Books published by publisher Dedalus Limited

The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) is Gaston Leroux's masterpiece and during his lifetime his most successful book. It is one of the classics of early 20th-century detective fiction. At the heart of the novel is the enigma: how could a murder take place in a locked room, which shows no sign of being entered?The novel is also about the rivalry to solve the case between the detective Frederick Larson, and a young investigative journalist, Rouletabille. Larson finds a suspect who is put on trial, only to have him cleared by Rouletabille, who reveals in the most dramatic fashion the identity of the real murderer.

One dark and stormy night, Mo hears her Inner Voice urging her to begin writing her memoirs. Having ignored her Inner Voice’s advice once before, with near-fatal consequences, she decides, this time, to do as she is told. Mo looks back on her life, beginning with the crucial moment when she met another cow, who introduced herself as La Vache qui Rit, and assured Mo that there was nothing more stupid in this world than a stupid cow. Mo spends her life trying to prove to her friend that, despite being a cow, she is not at all stupid. Besides, she has her Inner Voice and a great desire to live! Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, in which defeated Republican supporters are still being persecuted by victorious Nationalists.It paints a funny, touching portrait of friendship and freedom and the sometimes-difficult process of finding oneself,

Two friends are kidnapped by several masked men, who, to judge by their manners and their accent are men of the best society. One of the friends is a doctor, and the masked men say that they need him to assist a noblewoman, who is about to give birth. When they reach the house, they find no such noblewoman, only a dead man. Another man, known only as A.M.C., bursts in at this point and declares that the man died of opium poisoning. The doctor writes a letter to a newspaper editor, setting out the facts as he knows them. These facts are rebutted first by a friend of A.M.C. and then by the first masked man, who explains the whole story...Eça de Queiroz wrote this spoof 'mystery' with his friend Ramalho Ortigá£o, publishing it in the form of a series of anonymous letters in the Diá¡rio de Notá­cias between 24 July and 27 September 1870. Many readers believed the letters to be genuine. As the book progresses, one sees Eça gradually getting into his stride as a novelist, equally at home with humour and with human drama.Recently turned into a major Portuguese feature film it will delight avid Eça fans and lovers of mysteries.

The story revolves round the angelic and mysterious hermaphrodite Seraphita who seems to inspire love in all she meets. One of Balzac's most unusual novels which will appeal to lovers of the mystical and the supernatural 'Seraphita will be my master stroke. One can create a Goriot every day but one creates a Seraphita only once in a lifetime.' Honore de Balzac 'Never di Balzac approach the very ideal of Beauty as in this book.' Theophile Gautier

Vivaldo Bonfim was a bored book-keeper whose main escape from the tedium of his work was provided by novels. In the office, he tended to read rather than work, and, one day, became so immersed in a book that he got lost and disappeared completely. That, at least, is the version given to Vivaldo’s son, Elias, by his grandmother. One day, Elias sets off, like a modern-day Telemachus, in search of the father he never knew. His journey takes him through the plots of many classic novels, replete with murders, all-consuming passions, wild beasts and other literary perils.The Book that Devoured my Father is, at once, a celebration of filial love, friendship and literature.

The story revolves round the angelic and mysterious hermaphrodite Seraphita who seems to inspire love in all she meets. The battle for her affection leads Wilf and Minna past earthly knowledge and into the deeper mysteries of life. Set against the rugged landscape of 18th century Norway, Seraphita is the most unusual and bizarre novel in Balzac's Comedie Humaine.

My favourite of all locked-room novels has at last been reissued. The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written in 1908 by Gaston Leroux, better known for The Phantom of the Opera, and has never been bettered. The first in a series of novels to feature the intrepid if naive young reporter and sleuth, Rouletabille, it pits him against the dark soul of the detective Frederick Larsan and the murky secrets of the Stangerson family. Considering when the book was written, it remains remarkably modern, a page-turner whose exploration of the dark side can still send shivers up your back. Naturally, the solution to the central crime is a twist within a tortuous twist for which even a Mensa reader will be quite unprepared. A masterpiece. Maxim Jakubowski in Time Out

Andreyev's short stories explore the world of deprivation and depravity.Between the two Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 Leonid Andreyev was without a doubt the foremost writer in Russia. His name was always spoken with veneration, in mysterious whispers, as a grim portentous magician who descended into the ultimate depths of the nether side of life and fathomed the beauty and tragedy of the struggle. Leonid Nickolayevitch was born in the province of Oryol, in 1871, and studied law at the University of Moscow. Those were days of suffering and starvation; he gazed into the abyss of sorrow and despair. In January 1894 he made an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself by shooting, and then was forced by the authorities to severe penitence, which augmented the natural morbidness of his temperament. As a lawyer his career was short-lived, and he soon abandoned it for literature, beginning as a police-court reporter on the Moscow Courier. In 1902 he published the short story In the Fog, which for the first time brought him universal recognition. He was imprisoned during the revolution of 1905, together with Maxim Gorky, on political charges. Such are the few significant details of his personal life, for the true Andreyev is entirely in his stories and plays.

Carlo misses his father. His parents are separated, he is with his mother in Germany while his father is back in their native Palermo. His father is always about to visit but somehow never quite gets to Germany. Carlo gets tired of waiting and decides to do something about it and sets off for Palermo but without any money to pay his fare. What happens is a series of adventures when anything that could go wrong does but Carlo despite everything gets to Palermo and lands up at his Papa’s door. Will reality live up to Carlo’s dreams?

The protagonist, Father Llatzer, a priest banished for doctrinal heresy to an isolated, backward mountain parish, struggles to achieve personal redemption by bringing salvation to his primitive, taciturn, rural flock. Their mute atavism is disturbed only by the local whore, Footloose, embodying all the forces against which the priest's reforming mission is directed. Ambiguity surrounds the denouement of that conflict.Dark Vales is as as compelling today as when it was first written.

The author is one of Portugal’s greatest poets and, like her poetry, these stories are filled with her delight and pleasure in nature, gardens and the sea, as well as her keen sense of the magical. Among other things, we encounter dwarves, diminutive little girls who live on the sea bed, plants that come alive at night, a tree that lives on long after it has been felled, and a pilgrim who discovers much more than the Holy Land. Her themes are, above all, loyalty and friendship.

The diminutive Leon is the envy of all Paris when he becomes engaged to the successful stomatologist and ravishing 6ft beauty Solange, who leaves no man unstirred - including the priest who weds them. The dutiful husband happily ignores jealous remarks about the union of 'giraffe and zebra' as he sires one beautiful baby after another.But as his domestic bliss with Solange continues and their brood grows, Leon's body begins to shrink - with the exception of one vital organ - until the medical marvel is scarcely taller than a thimble. Can Solange's love for her 'Little bighorn' survive his diminished status, the onslaught of suitors at her door and his nocturnal abseiling down her body? Will Leon escape the paws of the family cat and the murderous thoughts of his children embarrassed by their father's s size?