Thirteen hair-raising stories to make your flesh creep. Here are literary masterpieces by Kipling, Saki, Algernon Blackwood and others with tales filled with chilling terror and unfathomable horror.
A haunted old house, a terrifying werewolf, the echoes of a heinous crime, the mark of a sinister beast . . . these and many more grisly tales are in this compilation of eerie stories that will take you to unexplored territories of the unknown, the uncanny and the plain terrifying. These classic tales have been written by great literary giants like Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, C.A. Kincaid, Gerald Kersh, and many others. Compiled by master anthologiser Ruskin Bond, these riveting tales are a heady mixture of crime, mystery, and terror, sure to chill your bones and give you goose pimples. So, here is your chance to savour every morsel of this sumptuous assortment. Meet the rich cast of characters and read, if you dare . . .
The popularity of Ghost Stories from the Raj resulted in a number of requests for more this period. Ruskin Bond delved into his archives and came up with another entertaining collection of strange or ‘nightmarish’ tales written by Englishmen who came to India and the East Indies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her are spooks, werewolves, dacoits, assassins, man-eating tigers, and head-hunters! And in his Introduction Ruskin Bond tells us why those “mad dogs and Englishmen” went out in the mid-day sun and what happened to some of them! Never a dull moment – and never a dull sentence in this, the eleventh of Rupa’s fast-selling anthologies.
'He was described as being the size of a bull-buffalo, with a belly that reached the ground and a white moon between his ears, true tokens of the man-eater, as every native of India knows. He was said to have the power of assuming different shapes and to lure his prey by the imitation of a human voice...' From 'The White Tiger' by Alice Perrin. Selected and edited by Ruskin Bond, this collection of eerie stories is sure to set your nerves racing. Read about an unconquerable, seemingly supernatural man-eater in 'The White Tiger'; The narrator's perilous journey in a dilapidated coach in 'The Phantom Coach'; Sherlock Holmes' investigation of how a speckled band and a whistle is connected to a mysterious death in 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' and Bond's own encounter with a Jinn in 'The Trouble with Jinns'.
She was getting closer. His mouth ran dry and his scream died deep inside him. His wobbly legs refused to move. . .The fear of the unknown, enhanced by the mist, darkness and pattering raindrops is part of life in the hills. But there have been real encounters with the supernatural, and included in this collection of chilling tales are personal experiences of people. Read on for some spine-chilling adventures with the spirits in Shimla.
In the middle of the night, I woke to a loud rattling sound. A rat, perhaps? But no. As soon as I opened the cupboard door, out popped the skull-landing near my feet and bouncing away right across the drawing room. Ghosts and spirits, prets and jinns abound in this collection of stories. From the skull that refused to be given away to the spirits of long dead hill-station residents and from the mysterious man you meet on a dark road to the malevolent presence at the bottom of a pond-these are some of Ruskin Bond's best stories about the supernatural. Dive under the covers, leave the lights on and lose yourself in these scary, funny and adventurous tales.
Daksh Sehgal, a corporate employee on a business tour meets Agastya Roy, a writer in the midst of penning a book, in a train coupe. Both are on their way to Kolkata from North East after their respective works and strike up a conversation. It’s a night journey but they aren’t sleepy anymore now so, they decide to kill time. Agastya begins telling Daksh six ghost stories… May 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic has spread around the world and Mumbai is the worst hit in India. Dr. Balagopal Reddy and his nurse, Mancy Varghese meet a peculiar man, Wridhesh Surve during a night shift in the hospital they work in. Every hundred years or so, a pattern is formed and there might just be more to it. Come, meet the beast! Izna Mehra gets arranged to Udarsh Sachdev and moves to the outskirts of Gurgaon. It’s an old secluded house away from the hustle and bustle where Izna discovers a fridge in one of the rooms which is always locked – a fridge full of meat. Udarsh has his own little secret which he might want to share with her that is, only if he gets an opportunity. Basant Agarwal becomes a businessman reluctantly but quite naturally and shifts base from Pune to Panchgani with his wife, Anaisha. It’s a wonderful house that he has bought and there is nobody around – just another house which is seemingly abandoned during the day but comes alive on one night every year. Their neighbour, Harini Srivastava wants to tell them something and invites for a party. Rushil Chatterjee travels from Vancouver to Kolkata after over three decades for some property-related work he can’t skip. His cousin, Laltu requests him to visit their ancestral home in Serampore where his father, an old man on his deathbed has to confess something. Karma always pays back! Tanay and Sushant, two close friends wake up one morning and realize things are different around them in the remote town of Himachal Pradesh. They meet The Transformer who tells them how they can go REVERSE – we all do! Know it. Hold That Breath once again as one of the stories connects the others and fear is unleashed from the mind of the master storyteller and bestselling author. Yours truly, Abhirup Dhar.
As the light came on, I saw the cat standing at the foot of the bed, tail erect and hair on end. It was very angry. And then...its appearance changed and its head was that of a human-a woman, black-browed with flaring nostrils and large crooked ears, her lips full and drenched with blood-my blood!This is a collection of some of Ruskin Bond's most pithy short stories ranging from eerie suspense to touching empathy. There's a bloodthirsty cat in a colonial rest house; an uncle who carries a vial of deadly arsenic with him; a mysterious woman whose seven husbands have disappeared one after another; and the touching tales of animals in the wilderness and their lonely struggle for survival against humans.Captivating and addictive, The Chakrata Cat will keep you enthralled till the end.