Книги издательства «Alma Books»

Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne’s novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious asides, explanations and host of memorable secondary characters – such as Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Parson Yorick and Widow Wadman – take centre stage, at the expense of the actual life events the book sets out to depict.
A humorous compendium of European thought and literature – pastiching the likes of Locke and Bacon and referencing Pope, Swift, Cervantes and Rabelais – emerges amid the convoluted accounts of Tristram’s conception, misnaming and accidental circumcision by a sash window, in a shrewd narrative that examines the role and nature of language itself.
A very ambitious editorial project which took our team more than a year to bring to perfection. The fresh editorial and typographical approach is of the highest standard, and makes this timeless classic come alive. It’s been newly annotated with a thorough but accessible approach, and is offered at a very reasonable price.

Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne’s novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious…

Most famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story writer, as exemplified by the tales included in this volume.
Concerned with the manifold aspects of everyday life and varying in their settings – from aristocratic drawing rooms to poverty-stricken garrets, from the hustle and bustle of Paris to the Provencal countryside of the author’s childhood – these stories will keep the reader riveted from the beginning to the end and surprise for their modernity.
Contains:
The Attack on the Mill
The Girl Who Loves Me
Rentafoil
Death by Advertising
Story of a Madman
Big Michu
The Way People Die
A Flash in the Pan
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
Priests and Sinners
Fair Exchange
The Haunted House

Most famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story…

When Tudy’s first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go to study in France. After she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancee has become involved with Riccard, a dashing French pilot and his near-double.
A tale of broken trust and infidelity based on Zelda Fitzgerald’s own dalliance with a French pilot, ‘Image on the Heart’ is here presented with other lesser-known stories written by Fitzgerald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which develop many of the themes found in his novels and his more famous works of short fiction.
Contains: ‘Zone of Accident’, ‘Fate in Her Hands’, ‘Image on the Heart’, ‘Too Cute for Words’, ‘Inside the House’, ‘Three Acts of Music’, ‘An Author’s Mother’, ‘“Trouble”’, ‘The Guest in Room Nineteen’, ‘In the Holidays’, ‘The End of Hate’, ‘On an Ocean Wave’, ‘The Woman from Twenty-One’ and ‘Discard (Director’s Special)’.

When Tudy’s first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go to study in France. After she and her benefactor become close, she…

Four sailors discover a copper cylinder containing a manuscript written by the adventurer Adam More, who was shipwrecked in the southern hemisphere. They read its contents out to one another, and the incredible story unfolds of his journey to a lost world which survives at the foot of a volcano. This strange utopian society, in which humans coexist with prehistoric animals, is the antithesis of Victorian England, as poverty is preferred to wealth and darkness to light.
At once a timeless satire and a pioneering work of science fiction, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder will enthral readers of today and revive James De Mille’s reputation as a writer ahead of his time.

Four sailors discover a copper cylinder containing a manuscript written by the adventurer Adam More, who was shipwrecked in the southern hemisphere. They read its contents out to…

When her wealthy family prepares to host a lavish summer party, the young, hitherto sheltered Laura Sheridan suddenly feels a kinship with the staff and the helpers hired to set up the venue for the festivities. As she learns of the death of one of their working-class neighbours, this burgeoning sense of class consciousness is heightened by a realization of her own mortality.
Published in 1922, at the height of literary modernism, ‘The Garden Party’ is now considered one of the key texts of that movement. This volume, which also includes a wide selection of Katherine Mansfield’s other short stories, is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to discover one of the early twentieth century’s finest writers.
Contains: ‘Prelude’, ‘Je ne parle pas francais’, ‘Bliss’, ‘The Wind Blows’, ‘Psychology’, ‘Pictures’, ‘The Man without a Temperament’, ‘Mr Reginald Peacock’s Day’, ‘Sun and Moon’, ‘Feuille d’album’, ‘A Dill Pickle’, ‘The Little Governess’, ‘Revelations’, ‘The Escape’, ‘The Garden Party’, ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, ‘The Doll’s House’, ‘The Fly’, ‘Germans at Meat’, ‘The Baron’, ‘The Sister of the Baroness’, ‘Frau Fischer’, ‘Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding’, ‘The Modern Soul’, ‘At Lehmann’s’, ‘The Luftbad’, ‘A Birthday’, ‘The Child-Who-Was-Tired’, ‘The Advanced Lady’, ‘The Swing of the Pendulum’ and ‘A Blaze’.

