The Arabian Nights is your magic carpet ride to exotic lands full of wonders and marvels. First collected nearly a thousand years ago, these folktales are presented as stories that crafty Scheherazade tells her husband, King Shahryar, over a thousand-and-one consecutive nights, to pique his interest for the next evening's entertainment and thereby save her life. Among them are some of the best-known legends of eastern storytelling, including the "Sinbad the Sailor," "Aladdin and His Magic Lamp," and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." This collection features more than twenty stories, in the classic translation of Sir Richard Burton, published between 1884 and 1886, and full-colour illustrations by Renata Fucikova and Jindra Capek. The Arabian Nights is one of Barnes & Noble's Leatherbound classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world's greatest authors in an exquisitely designed bonded-leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and a silk-ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offer hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for every home library.

"[Francis] is just so good at the transcription and transformation of everyday ordinary life, all seen from sideways on, so that everything becomes so strange and so funny."-Tessa Hadley An elderly academic is accosted by a homeless woman on his way home from the cinema. She tells him her name is Laura. So begins a nightmarish journey for Gerald, who is forced to confront the mystery of his own past and to ask himself if he has lived a good life - or even a decent one. In the course of this very funny, sometimes disturbing and often moving novel, suppressed memories return to haunt him, including the question of the role he played in a family tragedy. Above all he has to assess the harm he may have done in a long-forgotten love affair. Those close to him suddenly appear unfathomable as he begins to question if he truly knows those closest to him and even himself. The problem with exploring the past, Gerald begins to see, is that there are an infinite number of ways to travel through it.

From aphrodisiacs to special touches, from orgasm-delaying techniques to the endless varieties of kisses, "The Kama Sutra" is a wellspring of erotic knowledge and inspiration. Sir Richard Burton's controversial translation, which caused a stir in the Western world, is provided here, in the complete and unexpurgated edition of this world-famous classic.

"[Francis] is just so good at the transcription and transformation of everyday ordinary life, all seen from sideways on, so that everything becomes so strange and so funny."-Tessa Hadley An elderly academic is accosted by a homeless woman on his way home from the cinema. She tells him her name is Laura. So begins a nightmarish journey for Gerald, who is forced to confront the mystery of his own past and to ask himself if he has lived a good life - or even a decent one. In the course of this very funny, sometimes disturbing and often moving novel, suppressed memories return to haunt him, including the question of the role he played in a family tragedy. Above all he has to assess the harm he may have done in a long-forgotten love affair. Those close to him suddenly appear unfathomable as he begins to question if he truly knows those closest to him and even himself. The problem with exploring the past, Gerald begins to see, is that there are an infinite number of ways to travel through it.

The most evocative and richly contextualised account of the Salem Witch trials in print. The Salem witch trials of 1692 have assumed mythical status. Immortalised by Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible', the witch-hunt is now part of our vocabulary. Yet the actual events have ben overshadowed by the myth. Biographer and novelist Richard Francis brings the reality back into focus with the story of Samuel Sewall, New England Puritan, Salem trial judge, publisher, entrepreneur and writer. Sewall's life encompassed the tensions that faced the second generation colonists, caught between the staunch conservatism of the Founding Fathers and the possibilities their new world offered. Everywhere there was conflict, schism and violence, from the pagan Indians to dissenting settlers. Out of the struggle to maintain cohesion emerged the forces that drove the Salem tragedy. Five years after pronouncing judgment at the trials, Sewall walked into a Boston church and recanted the guilty verdicts, praying for forgiveness. Rarely remarked upon before now, this extraordinary act not only marked a turning point for Sewall, but arguably set the fledgling nation on the path that it has followed to this day. In this intriguing biography, Richard Francis rediscovers a period of great cultural change and historical development, enabling us to see the colonial Puritans not as grim ideologues but as flesh-and-blood people. We witness the comical courtship of Sewall's later years; his attempts to square a prodigious appetite with the scruples of piety, and a disagreement that led him to pen the first anti-slavery tract ever written in America. Through Sewall's life, we gain access to the lost wonders of the New World.

