Parties and Passions is a literary celebration. Love, betrayal, sadness, humour and more are explored in this collection of party stories by classic authors.

Featuring tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Parties and Passions shows making merry doesn’t always go to plan. Joy and disappointment, murder and mix-ups: there’s a party for everyone here. Find stories of glamorous masked balls from Edgar Allan Poe and Alexandre Dumas, ghostly wedding celebrations dreamed up by Edith Nesbit and Washington Irving, and more occasions for dancing and music in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and Kate Chopin’s ‘Wiser Than a God’. Nothing happens as expected in Nella Larsen’s ‘The Wrong Man’ and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Bridal Party’, and calm gatherings descend into chaos in witty and ironic writing from Saki and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

With an international range of much-loved writers from Akutagawa to Tolstoy, here is an eclectic collection of literary parties to suit every mood.

The Great Gatsby, Mrs Dalloway and The Picture of Dorian Gray are also available in this Macmillan Collector’s Library series of gorgeous paperbacks featuring the greatest parties and the wildest passions in literature.