E F Benson

THERE is an amazingly silly proverb which quite mistakenly tells us that "seeing is believing." The most ordinary conjurer at a village entertainment will prove the falsity of this saying. For who has not seen one of these plausible mountebanks put a watch into a top-hat, and, after clearly smashing it into a thousand pieces with a pestle, stir up the disintegrated fragments with a spoon and produce an omelette? Or who is so unacquainted with the affairs of the village schoolroom at Christmas as not to have seen a solid billiard-ball or a lively canary squeezed out of the side of a friend's head? Such phenomena are by no means rare, and occur periodically all over England...

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Winter Sports in Switzerland

The arrival of the snobbish Mrs Emmeline Lucas (known as Lucia to her friends) in the small seaside town of Tilling causes waves as she threatens the queen bee of Tilling’s social circle, Miss Elizabeth Mapp. Against a backdrop of genteel tea parties and bridge evenings, a series of hilarious conflicts ensues between the two power-hungry women as they battle on the social stage to gain the ultimate place as the first lady of Tilling society. This edition includes all three novels the brand new BBC adaptation is based on: Queen Lucia and Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia.

Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia

Mapp and Lucia Omnibus

It was precisely and carefully written, stating the facts and pulling apart the saintly whitewash Mrs. Gaskell and other previous biographers had done to Charlotte's life. He does a thorough job of getting at the real Charlotte behind all the myth. I'm not even sure the author liked Charlotte very much, but that didn't stop him depicting her honestly, with the facts that he had before him. The book ends very abruptly with Charlotte's death. The last few chapters seem a bit hurried, but on the whole it was a good effort.

Charlotte Bronte

Arthur Conan Doyle

Edgar Wallace

Charles Dickens

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Robert Louis Stevenson

Algernon Blackwood

George Macdonald

Wilkie Collins

M R James

Thomas Hardy

Nathaniel Hawthorne

G K Chesterton

Emmuska Orczy

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Jerome K Jerome

Arthur Cheney Train

Louisa M Alcott

Saki

John Kendrick Bangs

Florence Marryat

Fergus Hume

Grant Allen

Catherine Crowe

Sabine Baring-Gould

Katherine Rickford

Bithia Mary Croker

Leonard Kip

Catherine L. Pirkis

Lucie E. Jackson

William Douglas O'Connor

James Bowker

Frank R Stockton

Fred M White

R Austin Freeman

Sir J M Barrie

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (Arthur Conan Doyle)
The Flying Stars (G. K. Chesterton)
Percival Bland's Proxy (R. Austin Freeman)
A Christmas Capture (Fred M. White)
McAllister's Christmas (Arthur Cheney Train)
The Mystery of Room Five (Fred M White)
A Policeman's Business (Edgar Wallace)
Stuffing (Edgar Wallace)
Mr Wray's Cash Box (Wilkie Collins)
The Adventure of the Second Swag (Robert Barr)
A Chaparral Christmas Gift (O. Henry)
A Christmas Tragedy (Emmuska Orczy)
What the Shepherd Saw (Thomas Hardy)
The Silver Hatchet (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Markheim (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The Wolves of Cernogratz (Saki)
Mustapha (Sabine Baring-Gould)
The Christmas Banquet (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
The Haunted Man (Charles Dickens)
The Ghost's Touch (Fergus Hume)
Glámr (Sabine Baring-Gould)
The Ghosts at Grantley (Leonard Kip)
A Terrible Christmas Eve (Lucie E. Jackson)
Ghosts and Family Legends (Catherine Crowe)
Thurlow's Christmas Story (John Kendrick Bangs)
The Abbot's Ghost (Louisa M. Alcott)
Old Applejoy's Ghost (Frank R. Stockton)
Wolverden Tower (Grant Allen)
The Christmas-Eve Vigil (James Bowker)
The Box with the Iron Clamps (Florence Marryat)
Joseph (Katherine Rickford)
The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton (Charles Dickens)
The Ghost of Christmas Eve (J. M. Barrie)
The Dead Sexton (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu)
Uncle Cornelius His Story (George MacDonald)
The Grave by the Handpost (Thomas Hardy)
Number Ninety (Bithia Mary Croker)
At Chrighton Abbey (Mary Elizabeth Braddon)
The Black Bag Left on a Door-Step (Catherine L. Pirkis)
Between the Lights (E. F. Benson)
Transition (Algernon Blackwood)
The Kit-Bag (Algernon Blackwood)

The Best Holiday Mysteries for Christmas Time

Look out for the new BBC adaptation starring Anna Chancellor, Miranda Richardson and Mark Gatiss! Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling...until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or 'Lucia' to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia's formidable armoury: her duchesses, her Italian, her financial speculations, her celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. But Mapp will not relinquish her supremacy in local society so easily, and battle is joined between these two indomitable queens and their rather fickle allies.

Mapp and Lucia

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY WH Auden, Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward were among his fans... But have you discovered E. F. Benson yet? In a Holbein portrait above the grand old fireplace, Francis Vail, second baronet, brandishes a beautiful golden goblet, encrusted with pearls, rubies and emeralds. But this treasure, the Luck of the Vails, has since brought the family nothing but ruin and death. On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Harry Vail discovers the Luck hidden in the attic of his ancestral home, the family curse is reawoken, and a tale of madness, avarice and murder unfolds. Murder mystery... Ghost story... Whodunnit. This is a classic detective story from the author of Mapp and Lucia. Crime fiction at its best.

The Luck of the Vails

"Such things may have attached to them heaven knows what spooks and spirits." - The Ikon On the evening of Saturday, 28 October 1893, Cambridge University's Chit-Chat Club convened its 601st meeting. Ten members and one guest gathered in the rooms of Montague Rhodes James, the Junior Dean of King's College, and listened - with increasing absorption one suspects - as their host read "Two Ghost Stories". Ghosts of the Chit-Chat celebrates this momentous event in the history of supernatural literature, the earliest dated record we have of M. R. James reading his ghost stories out loud. And it revives the contributions that other members made to the genre; men of imagination who invoked the ghostly in their work, and who are now themselves shades. In a series of essays, stories, and poems Robert Lloyd Parry looks at the history and culture of the Club. In addition to tales and poems never before reprinted, Ghosts of the Chit-Chat features earlier, slightly different versions of two of M. R. James's best-known ghost stories; Robert Lloyd Parry's profiles and commentaries on each featured Chit-Chat member sheds new light on this supernatural tradition, making Ghosts of the Chit-Chat a valuable resource for casual readers and long-time Jamesians alike.

Ghosts of the Chit-Chat

Sherlock star Mark Gatiss selects and introduces chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story - E.F. Benson. There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy Tube platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden, inexplicable chill. There's no need for a ticking clock, a limping footstep, or a knock at the door to start you trembling. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all.

Selected and Introduced by Mark Gatiss

Ghost Stories

E F Benson

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