When her wealthy family prepares to host a lavish summer party, the young, hitherto sheltered Laura Sheridan suddenly feels a kinship with the staff and the helpers hired to set…

W.W. Jacobs delighted in finding unlikely humour in everyday situations and observations, and these tales succeed in raising a laugh from the most mundane of scenarios. In 'The Grey Parrot', a sailor buys a parrot for his wife, whom he suspects isn't faithful in his absence, hoping that the bird will inadvertently repeat anything untoward it hears. Unfortunately for him, the parrot exceeds his expectations, and it's not only his wife who is left blushing.
This volume contains a careful selection of the very best stories from Jacobs's 150-strong repertory, and includes well-known standalone pieces such as 'The Monkey's Paw', as well as accounts of raucous dockside dalliances and tightly woven tales of poacher Bob Petty's crimes against the unlikely cast of an Essex village. Showcasing a unique assortment of stories spanning his writing career, this edition hopes to shine a light on a hugely talented writer who inspired many of the literary giants we now consider masters of the genre.
Contains: 'A Love Passage', 'The Skipper of the Osprey', 'Rule of Three', 'An Intervention', 'The Grey Parrot', 'Twin Spirits', 'Sam's Boy', 'A Will and a Way', 'Jerry Bundler', 'The Peacemaker', 'The Monkey's Paw', 'The Well', 'Cupboard Love', 'In the Library', 'Captain Rogers', 'A Mixed Proposal', 'An Adulteration Act', 'Blundell's Improvement', 'Bill's Lapse', 'The Persecution of Bob Pretty', 'The Third String', 'Captains All', 'The Boatswain's Mate', 'The Changeling', 'Mixed Relations', 'His Lordship', 'Her Uncle', 'Matrimonial Openings', 'The Toll House', 'Head of the Family', 'Fairy Gold', 'Watchdogs', 'The Bequest', 'Back to Back', 'Keeping Watch', 'Stepping Backwards', 'The Three Sisters', 'The Vigil', 'Easy Money', 'Made to Measure' and 'Husbandry'.

W.W. Jacobs delighted in finding unlikely humour in everyday situations and observations, and these tales succeed in raising a laugh from the most mundane of scenarios. In…

A young Harvard graduate with bright prospects, Bill Frothington is invited on board a steamer hosting a high-school dance, where he meets and falls in love with the seventeen-year-old Mae. As the match is not considered socially advantageous enough, Bill moves on, marries and has a career, but he remains painfully nostalgic for that episode on the river.
A poignant tale which touches on the themes of yearning and lost youth that are central to many of Fitzgerald’s novels and stories, ‘The Love Boat’ is here presented with other lesser-known pieces which he wrote in the 1920s and explore the many facets of his creative talents.
Contains: ‘The Smilers’, ‘Myra Meets His Family’, ‘Two for a Cent’, ‘Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar’, ‘Diamond Dick and the First Law of Woman’, ‘The Third Casket’, ‘The Unspeakable Egg’, ‘John Jackson’s Arcady’, ‘The Pusher-in-the-Face’, ‘One of My Oldest Friends’, ‘Not in the Guidebook’, ‘Presumption’, ‘The Adolescent Marriage’, ‘Your Way and Mine’ and ‘The Love Boat’.

A young Harvard graduate with bright prospects, Bill Frothington is invited on board a steamer hosting a high-school dance, where he meets and falls in love with the…

Sara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina and the other during the First World War, when he was a soldier about to go to battle. When, years later and after the death of her husband, Cedric contacts her out of the blue, Sara finds herself eager to see him again – against the wishes of her in-laws – and to find out the secret of this man she loves yet knows so little about.
A poignant tale of thwarted love, ‘The Intimate Strangers’ explores many of Fitzgerald’s favourite themes, such as the constraints of society on romance and the American fascination for Old Europe. This volume also includes other lesser-known stories he wrote from the mid-1930s until the end of his life, revealing new facets to the author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.
Contains: ‘Indecision’, ‘Between Three and Four’, ‘A Change of Class’, ‘Diagnosis’, ‘Flight and Pursuit’, ‘The Rubber Cheque’, ‘On Schedule’, ‘I Got Shoes’, ‘The Family Bus’, ‘No Flowers’, ‘New Types’, ‘Her Last Case’ and ‘The Intimate Strangers’.

Sara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina and the other during the First…

Written in 1727, The Art of Sinking in Poetry was one of Alexander Pope’s contributions to the literary output of the legendary Scriblerus club – a circle of writers dedicated to mocking what they perceived as a culture of mediocrity and false learning prevalent in the arts and sciences of their day. Taking the form of an ironic guide to writing bad verse, Pope’s tongue-in-cheek essay is wickedly funny in its lampooning of various pompous poetasters, as well as being essential reading for any budding writer wishing to avoid sinking to the unintentionally ridiculous, and instead reach for the sublime.

