Choosing
a gift.
You know the person, not the catalogue. So these 30 volumes are arranged by who they suit rather than by what shelf they sit on — each one art-directed on its own, with a cover drawn for that book and no other.
For someone with a long winter ahead
Books measured in weeks. Give one of these to a reader who complains that novels end too soon.
For someone who has no time at all
Under two hundred and fifty pages, and not one of them a lesser book for it. A gift that will actually be finished.
For someone who likes the lights left on
The frightening ones, and the ones that are worse for not being frightening in any way you can point to.
For someone who wants a story and nothing else
Swords, escapes, sieges and long odds, by writers who were paid to keep you turning the page and knew it.
For someone who has read everything
The volumes a well-read person is least likely to own already, and most likely to be pleased by.
For someone who is being introduced to all this
A first classic that will not put them off the rest. Short, famous, and better than they expect.
Three that make one present
The shops sell these one at a time, so the arranging is ours. Each set is bought as three separate volumes; what makes it a set is that they answer one another.
The Musketeers, in order
One story told across three volumes and twenty years of its characters’ lives. Give all three or none: the third is where it costs them.
Three nights of being frightened
A monster made in a laboratory, a house that will not let anyone go, and a portrait doing the ageing for its owner. One a night, and none of them long.
Three women who are not what the house thinks
A secret in a country seat, a wife who investigates her own husband, and a courtesan the century preferred not to look at directly.
These are ebooks, and how one is given depends on the shop: some let you send a title to another reader with a message, some do not. The shop’s own page says which. What is in the file is the same either way — the complete text, newly set, with full-page plates credited to their painters, and a cover made for that book alone.