This acclaimed A-Z dictionary is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the superstitions, old and new, of the English-speaking world, complete with their origins, meanings and variant forms. It includes just about everything from touching wood, crossing fingers and identifying future lovers to folk remedies, spells and, new for this third edition of the book, modern beliefs relating to the lottery, the computer and the mobile phone. A first-class source book for the historian, folklorist and casual reader alike, it also offers antidotes to some of the most feared taboos. What should you do to avoid seven years' bad luck if you break a mirror? How can you walk safely under a ladder? Which is the correct end to crack open a boiled egg? This book has all the answers.

A more-ishly browsable collection of words and phrases, linguistic quirks, lexical oddities and syntactic surprises. Our langauge is one of delight and curiosity. BUTTERING PARSNIPS, TWOCKING CHAVS is a guided tour of English, exploring the origins of words, their changing meaning, lexical peculiarities, word games and lost words, presented in lists, small passages of narrative text, amusing quotations and nuggets of amazing facts. This must-have compendium shows that words have a matchless power to entertain. Here you will find enough new words and phrases to last a lifetime. Idioms frolic beside cliches, catchphrases, proverbs, eponyms, acronyms, spoonerisms and split infinitives. Text messages cavort alongside business jargon and rap slang to produce a language that is both witty and bizarre, and sometimes frankly outstanding. So whether you're a yuppie or a woopie, a sinbad or dinky, a spod or even a wazzock, these pages will provide endless hours of delight and fascination.

Have you heard the one about the man who walked into a bar? (Ouch!)... Penguin Pocket Jokes is essential (and hilarious) reading for anyone searching for the perfect joke. Whether you want a snappy wisecrack or a longer rib-tickler when making a speech, this easy-to-use guide will provide the perfect witticism.

The indispensible guide to choosing a special name for a baby.
Clear, helpful, and easy-to-use, "The Penguin Book of Baby Names" offers thousands of wonderful suggestions for picking the perfect name for your bundle of joy. It includes:
* Separate sections for boys' and girls' names
* More than 5,000 names, from well-loved favorites to something a little different
* The most popular celebrity names
* Top ten names through the centuries
* Facts about the true meanings and stories behind each name

It was not so long ago that the belief in witchcraft was shared by members of all levels of society. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, diseases were feared by all, the infant mortality rate was high, and around one in six harvests was likely to fail. In the small rural communities in which most people lived, affection and enmity could build over long periods. When misfortune befell a family, they looked to their neighbours for support - and for the cause. During the sixteenth century, Europe was subject to a fevered and pious wave of witch hunts and trials. As the bodies of accused women burnt right across the Continent, the flames of a nationwide witch hunt were kindled in England. In 1612 nine women were hanged in the Pendle witch trials, the prosecution of the Chelmsford witches in 1645 resulted in the biggest mass execution in England, and in the mid-1640s the Witch finder General instigated a reign of terror in the Puritan counties of East Anglia. Hundreds of women were accused and hanged. It wasn't until the latter half of the seventeenth century that witch-hunting went into decline.In this book, Andrew and David Pickering present a comprehensive catalogue of witch hunts, arranged chronologically within geographical regions. The tales of persecution within these pages are testimony to the horror of witch-hunting that occurred throughout England in the hundred years after the passing of the Elizabethan Witchcraft Act of 1563.

What's in a name? Rather more than you might at first suspect, for names are steeped in history and myth and have much to tell us about our past, our beliefs - even our personality traits. Now fully updated for its second edition, with 150 new entries, The Penguin Dictionary of First Names takes a close look at over 5,000 examples, ranging from the familiar to the comparatively obscure, drawn from all parts of the English-speaking world. Detailed and informative, it is essential reading for expectant parents and for anyone who is intrigued by the story attached to each name.

20 terrifying tales of horror written by such masters of the genre as Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Ambrose Bierce. Steel your nerves for encounters with ghouls, werewolves, invisible vampires, screaming skulls, monstrous slugs and, not least of all, the cruelty and murderous nastiness of your fellow-man. Ideal reading for newcomers to the horror story and aficionados alike. A companion volume to 'Classic Horror Stories', 'Classic Ghost Stories', 'Classic Ghost Stories 2' and 'Classic Short Stories'.

This collection contains twenty of the very best supernatural tales from the golden age of the ghost story. It includes classics by some of the most esteemed writers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, among them Sheridan Le Fanu, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ambrose Bierce, Washington Irving and M.R. James. Also included are neglected masterpieces of terror by the likes of William Hope Hodgson, Mrs B.M. Croker, Louisa Baldwin and Amyas Northcote. The stories themselves range from the quaintly wistful to the genuinely disturbing and, hopefully, will delight and surprise aficionados of the ghost story and newcomers alike. Each tale comes complete with a brief biography of the author. A companion volume to 'Classic Ghost Stories' and 'Classic Horror Stories'.

This carefully selected collection comprises twenty classic short stories on the themes of love and romance. Written by such masters of the form as Thomas Hardy, O. Henry, Anton Chekhov, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Oscar Wilde, these tales have enchanted, engaged and enthralled generations of readers and maintain a seductive and irresistible hold on the romantic imagination today. Each unforgettable story comes complete with an informative and illuminating biography of the author.

This unconventional rites-of-passage debut novel begins on the last evening of the twentieth century and spans a 25-year period in the life of its central character, encompassing along the way life in an English public school, a mysterious stone circle, witchcraft, illegal archaeology, first sex, teen confusion, hedgehogs and sudden death. Adventurous in subject matter, form and language, it has topped charts on sites for new writing. "Stunningly good," "Witty and gripping," "A wonderful piece of writing" (readers' comments).