Written in 1727, The Art of Sinking in Poetry was one of Alexander Pope’s contributions to the literary output of the legendary Scriblerus club – a circle of writers dedicated to…

Published posthumously in 1930, Stendhal’s travel notes on his 1838 journey to southern France contain descriptions of cities such as Bordeaux, Toulouse and Marseilles, peppered with numerous personal digressions, anecdotes and cultural musings.
Both an addition to the Stendhalian canon and a pioneering work of the travel-writing genre, Travels in the South of France provides an illuminating perspective on this popular region and the phenomenon of tourism in general.

Published posthumously in 1930, Stendhal’s travel notes on his 1838 journey to southern France contain descriptions of cities such as Bordeaux, Toulouse and Marseilles, peppered…

In the 1940s, Picasso wrote two plays in French: the first, Desire Caught by the Tail, was conceived during the German occupation of Paris and features a cast of grotesque allegorical characters such as the Onion, Silence or Fat Anxiety discussing the crucial wartime themes of hunger, cold and love; the second, The Four Little Girls, came about a few years after the end of the war on the French Riviera, and presents the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of four unnamed girls in a vegetable garden, revealing an unexpectedly evil aspect of childhood.
These surreal compositions, which were meant to be read aloud rather than formally staged, are a testament to the great artist’s imaginative powers, and have been considered as forerunners to the theatre of the absurd of the 1950s, as exemplified by Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov.

In the 1940s, Picasso wrote two plays in French: the first, Desire Caught by the Tail, was conceived during the German occupation of Paris and features a cast of grotesque…

In an examination of his laudanum addiction and the dreams and visions the drug engendered, Thomas De Quincey lays bare the celestial pleasures and infernal lows of an existence dependent on “subtle and mighty opium”. At once moving and rhapsodic, and suffused with a poetic and lyrical beauty, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater hauntingly evokes frightful scenes and phantasmagorical night-time wanderings, while reality, dream and memory blur and intertwine in a nebulous and protean haze.
Published anonymously in The London Magazine, the Confessions were an immediate success, and soon speculation was rife as to the identity of the mysterious Opium-Eater. The work, which introduced the literary world to De Quincey’s unique “impassioned prose”, is now widely deemed to be De Quincey’s masterpiece.

In an examination of his laudanum addiction and the dreams and visions the drug engendered, Thomas De Quincey lays bare the celestial pleasures and infernal lows of an existence…

Meet Miss Charlotte… a modern Mary Poppins who wears a large hat and a crumpled dress that maker her look like a scarecrow, and she talks to a rock!
At a train station on her way to meet her friends Marie and Leo to recover her pet rock, Madame Charlotte accidentally picks up the Prime Minister’s elephant-hide bag instead of her own. As it contains important documents and the politician is due to make an important speech on children’s education, Miss Charlotte – hoping that she might get a ministerial job out of this – embarks on a quest to track him down.
Along the way, Miss Charlotte cannot help making speeches on behalf of the country’s leader and putting her own original twist on his boring children’s policy, while attracting at the same time the attentions of the media and the secret service.

Meet Miss Charlotte… a modern Mary Poppins who wears a large hat and a crumpled dress that maker her look like a scarecrow, and she talks to a rock!
At a train station on her way…

Depicting the adventures of Rat, Mole, Badger and the pretentious Mr Toad, The Wind in the Willows sees these four animals getting into all sorts of trouble as they wander along the river, through the Wild Wood and around the grand Toad Hall.
Adapted for the stage by A.A. Milne as Toad of Toad Hall, and recreated for film and TV numerous times, Kenneth Grahame’s tale has been an essential part of every English child’s formative reading for over a century, with new generations of readers succumbing to its charm, wit and wonder.
This edition contains extra material for young readers including a section on ‘Other Classic Anthropomorphic Stories’, a test yourself quiz and a glossary

Depicting the adventures of Rat, Mole, Badger and the pretentious Mr Toad, The Wind in the Willows sees these four animals getting into all sorts of trouble as they wander along…

Unique edition presented in its definitive 1941 version with footnotes indicating the textual variants from the first volume edition of 1916
When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that his social experiment will be riddled with difficulties, and that behind her cockney parlance the girl in question, Eliza Doolittle, has a mind, ideas and aspirations of her own. Things come to a crux when the creature starts to rebel against her creator – and the scene is set for a play that questions the class system, social appearances and the role of women in society.
Universally regarded as Shaw’s most successful work, Pygmalion – here presented in its definitive 1941 version, with footnotes indicating the textual variants from the first volume edition of 1916 – has spawned a great number of adaptations, among them the famous 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady, and shows ancient myth’s undiminished ability to find new incarnations in modern life.

