Robin Hood is England's greatest folk hero. Everyone knows the story of the outlaw who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Nick Rennison's highly entertaining book begins with the search for the historical Robin. Was there ever a real Robin Hood? Rennison looks at the candidates who have been proposed over the years, from petty thieves to Knights Templar, before moving on to examine the many ways in which Robin Hood has been portrayed in literature and on the screen. He began as the hero of dozens of late medieval ballads. He appeared in plays by contemporaries of Shakespeare. In the Romantic era Robin was reinvented by Walter Scott as a Saxon champion in the struggle against the Normans. During the nineteenth century, he emerged as a hero in children's literature. More recently he has been portrayed as everything from proto-socialist man of the people to anarchist thug. In the cinema he put in an appearance as early as 1908 and Douglas Fairbanks and then Errol Flynn turned him into the typical hero of Hollywood swashbucklers. In the last twenty years, Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe have provided their own very different interpretations of the character. On the small screen, Robin has been the hero of half-a-dozen TV shows from the 1950s series starring Richard Greene, which used many writers blacklisted by Hollywood, via the well-remembered Robin of Sherwood in the 1980s to the recent BBC series. As the twenty-first century nears the end of its second decade, Robin Hood is still very much with us. He is the subject of graphic novels and computer games and films, including the new Lionsgate release in November 2018.

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous of all fictional detectives but, across the Atlantic, he had plenty of rivals. Between 1890 and 1920, American writers created dozens and dozens of crime-solvers. In this thrilling, unusual anthology, editor Nick Rennison gathers together 15 often neglected tales to highlight American crime fiction's early years. The detectives that feature include Professor Augustus SFX Van Dusen, 'The Thinking Machine', even more cerebral than Holmes; Craig Kennedy, the so-called 'scientific detective'; Uncle Abner, a shrewd backwoodsman in pre-Civil War Virginia; Violet Strange, New York debutante turned criminologist; and Nick Carter, the original pulp private eye.

Featuring a broad range of contemporary British novelists from Iain Banks to Jeanette Winterson, Louis de Bernieres to Irvine Welsh and Salman Rushdie, this book offers an excellent introductory guide to the contemporary literary scene. Each entry includes concise biographical information on each of the key novelists and analysis of their major works and themes. Fully cross-referenced and containing extensive guides to further reading, Fifty Contemporary British Novelists is the ideal guide to modern British fiction for both the student and the contemporary fiction buff alike.

Featuring a broad range of contemporary British novelists from Iain Banks to Jeanette Winterson, Louis de Bernieres to Irvine Welsh and Salman Rushdie, this book offers an excellent introductory guide to the contemporary literary scene. Each entry includes concise biographical information on each of the key novelists and analysis of their major works and themes. Fully cross-referenced and containing extensive guides to further reading, Fifty Contemporary British Novelists is the ideal guide to modern British fiction for both the student and the contemporary fiction buff alike.

1974 was a year of major changes around the world. Presidents resigned, emperors were deposed and new governments came to power. In society, the second wave of feminism grew in strength and the rights of gays and ethnic minorities were more powerfully asserted. The arts and the entertainment industry were in the midst of a period of great creativity and innovation. The roots of many aspects of today's societies which we take for granted lie in the 1970s and particularly in this, the pivotal year of the decade.

Sherlock Holmes remains the most famous of all fictional detectives. But he was not the only solver of crimes to patrol the gaslit streets of late Victorian and Edwardian London. The years between 1890 and 1914 were the heyday of the English (and American) story magazines and their pages were filled with platoons of private detectives, police officers and eccentric criminologists. These were the 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' and this second anthology of stories edited by Nick Rennison, author of Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography, highlights fifteen of them: Mr Booth created by Herbert Keen Max Carrados created by Ernest Bramah Florence Cusack created by LT Meade and Robert Eustace John Dollar, 'The Crime Doctor' created by EW Hornung Dick Donovan created by JE Preston Muddock Horace Dorrington created by Arthur Morrison Martin Hewitt created by Arthur Morrison Judith Lee created by Richard Marsh Madelyn Mack created by Hugh Cosgro Weir Lady Molly of Scotland Yard created by Baroness Orczy Addington Peace created by Fletcher Robinson Mark Poignand and Kala Persad created by Headon Hill John Pym created by David Christie Murray Christopher Quarles created by Percy Brebner John Thorndyke created by R Austin Freeman

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective ever created. The supremely rational sleuth and his dependable companion, Dr Watson, will forever be associated with the gaslit and smog-filled streets of late nineteenth and early twentieth century London. Yet Holmes and Watson were not the only ones solving mysterious crimes and foiling the plans of villainous masterminds in Victorian and Edwardian England. The years between 1890 and 1914 were a golden age for English magazines and most of them published crime and detective fiction. The startling success of the Holmes stories that appeared in The Strand magazine spawned countless imitators. This volume highlights some of those 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes'. In the fifteen tales which Nick Rennison has brought together in this anthology, readers can meet: THE THINKING MACHINE - Jacques Futrelle's dazzlingly intellectual genius Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, aka the Thinking Machine, even more capable than Holmes himself of solving the most baffling of mysteries through brainpower alone CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER - detective of the occult created by the legendary horror writer William Hope Hodgson, author of The House on the Borderlands EUGENE VALMONT - a sophisticated and urbane French detective, created by Robert Barr, who lives in exile in London and uses his Gallic wit and wisdom to learn the truth about the mysteries that regularly come his way NOVEMBER JOE - Hesketh Prichard's Canadian woodsman who uses his extraordinary powers of observation to track down villains and bring them to justice It may well be true that there never has been and never will be a detective quite like Sherlock Holmes but he did not stand alone. He did have his rivals and, as this collection of short stories shows, many of their adventures were as exciting and entertaining as those of the master himself.

