L. P. Hartley

The go-between

Neil Gaiman

Kelly Link

E. F. Benson

E. Nesbit

Louis de Bernières

Robert Aickman

M. R. James

Jenn Ashworth

Jerome K. Jerome

Frank Copwer

Benard Capes

Muriel Sparks

A present contains a monstrous secret. An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party. A shadow slips across the floor by firelight. A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams. Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

A chilling collection of modern and classic Christmas ghost stories

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Gregory Woods

Harness Room

Arthur Conan Doyle

Charles Dickens

Robert E. Howard

Virginia Woolf

Robert Louis Stevenson

Henry James

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

H. G. Wells

Lafcadio Hearn

H. P. Lovecraft

Aleister Crowley

Algernon Blackwood

F. Marion Crawford

Rudyard Kipling

Edith Wharton

O. Henry

Walter Scott

E. T. A. Hoffmann

Oscar Wilde

Clark Ashton Smith

Guy de Maupassant

Wilkie Collins

Willa Cather

Bram Stoker

Anatole France

W. W. Jacobs

Nathaniel Hawthorne

John Buchan

Margaret Oliphant

Edith Nesbit

Marjorie Bowen

Edward Lucas White

Elizabeth Gaskell

Oliver Onions

Arthur Machen

William Hope Hodgson

Robert W. Chambers

Nikolai Gogol

Ambrose Bierce

M. P. Shiel

Mark Twain

Edgar Allan Poe

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Washington Irving

Saki

Lord Dunsany

Leonid Andreyev

Amelia B. Edwards

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Richard Connell

Vernon Lee

Rebecca Harding Davis

W. F. Harvey

Robert Hichens

Walter De La Mare

Violet Hunt

John Metcalfe

A. M. Burrage

Cynthia Asquith

Myla Jo Closser

Vincent O’Sullivan

H. Russell Wakefield

Franz Kafka

If you were looking for the Holy Bible of the horror anthologies, consider yourself lucky, because you just found it! Cosmic horror, supernatural events, ghost stories, weird fiction, mystical fantasies, occult narratives, this book plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. This collection of the greatest mysterious dark tales gathers together more than 100 authors and more than 1000 short stories (!), which makes it truly unique in its kind. Be aware that this book includes a big amount of stories that appear for the first time in digital print.

The Big Book of the Masters of Horror: 120+ authors and 1000+ stories (KathartikaTM Classics)

'The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy...' Jael 97's good looks have been deemed a cause of discontent among other women, and she finds herself reporting to the Ministry of Facial Justice, where her face will be reconstructed to become 'beta' (second-grade). For she lives in a post-apocalyptic world, where society is based on a collective sense of guilt, where all citizens are labelled 'delinquents' and obliged to wear sackcloth and ashes. Individuality and privilege, which might arouse envy, are stamped out. But Jael refuses to fit in. Forced to become 'beta', and thus exempt from envy, her self-respect and rebellious spirit cannot be suppressed so easily. Slowly, she begins the struggle to reassert the rights of the individual. L. P. Hartley's dystopian classic is a darkly entertaining vision of human weakness, envy and governmental interference taken to their most chilling extremes.

Facial Justice

The Shrimp and the Anemone

Muriel Spark

Bernard Capes

Frank Cowper

Penguin Readers is a series of simplified novels, film novelizations and original titles that introduce students at all levels to the pleasures of reading in English. Originally designed for teaching English as a foreign language, the series' combination of high interest level and low reading age makes it suitable for both English-speaking teenagers with limited reading skills and students of English as a second language. Many titles in the series also provide access to the pre-20th century literature strands of the National Curriculum English Orders.

The Go-between

'A masterpiece' Anita Brookner 'A very beautiful novel' Nick Hornby 'Includes some of the most perfect sentences in English' Guardian At the turn of the twentieth century, two children play on an English beach. Eustace, a gentle, dreamy, boy with a weak heart, relies on his older sister Hilda. As young adults, Eustace and Hilda are unexpectedly invited to stay at the grand country house of the wealthy Staveley family. The weekend's events will haunt the siblings' lives as their story travels from Oxford colleges to Venetian palazzi. The magnum opus from the author of The Go-Between, this is an enchanting, tender exploration of two siblings who cannot live together or apart. With an introduction by Anita Brookner

With an introduction by Anita Brookner

Eustace and Hilda

There is a delicious irony and humour in this Jamesian story about Eustace and Hilda, an Edwardian brother and sister, with its famous opening scene as nine-year-old Eustace watches an anemone devour a shrimp in a tidepool among the rocks on a Norfolk beach during the summer holidays. A shadow begins to be cast over the children's innocent conversations and gaucherie, revealing their anxieties about themselves, and the constraints of their cosseted lives, as the outside world - of other children, dancing lessons, adults, illness, funerals, money, excursions in landaus, future schools - impinges in Eustace and Hilda's intimacies and fantasies.

Timothy Casson, a bachelor writer, is forced to return from a contented life in Venice to an English village. Taking a house by the river where he can pursue his passion for rowing, he has to do battle with the locals to overcome his isolation and feelings of incompleteness. This most complex of Hartley's novels examines the multiple layers of Casson's relationships with servants, local society and friends.

The Boat

Overcome with grief at her husband's death, Lady Franklin, an eligible young widow, unburdens herself to Leadbitter - a gallant, hard-bitten ex-soldier who has invested his savings in the car he drives for hire - as he takes her on a series of journeys. He in turn beguiles her with stories of his non-existent wife and children, drawing her out of her self-absorption and weaving a dream-life with Lady Franklin at its heart. Half-hoping to make his dream come true, Leadbitter takes a bold, not to say reckless, step which costs him dearly, and brings these characters' tangled story to a dramatic and unexpected conclusion.

The Hireling

Though best known for his classic novel of Edwardian childhood The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley was also a master of supernatural and macabre fiction, the best of which is collected in The Travelling Grave and Other Stories. This volume demonstrates Hartley's versatility, ranging from traditional ghost stories like 'Feet Foremost' and 'The Cotillon' to the wickedly black humour of the horror masterpieces 'The Travelling Grave' and 'The Killing Bottle'. Originally published in 1948 and long out of print, this collection features twelve of Hartley's finest tales, presented in this edition with a new introduction by John Howard.

The Travelling Grave and Other Stories (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Quidquid Id Est, Timeo Danaos, Et Dona Ferentes Whatever it Is, I Dread the Greeks, Even when They are Bearing Gifts

Pool Clare

L. P. Hartley

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