A superb collection of some of the greatest tales of the genre; many are classics while others are lesser-known gems unearthed from the vintage era of the supernatural.
E. F. Benson was a master of the ghost story and now all his rich, imaginative, spine-tingling and beautifully written tales are presented together in this bumper collection.
Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M.R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace, from creatures seeking retribution and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb. This edition presents all of James's published ghost stories, including the unforgettable 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' and 'Casting the Runes', and an appendix of James's writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones's introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own. --! From publisher's description.
This is a book to be read by a blazing fire on a winter's night, with the curtains drawn close and the doors securely locked. The unquiet souls of the dead, both as fictional creations and as 'real' apparitions, roam the pages of this haunting selection of ghost stories by Rex Collings. Some of these stories are classics while others are lesser-known gems unearthed from this vintage era of tales of the supernatural. There are stories from distant lands - 'Fisher's Ghost' by John Lang is set in Australia and 'A Ghostly Manifestation' by 'A Clergyman' is set in Calcutta. In this selection, Sir Walter Scott (a Victorian in spirit if not in fact), keeps company with Edgar Allen Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu and other illustrious masters of the genre.
THE TERROR BY NIGHT by E. F. Benson Although E. F. Benson's four volumes of short weird tales are acknowledged classics of their kind, original hardback editions are now difficult to obtain, and when copies are offered for sale the price is often prohibitive. Too, recent research has, to an extent, rendered them out of date, since over the past two decades nearly a score of previously uncollected stories have been unearthed, which need to be integrated within the Benson 'spook story' canon. The Ash-Tree Press 'Collected Spook S"tories', under the editorship of Jack Adrian, now brings together all of E. F. Benson's known tales of the strange and the supernatural into an extended five-volue set. The series features a radical rearranging of the stories themselves into their chronological order of publication and publication. THE TERROR BY NIGHT-the first volume in the series-covers the period between 1899 and 1911, and demonstrates Benson's early mastery of his craft, in such stories as 'Caterpillars', 'The Man Who Went Too Far', 'Gavon's Eve', and 'The Bus-Conductor', the basis for one of the stories in the classic supernatural film DEAD OF NIGHT in 1945. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.
A collection of strange stories from Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. It also includes the novella, The Haunted Hotel, a combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of waterways and death.
I doubt there's a technical word for a collection of ghost stories, but in this case it is a delight. In the tradition of M. R. James (or at least the influence), these two collections are worth a close look by any enthusiast of supernatural fiction. Stoneground Ghost Tales relate the strange experiences of Mr. Batchel, Vicar of the Parish. Tedious Brief Tales focuses on strange and haunted doings at Jesus College (Cambridge) from centuries past.
Ghosts, murder, demonic possession, and psychological torment: these are just some of the subjects taken up by the unparalleled writers in this superb collection. Lovers of the supernatural will discover the true masters of the genre, and readers of classic literature will discover another side of their favorite Victorian, French, and American authors. In “La Grande Bretèche” by the great French nineteenth-century writer Honoré de Balzac, a doctor discovers an abandoned manor with a disturbing history. Victorian master Thomas Hardy’s “The Three Strangers” proves just how hard it is to judge a man’s character, even when a life is at stake. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s exciting and suspenseful trilogy “The Suicide Club,” a detective delves into a dark association whose members are intent on losing their lives. And in “Green Tea,” by the incomparable ghost-story writer Sheridan Le Fanu, a detective of the occult investigates the case of a clergyman haunted by a demon in the form of an ethereal monkey. This chilling collection also includes stories by: Edgar Allan Poe Henry James Willa Cather Charles Dickens Guy de Maupassant Rudyard Kipling Nathaniel Hawthorne Charlotte Brontë And more