warner explores the morals, domestic practices, politics and passions of Elfins. She follows their affairs with mortals, and their daring flights across the North Sea. The Kingdoms of Brocéliande in France, Zuy in the Low Countries, Gedanken in Austria and Blokula in Lappland entertain Ambassadors, hunt with wolves, and rear changelings for the courtiers’ amusement. Enter a world where the fairy ruling classes are charming and insolent, and all levels of fairy society are heartless, in human terms. But love and hate strike at fairies of all ranks, as do poverty and the passions of the heart. Enter Elfindom with care.  Sylvia Townsend Warner’s last short stories were originally published in The New Yorker, and appeared in book form in 1977. This Handheld Classics reprint brings these sixteen sly and enchanting stories of Elfindom to a new readership, and shows Warner’s mastery of realist fantasy that recalls the success of her first novel, the witchcraft classic Lolly Willowes (1926). The foreword is by the noted US fantasy author Greer Gilman, and the introduction is by Ingrid Hotz-Davies.

“Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of our finest writers.” – Neil Gaiman Following the success of Kingdoms of Elfin in October 2018, this collection includes the remaining four Elfin stories along with the remarkable forgotten tales of The Cat’s Cradle Book, eighty years after its first publication. The twenty-three stories in Of Cats and Elfins encompass scholarship, black humor, the Gothic, and the bizarrely anthropomorphic cats of The Cat’s Cradle Book, which reflect Warner’s preoccupation with the dark forces at large in Europe in the later 1930s. Warner mixes fables and myths with storytelling traditions old and new to express her unease with modern society, and its cruelties and injustices. A new selection of Warner’s remaining fantasy short stories, collected for a new generation of fantasy enthusiasts and Warner fans.