The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn and Other Stories

'I was to be offered up as a sacrifice to some heathen god an awful fate for a Free-kirk elder in the prime of life' In 'The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn' and the other stories in this collection, peculiar worlds of temptation, adventure or iniquity are perilously close at hand. Mr Hawthorn himself steps outside to allow his porridge to cool and disappears for five years and more, a Glasgow grocer is shipwrecked and ultimately worshipped as a god, a young mathematician discovers an entirely new aspect of reality and becomes terrified by what he finds there, and an ageing sinner clings grimly, weakly to a hard-won life of decency: John Buchan in each demonstrating his abilities as a gripping writer of short stories. In his introduction, Giles Foden explores Buchan's innate sense of the fascination held by sudden jeopardy and vanished comfort, and the themes of the will and fate in his work. Selected with an introduction by GILES FODEN

John Buchan (1875-û1940) was a writer as well as an imperial statesman, MP, barrister, and soldier.

Giles Foden is the author of several novels, including the bestselling The Last King of Scotland, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award. He has also introduced the Penguin Classics edition of H. Rider Haggard-'s King Solomon-'s Mines.