Valancourt Books

The William Morris Institute of Automation Research is working hard to simplify our lives by programming computers to carry out life's routine tasks. Whether it's resolving ethical dilemmas, writing...

Forrest Reid (1875-1947), the Ulster novelist, spent his life in Belfast, in the north of Ireland, save for a period as an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in...

Although Sophia Lee is best known for her historical romance about the fictive daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots, The Recess (1783-85), her The Two Emilys (1798) is a fast-paced novel of vengeance...

In this volume, you will encounter tales of ghosts, haunted houses, witchcraft, vampirism, lycanthropy, and sea monsters. Stories of cruelty and vengeance, of a body that refuses to be cremated, a...

Vampires are usually associated in the popular imagination with Transylvania and other Eastern European locales. But in this new collection, editor Álvaro García Marín has uncovered the earliest...

The dashing young knight Fernando and his friend, Alberto di Vincenti, are anxious to marry their true loves, Rosara and Viola. But the haughty Duca di Urbino and his bloodthirsty companion...

A political prisoner, A., has just been released from a long term of imprisonment for writing a seditious book. Fearing re-arrest, he leaves town, setting off on foot along a disused railway track...

"A valid and important human situation . . . The book is vivid with the characteristic Braine sights and smells." - Kenneth Allsop, Daily Mail "Triumphantly underlines the point that Room at the Top...

"A horror story the like of which is not often seen ... a tragic tale calculated to chill the blood of any reader whose nerves are not well under control." - New York Times "Twentieth-century...

Mary Irwin was crushed by a truck. The police ruled it an accidental death, but her husband Bill isn't so sure: his own memory of the night is clouded by amnesia-could he have pushed her himself? His...

In 1888, a little-known writer named Mona Caird ignited a firestorm of controversy when she published her essay "Marriage" in The Westminster Review, arguing that modern marriage was a failure. Over...

"Her books are among the finest historical novels ever written." - Alison Weir "[O]rgies, spells, and rites . . . a tasty brew!" - Library Journal "This novel by Hilda Lewis is one of the best I...

'A thorough reinvention of the Gothic landscape . . . Gregory's voice and vision are wholly original.' - Ramsey Campbell 'Admirable . . . a queerly intense, hothouse atmosphere.' - Newsday 'A...

'One of the more earnest and interesting writers of his generation.' - The Guardian 'Readable to an almost hypnotic degree . . . absorbing and exciting.' - Sphere 'Some really good narrative . . ...

After critics condemned his sensational Gothic novel Martyn of Fenrose; or, The Wizard and the Sword (1801) as blasphemous, Henry Summersett returned with the very different The Worst of Stains...

'Mr. Goff writes compassionately and he has a gift for bringing out the drama in people's ordinary confrontations with each other.' - Sunday Times 'A sophisticated book which demonstrates the...

'[A]mong the few great writers of our time.' - Auberon Waugh, The Independent 'He gets into the mind of his eleven-year-old, sees the world from the height of three foot six . . . The book is vivid,...

"An extremely interesting novelist, and a genuinely original one." - J. B. Priestley "One of the most interesting and one of the most important novelists now writing in England." - Hugh Walpole "At...

Ten years ago, a shocking murder cut short a blossoming romance between beautiful young heiress Sibyl Higginson and her cousin Brandon Mountford. When Mountford, an epileptic subject to seizures and...

"I find on adding up that I have to read over 300 modern novels a year. Half-a-dozen of them I would wish to read again. This is one." - John Betjeman, Daily Herald "His creative ability is...

DEATH IN THE FAMILY BUT COME BACK SOON, the sign said. Obviously it was a lie. The people in the grocery store just wanted to make sure he couldn't buy the spice he needed to make the recipe he'd...

Set in the waning years of London's Fleet Street, this is the story of John Dyson and his colleagues in the crossword and nature-notes section of an obscure London newspaper. The ambitious young...

'An exquisite book.' - E. M. Forster 'No other novelist of today can recapture more clearly than Mr. Reid the sense of early wonder and adventurous childhood.' - The Times 'An altogether remarkable...

Handsome young Bertie Cecil, star horseman, pride of the Queen's guards, and heir to the Royallieu fortune, is forced to flee England when he accepts the blame for a scandal that threatens the honour...

Unity Penfold returns home to her street one afternoon to find that her house has vanished into thin air as though it never existed. Worse, her children's school has no record of her two sons, no...

"Tremendously capable and intimately revealing of a generation and a class." - Daily Telegraph "Mr. Martin writes with enjoyment and eclectic good taste." - Times Literary Supplement "One of the...

Teenager Frederick French is attending a trial in his father's courtroom when a gunshot is heard and the plaintiff falls dead in a pool of blood. Amidst the confusion, Frederick catches a glimpse of...

Francesca is eight months pregnant when her husband's death in Vietnam makes her a widow at age 21. With no one else to turn to, she remembers her husband's often-repeated promise, "You'll like my...

'One of the most original and most perfect works of imagination of our time' - Edwin Muir, The Listener 'A unique achievement in modern literature' - John Boyd 'It has a charm and freshness, it is...

"The romantic will love to shudder at Udolpho; but those of mature age, who know what human nature is, will take up again and again Dr. Moore's Zeluco." -- Anna L titia Barbauld One of the most...