Books published by Top Five Books, LLC

This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights includes the complete, unabridged text; 12 starkly beautiful woodcut illustrations by renowned artist Clare Leighton (which were the inspiration for the sets of the classic 1939 Laurence Olivier-Merle Oberon film adaptation), as well as a helpful introduction, detailed author bio, and bibliography.Wuthering Heights was released in 1847 in the shadow of the instantly successful Jane Eyre, published two months earlier by her older sister Charlotte. It enjoyed only mixed reviews--but the reactions were intense, foreshadowing the eventual stature the novel would claim in the pantheon of English literature, surpassing in many readers' eyes even her sister's magnum opus. Though Emily would not live to see it, Wuthering Heights would become synonymous with passionate gothic romance and tragic love, establishing Heathcliff and Catherine as the most poignantly doomed couple in fiction since Romeo and Juliet, but with even darker consequences for everyone involved.

This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of Dickens’ immortal holiday classic, A Christmas Carol, includes the original color illustrations by John Leech, as well as another 20 woodcut engravings by Sol Eytinge Jr. from the 1869 American edition by Ticknor & Fields. Beautifully designed and carefully edited, this hardcover edition also includes a short introduction and bio.Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old curmudgeon who spurns Christmas as a “humbug,” is given the chance to redeem himself through the intervention of four spirits on Christmas Eve—the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, and the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come. The story not only reformed Scrooge, it transformed the way we celebrate the Holiday itself. If reading Dickens’ most beloved story doesn’t put you in the true spirit of Christmas, you may very well be beyond hope.As Scrooge’s nephew Fred said, “I have always thought of Christmas time...as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”Or as Tiny Tim put it more succinctly, “God Bless Us, Every One!”

By the time Lucien Carr stabbed David Kammerer to death on the banks of the Hudson River in August 1944, it was clear that the hard-partying teenage companion to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs might need to reevaluate his life. A two-year stint in a reformatory straightened out the wayward youth but did little to curb the wild ways of his friends.MANIA tells the story of this remarkable group-who strained against the conformity of postwar America, who experimented with drink, drugs, sex, jazz, and literature, and who yearned to be heard, to remake art and society in their own libertine image. What is more remarkable than the manic lives they led is that they succeeded-remaking their own generation and inspiring the ones that followed. From the breakthrough success of Kerouac's On the Road to the controversy of Ginsberg's Howl and Burroughs' Naked Lunch, the counterculture was about to go mainstream for the first time, and America would never be the same again.Based on more than eight years' writing and research, Ronald Collins and David Skover-authors of the highly acclaimed The Trials of Lenny Bruce (2002, 2012)-bring the stories of these artists, hipsters, hustlers, and maniacs to life in a dramatic, fast-paced, and often darkly comic narrative.

"The impressive first in a historical series, which effortlessly alternates between Washington, D.C., in 1862 and the same city 95 years later...this debut shows definite promise." -Publishers WeeklyNo one noticed anything suspicious about the death of a wounded soldier at the height of the Civil War-not, that is, until almost a hundred years later.In 1957, a young Washington, D.C. police sergeant, Ben Carey, heads up a team of officers in a dilapidated house three blocks from the Capitol. Though Carey's career is on the rise, his marriage is circling the drain, and as he spends more time at the office, he discovers there is something not quite right about this decaying old home. It harbors some dark secrets-connecting him to the long-dead soldier and others in ways he can't understand. With his personal life in shambles, and forces from within the house vying for his attention, Carey casts reason aside and begins an investigation to uncover the truth about what happened in this haunted place. As he peels back the layers of history, he finds courage and love, but also deception, greed, jealousy, and murder.Twisting through time-between an America torn by Civil War and the prosperous 1950s-Murder Bay is a mystery that spans eras and the gulf dividing what can and cannot be explained."Very nicely done...Recommended." -Library Journal"An involving, period-perfect story. The action is fast-paced and convincing...the characters are expertly drawn." -Foreword Reviews

"We are transported. We are consigned to the ends of the Earth. And we are therefore as good as dead to the realm and its judges. There can be no hope of reprieve…"Gabriel Carver, the convict hangman of Sydney Prison, knows that none of his kind may depart Australia's penal colony without the system's leave. Then three people are murdered, seemingly to protect the "Rats' Line," an illicit path to freedom that exists only in the fevered imaginations of transported felons. But why kill to protect something that doesn't exist?When an innocent woman from Carver's past is charged with one of the murders and faces execution at his hands, she threatens to reveal an incriminating secret of his own unless he helps her. So Carver must try to unmask the killer among the convicts, soldiers, sailors, and fallen women roaming 1829 Sydney. If he can find the murderer, he may discover who is defying the system under its very nose. His search will take him back to the scene of his ruin-to London and a past he can never remake nor ever escape, not even at the edge of the world."Baltakmens, echoing the voices of 19th-century masters like Conrad and Melville, combines adventure and mystery in a high-stakes tale of class, morality, and justice." -Kirkus Reviews"A page-turner, a savory treat to be devoured." -Foreword Reviews