Books in the Handheld Classics series

Civil war is brewing in this Edwardian speculative political thriller, between the Conservative resistance and a Labour government inflicting a socialist nightmare on British society. Ernest Bramah's What Might Have Been (1907), better known as The Secret of the League, is now republished with 7000 words restored and a critical introduction.

The Runagates Club is John Buchan's last collection of short stories, and is a classic of British interwar short fiction. These twelve stories were written from 1913 to 1927, when he was at the peak of his powers, reprinted here with a critical introduction by Kate Macdonald.

Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936) was a ship's doctor serving in south-east Asia, and is one of the most important twentieth-century Dutch-language writers. His 1934 novel Adrift in the Middle Kingdom (Het leven op aarde), is an epic sweep of narrative that takes the reader from 1920s Shanghai to a forgotten city beyond the Great Wall of China.