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  • Published: 9 July 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241652671
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 864
  • RRP: $22.99

The Complete Father Brown Stories




A new selection of the much-loved Father Brown stories, now part of the Penguin English Library

'No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be'

Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself.

With a beautiful new cover design by award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith and presented in the delightful Penguin English Library series, this new selection brings together the very best of the Father Brown stories, inviting new readers to discover one of the most unforgettable characters in literature.

  • Published: 9 July 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241652671
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 864
  • RRP: $22.99

Other books in the series

On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

G K Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936) studied art at Slade School and literature at University College London before ending his studies early without qualifications. From 1900 he worked his way to become a freelance art and literary critic then a regular columnist and later a prolific writer (he has many essays, poems, short stories, novels and plays to his name).

Forty eight of the Father Brown short stories first appeared in various, now unknown, magazines and were later collected into five books: The Innocence of Father Brown, published in 1911; The Wisdom of Father Brown, published in 1914; The Incredulity of Father Brown, published in 1926; The Secrets of Father Brown, published in 1927; and The Scandal of Father Brown, published in 1935.

This edition also includes 'The Doddington Affair', the first half of which was published in Premier Magazines in 1914 with the challenge to G. K. Chesterton to finish and solve the mystery. He did so in the following issue. 'The Vampire of the Village', which also appears in this edition under The Scandal of Father Brown, was first published in 1936.

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