Rudyard Kipling

The Phantom Rickshaw & Other Eerie Tales brings together four of Kipling's most-loved short stories. Each deals with events that can't quite be explained away, whether a traditional ghost story, a terrifyingly realistic nightmare or an sumptuous and lavish romance. Powerful, exotic and extravagant, these tales are rated, by some, to be the best stories Kipling ever wrote, with The Man Who Would Be King being hailed as the finest story in the English language.

The Light That Failed is a haunting and powerful novel of human suffering, love and loss. In Dick Heldar, artist and journalist, we see a man struggling to rise above his cruel beginnings and neglected childhood to grasp at a chance for happiness in later life. However as his hopes slowly turn to dust, his determination and mental powers begin to drain away, and the onset of premature physical decline determines his final demise. In a shocking and tragic conclusion, Kipling completes his frighteningly realistic survey of physical and psychological breakdown. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience

The Man Who Would be King (1888) is a short story by Rudyard Kipling chronicling the adventures of two British men who become kings in Kafiristan (now a province of Afghanistan).

"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is a short story in the 1894 anthology The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling about the adventures of a valiant young mongoose.

Imagine an alternate reality where the man who gave the world The Jungle Book and Gunga Din and The Phantom 'Rickshaw was a science fiction writer - generations before Hugo Gernsbeck and Amazing; before the pulp SF that dominated the thirties; before intellectually prescient Astounding in the forties and sophisticated literary SF magazines like Galaxy and The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction fifties. Think of it: a world where Rudyard Kipling was a science fiction writer, long before SF as we understand it was invented. Well actually, he was. And the book you have in your hands - Actions And Reactions - is a wonderful example of it. It feels a lot like the sort of sophisticated SF - literary without being precious - we all remember from the Golden Age of Galaxy and The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction. Imagine that. We live in an alternate universe.

The Barrack-Room Ballads are a set of martial songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling originally published in two parts: the first set in 1892, the second in 1896. Many have become classic military ditties, still well known, and are closely linked to British imperialism in many minds, particularly Gunga Din, Tommy and Danny Deever.

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling. The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle."