Books with author Mervyn Peake

[Read by Simon Vance] An undisputed classic of epic fantasy, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels represent one of the most brilliantly sustained flights of Gothic imagination. A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of the Gormenghast novels which, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Peake has created a world where all is like a dream -- lush, fantastical, vivid, and yet symbolic of a dark struggle. At the center of everything is the seventy-seventh earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom. Inside, all events are predetermined by a complex ritual whose origins are lost in history, and the castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. When Titus is crowned, he is called ''Child-Inheritor of the rivers, of the Tower of Flints and the dark recesses beneath cold stairways…Child-Inheritor of the spring breezes that blow in from the jarl forests and of the autumn misery in petal, scale, and wing.''

As the novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle. Inside, all events are predetermined by a complex ritual whose origins are lost in history and the castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. Dreamlike and macabre, Peake's extraordinary novel is one of the most astonishing and fantastic works in modern English fiction.

When the murderous Captain Slaughterboard and the crew of the Black Tiger make landfall on a pink island full of preposterous animals they meet the Yellow Creature, 'bright as butter', who changes Slaughterboard's life for ever. Written and drawn by Mervyn Peake in 1939, this pirate fantasy is as marvellous now as it was in 1939. This is the 70th anniversary edition, with an introduction by the author's son, Fabian Peake.

The eccentric talent of the legendary Mervyn Peake figures prominently in FIGURES OF SPEECH, a playful series of drawings that challenge the reader to guess what familiar saying each picture portrays."We give no table of contents here, for to do so would spoil your pleasure," wrote author-illustrator Mervyn Peake when this quirky book was first published in 1939. "Each drawing represents a particular Figure of Speech." Following were twenty-nine drawings, identified only by number: a couple with their noses on fire; a gentleman cutting pages from a book; a tropical explorer resting his heels inside water glasses. Revealed in a key at the end were the "figures of speech" the drawings portrayed (in this case, "burning their bridges," "cutting a long story short," and, of course, "cooling his heels").Now this idiosyncratic volume has been lovingly reissued, its original black-and-white drawings set against colorful panels. Whether enjoyed simply for its witty, intriguing, and masterly pictures or used as a game book with family or friends, Figures of Speech will delight devoted followers of Mervyn Peake and everyone else who loves visual puns.