It is 1882 & the Old Ones are already here They arrived seven hundred years ago & have been ruling the planet ever since The majority of people just get on with their lives accepting their monstrous rulers However a growing band of revolutionaries wish to free mankind from their slavery These freedom fighters call themselves the Restorationists A secret war has already broken out between the Restorationists & the forces loyal to the Old Ones The invention of dynamite has changed the balance of power & a lone assassin now has the capacity to destroy an Old One In this shadow world of assassins informers police agents & anarchists nobody is quite sure who is who & which side they fight for The game A Study in Emerald draws its central plot from the award-winning short story penned by Neil Gaiman in which the worlds of Sherlock Holmes & HP Lovecraft are combined to telling effect However to create a world detailed enough for players much has been added from real history The nineteenth century was a time of unrest with many colorful characters fighting both for & against the authorities A Study in Emerald is the outcome of the merging of these three worlds This second edition of A Study in Emerald sports new artwork by Ian O& Toole & Tatiana Kuzilova along with a streamlined set of rules that will hopefully help those folks who found the first version a tad complicated Inconsistencies have been removed & the number of available actions has been reduced to the minimum whilst still retaining the mood of paranoia from the first edition ...

The Penguin English Library edition When Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy world of criminality & violence Accompanying Holmes to an ill-omened house in south London Watson is startled to find a dead man whose face is contorted in a rictus of horror There is no mark of violence on the body yet a single word is written on the wall in blood Dr Watson is as baffled as the police but Holmes's brilliant analytical skills soon uncover a trail of murder revenge & lost love ...

All legends begin somewhere & the two novels here are where one of the world&s best-loved legends began In A Study in Scarlet Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson first meet & investigate a seemingly impossible mystery that begins with a corpse in a deserted house In The Sign of the Four the detective faces an even greater challenge solving both the disappearance of Captain Arthur Morstan & the theft of the Agra treasure in India In this Macmillan Collector&s Library edition Sherlock scholar David Stuart Davies provides an illuminating afterword Designed to appeal to the booklover the Macmillan Collector&s Library is a series of beautiful special gift editions of much loved classic titles Macmillan Collector&s Library are books to love & treasure ...

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies & Doctor Watson Mr Sherlock Holmes&
- The most famous introduction in the history of
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Harper Collins is proud to present its new range of best-loved essential classics There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life & our duty is to unravel it After a harrowing tour in Afghanistan Dr Watson returns to London to convalesce at 221B Baker Street home to the enigmatic Sherlock Holmes Their lives are irrevocably thrown together by news that a man has been found dead in a grimy ill-omened' house with the word rache'
- German for revenge
- written in blood on the wall This grisly discovery is complicated further by the look of utter horror on the victim's face & the complete absence of any wounds on the body or sign of a struggle First published in 1887 A Study in Scarlet' is the remarkable first-outing of one of literature's most famous partnerships

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' Almost a prerequisite for any serious study of Sufism in European languages' this was the verdict of Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his review of the first edition of the book According to the Journal of Near Eastern Studies it is 'one of the most thorough & intimately engaging books on Sufism to be produced by a Western scholar' Certainly there is nothing second-hand about it The author lets Sufis speak for themselves & in a series of unusual & absorbing texts mainly translated from Arabic he gives a vivid picture of life in a North African Sufi order Against this background stands the unforgettable figure of the Algerian Shaikh who was head of the order from 1909 until his death in 1934 The last few chapters are mainly devoted to his writings which include some penetrating aphorisms & which end with a small anthology of his remarkable mystic poems ...

A modern classic this epic tale of families romance & political intrigue never loses its power to delight & enchant readers Vikram Seth's novel is at its core a love story the tale of Lata
- & her mother's
- attempts to find her a suitable husband through love or through exacting maternal appraisal At the same time it is the story of India newly independent & struggling through a time of crisis as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great general election & the chance to map its own destiny'A Suitable Boy may prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of this century
- perhaps even the book to restore the serious reading public's faith in the contemporary novel You should make time for it It will keep you company for the rest of your life' Daniel Johnson The Times


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Romance humour & happy-ever-after endings The deliciously romantic novel from the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of A Vintage Wedding Emily is happy with her life just as it is She has a career as a midwife that she loves She enjoys living on her own as a single woman But she’s also feels it’s time for a change & a spot of some sea air So when her best friend Rebecca asks whether she’d like to spend the summer cooking on a ‘puffer’ boat just off the Scottish coast she jumps at the chance But she barely has time to get to grips with the galley before she finds herself with a lot on her plate Rebecca is heavily pregnant & is thrilled to have her friend on board doing most of the work Then there’s Emily’s competitive & jealous kitchen assistant who thinks she should be head-cook not Emily & there’s Alasdair the handsome local doctor who Emily is desperately trying not to notice Because if she falls in love with him as he appears to be falling for her will she ever want her old life back again? ...

Daisy's getting into double the trouble in this fantastic collection! Whether she's making lots of furry friends on her summer holiday in Spain or trying to win a coconut at the fair one thing's for sure
- there's always trouble when Daisy's about
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When five women become friends it's one for all & all for one! A heartwarming & hilarious novel from the bestselling author of Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Cafe & The Queen of Wishful Thinking When dynamic power-dressing Christie blows in like a warm wind to take over their department five very different women find themselves thrown together at work But none of them could have predicted the fierce bond of friendship that her leadership would inspire Anna 39 is reeling from the loss of her fiance who ran off with a much younger woman Her pride in tatters these days Anna finds it difficult to leave the house So when a handsome mysterious stranger takes an interest in her she's not sure whether she can learn to trust again? Then there's Grace in her fifties trapped in a loveless marriage with a man she married because unable to have children of her own she fell in love with his motherless brood Grace worries that Dawn is about to make the same mistake orphaned as a child engaged to love-rat Calum is Dawn more interested in the security that comes with his tight-knit boisterous family? When a sexy footloose rock singer catches her eye will Dawn have the courage to follow her heart? At 28 Raychel is the youngest member of their little gang & with a loving husband Ben & a cosy little nest for two she would seem to be the happiest But what dark secrets are lurking behind this perfect facade that make sweet pretty Raychel so guarded & unwilling to open up? ...