- Paperback: 282 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books, London (22 Feb 1979)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140051317
- ISBN-13: 978-0140051315
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
9,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Books > Fiction > Horror > Short Stories
- #50 in Books > Fiction > Horror > Contemporary Horror
Tales of the Unexpected
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Tales of the Unexpected for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Stories included: Taste, Lamb to Slaughter, Man from the South, Dip in the Pool, Skin, Neck, Nunc Dimittis, The Landlady, William and Mary, The Way up to Heaven, Parsons Pleasures, Mrs Bixby and the Colonel Coat, Royal Jelly, Edward the Conqueror, Galloping Foxley.
About the Author
From the publication of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the 1960s to his death in 1990, Roald Dahl became the most successful children’s author in the world. Nearly twenty years later, a fresh generation of children seek out his work with instinctive fanaticism. His creations endure - through Hollywood movies, theatre adaptations and musical works, but still most potently of all through the pure magic of his writing upon the page.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
There were six of us to dinner that night at Mike Schofield's house in London: Mike and his wife and daughter, my wife and I, and a man called Richard Pratt. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
There were six of us to dinner that night at Mike Schofield's house in London: Mike and his wife and daughter, my wife and I, and a man called Richard Pratt. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What a special writer Roald Dahl is. In this collection of short stories we see his full range of rampant storytelling,gloriously macabre humour,and totally unpredictable twists. Check out the father who feeds his son Royal Jelly with ominous results,or the cruise passenger who jumps overboard to win a bet. See a man`s schooldays return to haunt him in GALLOPING FOXLEY,and a scheming wife`s shock in MRS BIXBY AND THE COLONAL`S COAT. All these and more ,told with style and glee,perfectly weighted to keep you hooked until the bitter end.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Blimey, That was Unexpected!
A silly little review of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected
I grew up on Roald Dahl. With food, drink and oxygen I also had a brief flirtation, but the stories of Roald Dahl were my true love. I marvelled at the fantastic effects of George's marvellous medicine, cheered for the fantastic Mr. Fox, and got a bit unnerved by The Witches (although this was owing more to the protagonist's creepy grandmother than the villains of the story).
Imagine my delight, then, upon receiving Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected as a birthday present. A two-hundred and eighty-ish page collection of charming short fiction from one of my favourite writers of all time! I assumed.
And I assumed correctly. The fiction is both short and charming (and, by some immense stroke of luck, it seemed, I had even guessed the number of pages correctly). While the witches and chocolate factories are non-existent, the masterful prose and unique, interesting characters are in abundance. Highlights include Taste, if only because it gives a - dare I say it - first taste of what's to follow, Lamb To The Slaughter, which includes the curiously homicidal Mary Maloney, Galloping Foxley, for the masterful use of a somewhat minimalistic plot to create such an intriguing story, Parson's Pleasure, for an ending left in so many ways to the reader's imagination and Royal Jelly, for being everything one can hope for in a Dahl story.
The flaws are few and far between. Some of the endings hover slightly too far on the ambiguous side, while some are perhaps made too obvious (such as Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat). Others perhaps feel a little anti-climactic (Edward the Conqueror, or maybe I'm missing something with that one).
This book is a very fine collection of short stories. Each story is a little gem, each one the product of an ingenious imagination.
A silly little review of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected
I grew up on Roald Dahl. With food, drink and oxygen I also had a brief flirtation, but the stories of Roald Dahl were my true love. I marvelled at the fantastic effects of George's marvellous medicine, cheered for the fantastic Mr. Fox, and got a bit unnerved by The Witches (although this was owing more to the protagonist's creepy grandmother than the villains of the story).
Imagine my delight, then, upon receiving Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected as a birthday present. A two-hundred and eighty-ish page collection of charming short fiction from one of my favourite writers of all time! I assumed.
And I assumed correctly. The fiction is both short and charming (and, by some immense stroke of luck, it seemed, I had even guessed the number of pages correctly). While the witches and chocolate factories are non-existent, the masterful prose and unique, interesting characters are in abundance. Highlights include Taste, if only because it gives a - dare I say it - first taste of what's to follow, Lamb To The Slaughter, which includes the curiously homicidal Mary Maloney, Galloping Foxley, for the masterful use of a somewhat minimalistic plot to create such an intriguing story, Parson's Pleasure, for an ending left in so many ways to the reader's imagination and Royal Jelly, for being everything one can hope for in a Dahl story.
The flaws are few and far between. Some of the endings hover slightly too far on the ambiguous side, while some are perhaps made too obvious (such as Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat). Others perhaps feel a little anti-climactic (Edward the Conqueror, or maybe I'm missing something with that one).
This book is a very fine collection of short stories. Each story is a little gem, each one the product of an ingenious imagination.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is very clever in the sense that Roald Dahl has managed to combine comedy ; horror ; murder and a whole host of other factors all into one book.
Definately a book that will keep you hooked from the beginning to the end.
Definately a book that will keep you hooked from the beginning to the end.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Amusing tales, unexpected endings
This is one of Roald Dahl's finest works in adult fiction, so popular that it had its own TV series spanning 9 years. Read more
Published 8 months ago by O Durham
Severely disappointing
After all the praise I've heard for this book, I found it very disappointing. Characters are one dimensional: the women in the stories can be categorised into two groups, ditsy and... Read more
Published on 16 Oct 2004 by "distress_signals"
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