Unique edition presented in its definitive 1941 version with footnotes indicating the textual variants from the first volume edition of 1916
When professor of phonetics Henry…

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of one of the most poignant and enduringly popular novels of the twentieth century, left only a few other pieces of fiction when he died prematurely at the age of sixty. Childhood Memories and Other Stories, here presented in a new translation by Stephen Parkin and including previously deleted passages and the unpublished fragment ‘Torretta’, collects all of Lampedusa’s extant shorter fiction and provides a revealing glimpse into the writer’s workshop and the background to the composition of his masterpiece.
From the atmospheric recollections of the Palazzo Lampedusa and the Palazzo Filangeri Cuto at the turn of the twentieth century in ‘Childhood Memories’ to the delightful fable ‘The Siren’, from the gently humorous, bitter­sweet tones of ‘Joy and the Law’ to ‘The Blind Kittens’ – the first chapter of what was intended to be a sequel to The Leopard – this volume showcases Lampedusa’s unparalleled ob­ser­vational powers and narrative skills.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of one of the most poignant and enduringly popular novels of the twentieth century, left only a few other pieces of fiction when he died…

An unnamed young governess is sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Yet she is soon oppressed by a sense of foreboding and deep disquiet, becoming convinced that something dark is threatening her young charges. But are supernatural forces at work, or is the danger something altogether more earthly?
Henry James’s masterpiece, and widely considered to be the greatest ghost story ever written, The Turn of the Screw remains the apogee of suspenseful, haunting writing in the English language.
Contains: Extract from the Preface to Vol. 12 of the New York Edition (1908), notes, extra material on Henry James’s life and works and a select bibliography.

An unnamed young governess is sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Yet she is soon oppressed by a sense of foreboding and deep disquiet,…

In A Voyage to the Moon, the narrator, after an attempt to reach the moon using vials of dewdrops, finally finds himself in what appears to be the Garden of Eden, surrounded by Biblical patriarchs. After falling foul of the prophet Elijah, he soon meets a race who walk on all fours and whose nourishment comes in the form of vapour.
Published posthumously and intended mainly as a satire of its age, this imaginative and entertaining tale – here presented in a lively translation by Andrew Brown – is now considered one of the pioneering works of science fiction.

In A Voyage to the Moon, the narrator, after an attempt to reach the moon using vials of dewdrops, finally finds himself in what appears to be the Garden of Eden, surrounded by…

Contains the Preface to the 1908 Edition
Having travelled from her native New York to London to meet her relatives, Isabel Archer, a young, independently minded young woman, rejects the marriage proposals of two suitors in her determination to stay in control of her destiny. When she suddenly comes into a large legacy, Isabel believes that this windfall will finally ensure the freedom that she yearns for and embarks on an exhilarating journey through France and Italy, only to find her endeavours thwarted by the sinister plotting of some of her acquaintances.
Considered by many to be Henry James’s finest novel, The Portrait of a Lady is a subtle examination of Victorian society and power relations, providing a groundbreaking psychological study of its protagonist. This volume is based on the authoritative New York Edition, and includes the author’s seminal preface. It includes an extensive critical apparatus, extra reading material including a section of photographs and notes.

Contains the Preface to the 1908 Edition
Having travelled from her native New York to London to meet her relatives, Isabel Archer, a young, independently minded young woman,…

Pipi isn’t like his four brothers or the other young monkeys living in the forest of Hullabaloo: he has bright-pink fur, a mischievous character and a rebellious streak that lands him into all sorts of scrapes. In this story, an expanded version of Collodi’s original tale, we see him lose his tail to an ancient crocodile, end up as a valet to a young master, fall into the hands of flying bandits and become emperor of a tribe of apes.
Collodi wrote this story immediately after Pinocchio, and the little monkey’s adventures present clear similarities, both in terms of themes and characters, with his more celebrated masterpiece. This rediscovered gem of Italian literature, beautifully illustrated by Axel Scheffler and preserving all of Collodi’s trademark wit and linguistic crispness, will delight and enthral a new generation of children.

Pipi isn’t like his four brothers or the other young monkeys living in the forest of Hullabaloo: he has bright-pink fur, a mischievous character and a rebellious streak that lands…