1922 was a year of great turbulence and upheaval. Its events reverberated throughout the rest of the twentieth century and still affect us today, 100 years later. Empires fell. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after more than six centuries. The British Empire had reached its greatest extent but its heyday was over. The Irish Free State was declared and demands for independence in India grew. New nations and new politics came into existence. The Soviet Union was officially created and Mussolini's Italy became the first Fascist state. In the USA, Prohibition was at its height. The Hollywood film industry, although rocked by a series of scandals, continued to grow. A new mass medium - radio - was making its presence felt and, in Britain, the BBC was founded. In literature it was the year of peak modernism. Both T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses were first published in full. In society, already changed by the trauma of war and pandemic, the morals of the past seemed increasingly outmoded; new ways of behaving were making their appearance. The Roaring Twenties had begun to roar and the Jazz Age had arrived. In a sequence of vividly written sketches, Nick Rennison conjures up all the drama and diversity of an extraordinary year.

London, 1871. Traveller, photographer and sometime intelligencer Adam Carver is asked by a friend from the Foreign Office to find Dolly Delaney, a West End dancing girl who has been involved with a diplomat and since disappeared. What seems a straightforward case soon proves otherwise. Carver is discomfited to come across alluring daguerreotypes of Dolly and he seeks answers from one of her fellow dancers, the feisty Hetty Gallant. Soon, Carver and his stoical manservant Quint are drawn north to York, where they are implicated in a shocking death. The pair flee across the Channel, but soon encounter new treacheries in Berlin, the imposing and dangerous capital of the nascent Germany. Carver's Truth is both a compelling murder mystery and a splendidly full-blooded portrait of mid-Victorian England.

According to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, 'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised.' Despite this there has never been a shortage of volunteers willing to endure the bad times in pursuit of the glory that polar exploration sometimes brings. Nick Rennison's compelling book tells the memorable stories of people who have risked their lives by entering the white wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic, from the compelling tales of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen, to those of lesser known explorers such as Elisha Kent Kane and Douglas Mawson. A Short History of Polar Exploration also looks briefly at the hold that the polar regions have often had on the imaginations of artists and writers in the last two hundred years examining the paintings, films and literature that they have inspired.

Bram Stoker's Dracula, still the most famous of all vampire stories, was first published in 1897. But the bloodsucking Count was not the only member of the undead to bare his fangs in the literature of the period. Late Victorian and Edwardian fiction is full of vampires and this anthology of scary stories introduces modern readers to fifteen of them. A travel writer in Sweden unleashes something awful from an ancient mausoleum. A psychic detective battles a vampire that has taken refuge in an Egyptian mummy. A nightmare becomes reality in the tower room of a gloomy country house. The Rivals of Dracula is a collection of classic tales to chill the blood and tingle the spine, including the following stories: Alice & Claude Askew - 'Aylmer Vance and the Vampire' EF Benson - 'The Room in the Tower' Mary Cholmondeley - 'Let Loose' Ulric Daubeny - 'The Sumach' Augustus Hare - 'The Vampire of Croglin Grange' Julian Hawthorne - 'Ken's Mystery' E and H Heron - 'The Story of Baelbrow' MR James - 'Count Magnus' Vernon Lee - 'Marsyas in Flanders' Richard Marsh - 'The Mask' Hume Nisbet - 'The Vampire Maid' Frank Norris - 'Grettir at Thorhall-stead' Phil Robinson - 'Medusa' HB Marriott Watson - 'The Stone Chamber'

Sherlock Holmes was the most famous detective to stride through the pages of late Victorian and Edwardian fiction, but he was not the only one. He had plenty of rivals. Some of the most memorable of these were women: they were 'Sherlock's Sisters'. This exciting, unusual anthology gathers together 15 stories written by women or featuring female detectives. They include Dorcas Dene, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Hagar the Gypsy, Judith Lee and Madelyn Mack. Editor Nick Rennison has already compiled several highly entertaining collections of stories from what he considers a golden age of crime fiction, including The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Supernatural Sherlocks. His latest anthology turns the spotlight on the women detectives who could more than match their male counterparts.

"A reliable guide to what science fiction is" Christopher Priest, award-winning science fiction author "A really good introduction to the genre" SFX Magazine "Perceptive and glorious" Ian Watson, author of the screenplay for Steve Spielberg's A.I. Want to become a science fiction buff? Want to expand your reading in your favourite genre? This is a good place to start! From the publishers of the popular Good Reading Guide comes a rich selection of some of the finest SF novels ever published. With 100 of the best titles fully reviewed and a further 500 recommended, you'll quickly become an expert in the world of science fiction. The book is arranged by author and includes some thematic entries and special categories such as SF film adaptations, SF in rock music and Philip K. Dick in the mass media . It also includes a history of SF and a new definition of the genre, plus lists of award winners and book club recommendations. Foreword by Christopher Priest, the multiple award-winning SF author.

"The essential guide to the wild uncharted world of contemporary and 20th century writing." Robert McCrum, The Observer Deciding what to read next when you've just finished an unputdownable novel can be daunting. The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide features hundreds of authors and thousands of titles, with navigation features to lead you on a rich journey through some of the best literature to grace our shelves. This greatly expanded edition features 40 new author entries including more recently established authors with a proven body of work: Monica Ali, Anne Enright, Jonathan Franzen and Marina Lewycka, more non-fiction writers (Roger Deakin, Robert Macfarlane, Graham Robb, Kate Summerscale), new sections including 'New Writers to Watch' and 'Forgotten Classics' and major revisions throughout. An accessible and authoritative guide that no serious book lover should be without.