Fans of Jonathan Coe will love this extraordinary panoramic novel, which turns upon the whirligig of life that is Costford, a North Western town, in 1970. Costford, a brash north of England town. It's 1970 and young Trevor Morgan has a magical smile and large ambitions. But his marriage is in crisis, and he seeks help from an unexpected quarter: feisty middle-aged May Rollins. May is feeling the stress of living with the demented mother she has always hated. Strange things start happening: she spots a lollipop lady at eight o'clock on an August evening; her TV converts to colour of its own accord; and mother takes to wandering off, with murderous intent, when the minder, May's stepdaughter Cherry, is not looking. May and Trevor are political enemies, at odds over a controversial plan to build council flats at Prospect Hill, but their relationship takes a shocking - and ambiguous - twist. Meanwhile Art Whiteside, a predatory estate agent who believes in true love, complicates affairs on both town and home fronts. With dazzling ingenuity, Richard Francis catches the whirligig of urban life at the very moment when contemporary society was struggling into being. His comic and poignant novel conjures up the fumbled negotiations we make between our public and private lives, evoking the pain and pleasure of husbands, wives, and lovers, of parents and children - and depicting a personal and communal quest for the meaning of home.

The new novel from Richard Francis, the acclaimed author of Taking Apart the Poco Poco, is a bittersweet portrait of the Willis family, who live in a small terraced house in 1940s Stockport. Fat Hen is a novel about the inner and outer lives we create for ourselves and how they impinge on each other, sometimes even without our realising it. It's Stockport, 1948, and an ordinary family, Rose and Jack Willis, their son Donald, and Rose's father Ernie, are living apparently uneventful existences in a small terraced house. Things are not what they seem. While moving a piano Jack makes a discovery that enables him to create an alternative life for himself, unknown to his nearest and dearest. Rose, comforting an acquaintance whose son died shortly before he was due to appear at a municipal ball, finds herself having an experience that she simply can't put a name to. Ernie becomes increasingly absorbed by his two main interests, executions and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and discovers that these obsessions have a part to play in his own destiny. Young Donald convinces himself that he died at the age of six, and that his whole existence is a fantasy of the afterlife. 'The narrowed ration-book existence of the Willis family seems uneventful, but each character has secrets and dreams. Through a complex of narrative voices and curious vantage points, Francis cleverly reveals the almost magical significance of the lives of people who seek to escape the humdrum throught their imaginings.' Harpers & Queen

Many of these tales are ancient, appearing in written sources dating perhaps to 200 BCE. Each tale, acted out by a cast of animals and people, illustrates an important lesson in life, often one that evolves from the protagonist's various misfortunes. Burton translated the tales, which had likely originally been written in Sanskrit, from Hindi; his handwritten original was completed in 1847. Surviving fire, bombing during two world wars, and a library flood, it was eventually discovered by ethnographer Tom Cox, and is today available to instruct and delight young and old

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.
This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, have entered into the popular imagination, demonstrating that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.

"From the Trade Paperback edition.

Soon after returning from his celebrated journey to Mecca disguised as an Arab, Burton set out on a similarly perilous trip to the city of Harrar in the heart of little-known Somaliland. As related in the Preface to his journal: "He disappeared into the desert for four months...The way was long and weary, adventurous and dangerous, but at last the 'Dreadful City' was sighted, and relying on his good Star and audacity, he walked boldly in...His diplomacy on this occasion, his capacity for passing as an Arab, and his sound Mohammedan Theology, gave him ten days in the city, where he slept every night in danger of his life."His journey to Harrar, the account of his stay, and the gruelling story of his return across the desert, are here contained in this fine facsimile of the two-volume memorial edition of 1894, complete with maps, plates and diagrams.

Soon after returning from his celebrated journey to Mecca disguised as an Arab, Burton set out on a similarly perilous trip to the city of Harrar in the heart of little-known Somaliland. As related in the preface to his journal: 'He disappeared into the desert for four months...The way was long and weary, adventurous and dangerous, but at last the 'Dreadful City' was sighted, and relying on his good Star and audacity, he walked boldly in...His diplomacy on this occasion, his capacity for passing as an Arab, and his sound Mohammedan Theology, gave him ten days in the city, where he slept every night in danger of his life.' His journey to Harrar, the account of his stay, and the gruelling story of his return across the desert, are here contained in this fine facsimile of the two-volume memorial edition of 1894, complete with maps, plates and diagrams.

By the side of the camels ride my three attendants, the pink of Somali fashion. Their frizzled wigs are radiant with grease; their Tobes are splendidly white, with borders dazzlingly red; their new shields are covered with canvass cloth; and their two spears, poised over the right shoulder, are freshly scraped, oiled, blackened, and polished. They have added my spare rifle, and guns to the camel-load; such weapons are well enough at Aden, in Somali-land men would deride the outlandish tool!