One sweltering summer’s day, Charles Dickens passes through Wall Street. James Weldon Johnson’s anonymous narrator stumbles into a hidden bar full of poker players. Mark Twain recalls a dinner held in seven different languages. And Anaïs Nin declares that she is in love . . . with the city itself.

New York has lived through immense challenges yet remains irrepressible, filled with constant energy, movement and excitement. All these different perspectives are captured by the prose and poetry of a wonderful range of writers, including Audre Lorde, Walt Whitman, Edna St Vincent Millay, Henry James, Langston Hughes and many more.

Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library series of gorgeous pocket-sized travel paperbacks, featuring Treasures of Cornwall, Yorkshire: A Literary Landscape, London: An Illustrated Literary Companion and Paris: A Literary Anthology. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Edited and introduced by J. Michelle Coghlan.

From a beloved dachshund to a trouble-seeking Great Dane, via all manner of dogs large and small, obedient and defiant, von Arnim brilliantly captures the bond between dogs and their owners. This witty and often poignant book is the closest the author came to writing a memoir. Despite her frequent exhortations that it wasn’t an autobiography, much is revealed about her fascinating life: her marriages, life in Germany, England and Switzerland, her children and her lovers.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics bound in real cloth with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.

Two strangers embark on a feverish, dreamlike encounter abroad in Algernon Blackwood’s ‘The Olive’. A man impulsively meets his first love in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Between Two Planes’. Willa Cather writes of sunset island explorations, and Virginia Woolf depicts the all-too-familiar drowsy garden nap. Yet summer idylls can be shattered: there’s a deadly fishing quarrel from Guy de Maupassant, a touch of malevolent fairy magic from Selma Lagerlöf and, of course, Sherlock Holmes finds himself under pressure to solve an unsettling murder on the Cornish coast.

From light humour to deep nostalgia, Italian resorts to rural Russia, each of these tales will transport you somewhere new. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, these pocket-sized editions are perfect for travel. This edition is compiled and introduced by anthologist Becky Brown.

The book follows the pattern of the gardening year and is divided into sections: spring, when green shoots start to appear; summer, when plants grow in earnest, followed by high summer with its sultry days and warm nights. Then comes autumn and winter, when the year ends with frost and bare branches.

Filled to the brim with classic poetry, this collection contains poems about birds, plants, trees, flowers, weeds, bugs and butterflies, weather and wildlife, from poets such as William Wordsworth, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library poetry series of stunning, quarter-clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is compiled by publisher and anthologist Gaby Morgan, with an introduction by Alice Vincent.

Dip into five uplifting sections of essays, bite-size quotes and short, meditative poems. The best parts of powerful speeches from Martin Luther King Jr. and Theodore Roosevelt are included here, as well as humorous words from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mark Twain.

Pick the brains of the ancients: Seneca and Epictetus show us what we can and can’t control, while fables from Aesop remind us that slow and steady wins the race. Find inspiring poems on hope and choosing your own path by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Robert Frost.

To remind new graduates that they can and will flourish, The Road Ahead has plenty of curated quotations for dealing with change, cultivating resilience and finding happiness, from Tolstoy, George Eliot, Shakespeare, Kahlil Gibran and many more.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics with ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect presents or a treat for any book lover.

Carrie’s War is part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics bound in cloth with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.

To escape the bombs falling on London, Carrie and her younger brother Nick are evacuated from their home to a small Welsh village where they are taken in by the village grocer, Mr Evans, who’s mean and unfriendly, and his timid sister, Lou. The children befriend another evacuee, Albert, who seems to have had more luck. He lives at a mysterious house called Druid’s Bottom where he’s looked after by the housekeeper, Hepzibah Green. The children are entranced by Hepzibah’s magical stories, including one about the curse of the screaming skull. And it’s this story that leads Carrie to do something she regrets for the rest of her life . . .

Seized by the urge to travel, revered German writer Gustav von Aschenbach books a stay in a hotel on Venice’s Lido. There, in the oppressive summer heat, he becomes intoxicated by the beauty of a young Polish boy who is on holiday with his family. As Aschenbach’s struggle between discipline and passion intensifies, Venice itself falls into the grip of disease. Despite the danger and decay around him, Aschenbach is unable to leave.

Death in Venice is part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics bound in cloth with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is translated by Shaun Whiteside and features an introduction by Oxford University academic Karolina Watroba.

Charles Swann is a man about town with friends in high places. At Parisian society gatherings hosted by the wealthy Verdurin couple, he meets the intriguing Odette de Crécy. Though struck by how different they are, Swann’s feelings for Odette deepen. As the Verdurin circle expands, he is overcome by doubts and unhealthy jealousies. Odette distances herself, and Swann is convinced he has a rival for her affections. Behaving erratically and tortured by spiralling thoughts, Swann’s love becomes a sickly poison.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library: a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of Swann in Love is translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff with an introduction by Marion Schmid.

Poetry is the perfect medium to capture the elusive nature of happiness, and this beautiful anthology explores happiness in all its forms – whether it be a fleeting moment, the promise of freedom and adventure, surviving adversity or the comfort of nature.

Poems for Happiness is an uplifting collection that includes beloved classics such as ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling, ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ by William Wordsworth and ‘Invictus’ by W. E. Henley. Alongside these well-known verses are lesser-known gems waiting to be discovered. An inspiring and cheerful volume that celebrates the joy, beauty and resilience of the human spirit through the power of poetry.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning pocket-sized classics. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction by writer, broadcaster and parish priest the Reverend Richard Coles.