The Illustrated Man by
"Sometimes at night I can feel them, the pictures, likeants, crawling on my skin. Then I know they're doing what they have to do . . . " Fantasy master Ray Bradbury weaves a narrative spanning fromthe depths of humankind's fears to the summit of their achievements in eighteeninterconnected stories--visions of the future tattooed onto the body of anenigmatic traveler--in The Illustrated Man, one of the essential classicsof speculative fiction from the author of The Martian Chronicles, DandelionWine, and The October Country.
The War of the Worlds by
The night after a shooting star is seen streaking across the sky, a cylinder is discovered near London. Armed with just a white flag, the locals approach the mysterious object - only to be burned alive by heat-rays as horrific, tentacled invaders emerge. Soon, the whole of human civilization is under threat, as powerful Martians move across the land in massive killing machines, armed with black gas and burning rays. The aliens are determined to win the Earth for themselves.
Frankenstein by
More than 200 years after it was first published, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has stood the test of time as a gothic masterpiece-a classic work of horror that blurs the line between man and monster. "If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear." For centuries, the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created has held readers spellbound. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting dread. On a more profound level, it illuminates the triumph and tragedy of the human condition in its portrayal of a scientist who oversteps the bounds of conscience, and of a creature tortured by the solitude of a world in which he does not belong. A novel of almost hallucinatory intensity, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein represents one of the most striking flowerings of the Romantic imagination. With an Introduction by Douglas Clegg And an Afterword by Harold Bloom
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by
An ancient book is opened by the eccentric Professor Lidenbrock and his life - and the life of his nephew Axel - is changed for ever. An old piece of paper has tumbled from the book, a priceless parchment that will lead them on a terrifying journey to find what lies at the centre of the Earth. A timeless adventure, brilliantly introduced by the late Diana Wynne Jones, one of Britain's top fantasy and sci-fi writers for children.