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The art of writing a short story can be barely noticed by a reader or listener - such is the quality with which they are usually written. It is a difficult trade, an unforgiving discipline, but for those who master it, the rewards are many. In this series of works by our greatest female writers, we bring you a selection of those we consider the best.

In this selection of some of Saki's best short stories, we enter a fictional world in which the Edwardian gently are pitched against the rude forces of nature and maiden aunts struggle unsuccessfully to contain the merciless antics of children in their charge. Saki is perhaps the ultimate master of writing complete stories in just a few pages and his sublime craftsmanship is accompanied by a wicked black humour.

The art of writing a short story can be barely noticed by a reader or listener - such is the quality with which they are usually written. It is a difficult trade, an unforgiving discipline, but for those who master it, the rewards are many. In this series of works by our greatest female writers we bring you a selection of those we consider the best. In Volume 1 we bring you the classics 'A Dill Pickle' by Katherine Mansfield, 'The Storm' by Kate Chopin, and 'The Sexton’s Hero' by Elizabeth Gaskell.

We begin with one of Hardy’s best regarded stories, 'The Fiddler of the Reels'. Here Hardy exposes a supernatural and demonic theme, against a realistic and historical background of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the first trains. A typical Wessex girl is gripped by the power of music and dance when a lone fiddler casts his spell on her, causing her cloying but plain suitor to leave suddenly for London.

'Malachi’s Cove' tells the story of Mally Trenglos and Barry Gunliffe, who both earn their living by gathering seaweed. They are sworn enemies unit la near fatal accident seals their fate forever. Father Giles of Ballymoy is a hospitable Irish priest whose strange ways are at first misinterpreted by an English visitor.

These 11 stories include, amongst others, a terrifying Nordic curse and a country garden inhabited by a deadly ghost. Aiken's other works include 'The Kingdom Under The Sea', 'Mortimer Says Nothing' and 'Past Eight O'Clock'.

Katie thinks looking after a baby will be easy. But after Emily has covered herself in sticky golden syrup, newspaper print, scrambled egg, a few leaves and plenty of boot polish, Katie has changed her mind! And a week in a holiday camp sounds awful to Katie she’s sure she’ll be bored stiff! But then she meets Antonia, whose family wins all the competitions, and suddenly Katie finds lots of opportunities for her family to show off their talents!

Star Spooks: Hollywood has come to Creakie Hall! But is Chubby Cellophane really a world-famous director or is he a fake? Once again, the family ghosts, Miasma and Marmaduke, come to the rescue with some out-of-this-world special effects. Funky Phantoms:
Ghost hunters have arrived at Creakie Hall! Miasma and Marmaduke are sure they're imposters who are up to no good....

Sadie Smith would love to do the things that other children can, but a degenerated hip prevents her from walking. On her way to a Dr Barnardo's home, her mother buys her a pair of scarlet ribbons which bring Sadie solace in the difficult years ahead.

Bennett may not be the best school in the world - but it's theirs. And Barny, Spag and Clipper certainly don't want to get sent off to snobby King's Road School instead. So when Bennett School is threatened with demolition, the three friends draw up a plan of campaign to save it. But everything they do seems to go disastrously and hilariously wrong...

When a large plane is hijacked, the Prime Minister looks at the list of passengers and suddenly becomes very, very frightened. There is a name on the list that the Prime Minister knows very well - too well. There is someone on that plane who will soon be dead - if the hijackers can find out who he is! And there isn’t much time. One man lies dead on the runway. In a few minutes the hijackers will use their guns again. And the Prime Minister knows who they are going to kill.

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

We all love animals, even if sometimes its only from afar on TV or at a zoo. But many of us have felt a closer friendship and companionship with our friends in the animal world. We talk and react to them as if they really do understand us. Perhaps they do. In this volume Hardy, Thackeray, Carroll, DH Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, and many others share their words with our ears.

The Lighthouse begins on a North Sea ferry, on the blustery outer deck of which stands Futh: a middle-aged, recently-separated man heading to Germany for a restorative walking holiday. After an encounter with an inexplicably hostile barman at a family-run hotel in Hellhaus, Futh sets out on his week-long circular walk along the Rhine. As he travels, he contemplates his childhood, a complicated friendship with the son of a lonely neighbour, his parents’ broken marriage and his own.

Charlotte Mary Mew was born on 15th November, 1869 in London to professional parents her father was responsible for the design of Hampstead Town Hall. Charlotte, one of seven children, three of whom died in early childhood, was educated at Lucy Harrison's School for Girls and attended lectures at University College, London.

In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. This volume is dedicated to one such recognised master of the short story, namely Katherine Mansfield, whose innovative stream of consciousness and symbolic narrative style profoundly influenced Virginia Woolf. She was born on 14th October 1888 into a prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand, the middle child of five. A gifted cellist who at one point considered taking it up professionally, her first attempts at writing were published in school magazines.

For the female poet there was always the confining hand of men to instruct that their time was perhaps spent more productively elsewhere. These lines, these gilded verses often protest otherwise. The contribution of women in these earlier centuries is immense, and in this series we bring together poets who have created some of the most beautiful and expressive verses ever written. And remember these words, these telling lines, have been written against the grain of society's male bias. With their remembered words these female poets have given us a history that we can all now share.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington, on May 29th, 1874. Originally, after attending St Paul's School, he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic before going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. Chesterton's poems range from the virtues and vices of England and the English to his worldview and religious beliefs.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a group of painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, who wished to reject the stern and academic strictures of current painting and return to the simpler and more uncomplicated days before the Italian High Renaissance and the days of Raphael. The movement was short lived but very influential and, as well, was taken up by a number of different arts.

Able to write comfortably in a number of genres, HG Wells was especially applauded for his science fiction works such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, but his forays into the social conditions of the times, with classics such as Kipps, were almost as commercially successful. His short stories are miniature masterpieces, many of which bring new and incredible ideas of science fiction to the edge of present-day science fact. Wells also received four nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature.