Mrs Midas, Queen Kong, Mrs Lazarus, the Kray sisters, and a huge cast of others startle with their wit, imagination, lyrical intuition and incisiveness.

The World's Wife throws open the windows on the stuffy annals of historical myth and breezes through some of its highlights with a sense of revelry and laugh-out-loud observation.

In Feminine Gospels, Carol Ann Duffy draws on the historical, the archetypal, the biblical and the fantastical to create various visions – and revisions – of female identity. Simultaneously stripping women bare and revealing them in all their guises and disguises, these poems tell tall stories as though they were true confessions, and spin modern myths from real women seen in every aspect – as bodies and corpses, writers and workers, shoppers and slimmers, fairytale royals or girls-next-door. ‘Part of Duffy’s talent – besides her ear for ordinary eloquence, her gorgeous, powerful, throwaway lines, her subtlety – is her ventriloquism . . . From verbal nuances to mind-expanding imaginative leaps, her words seem freshly plucked from the minds of non-poets – that is, she makes it look easy’ Charlotte Mendelson, Observer

Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize, "essential reading for the broken-hearted of all ages" (The Guardian) The effortless virtuosity, drama, and humanity of Carol Ann Duffy's verse have made her much admired among contemporary poets. Rapture is a book-length love poem and a moving act of personal testimony. But what sets these poems apart from other treatments of the subject is Duffy's refusal to simplify the contradictions of love and read its transformations-infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancor, separation, and grief-as either redemptive or destructive. This is a map of real love in all its churning complexity, simultaneously direct and subtle, showing us that a song can be made of even the most painful episodes in our lives. With poems that will find deep resonance in the experience of most readers, it is a collection that can and does speak for us all.

Once upon a time, there was a rich merchant who had three daughters. The girls were just as clever as they were bella and none more so than the youngest, whose name was Beauty.Disappear to faraway lands of wicked witches, evil monsters and brave heroines in Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's stunning collection of fairy tales. Including her beautiful and haunting retellings of the Grimm classics Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and the Pied Piper, as well as other tales from around the world, and new stories of her own, this book will make you think again about once upon a time . . . With ethereal illustrations by Tommi Tomislav, this uncommonly beautiful book is a very special introduction to - or reminder of - many classic fairy tales.

One of those rare books that is immediately enjoyable yet will repay many re-readings' Poetry Review Carol Ann Duffy's highly praised second collection, for which she was given the Somerset Maughan Award, showcases the Poet Laureate's skill even at the very start of her career. Within are poems that reveal the full range of her interests: from the dramatic monologues, to meditations on death and art, to poems of protest and poems of love. Throughout it all, though, is a resounding determination to give voices to those who are usually voiceless, and always apparent is her inimitable wit, wisdom and imagination. At once tender and sharp, moving and humourous, Selling Manhattan has dazzled both readers and critics ever since it was first published in 1987.