The Shadowy Third

Ellen Glasgow's 'The Shadowy Third and Other Stories' is a haunting and thought-provoking collection of short stories. Featuring seven tales, the first four are spine-tingling ghost stories that will keep readers on edge. In 'The Shadowy Third', the narrator, Miss Randolph, must unravel the mystery surrounding Mrs. Maradick's haunted visions, while 'Dare's Gift' tells the tales of two women whose actions lead to devastating consequences. Other stories explore themes of infidelity and memory in early 20th-century society. With richly drawn characters and intricate plots, this collection showcases Glasgow's mastery of the short story form and is a must-read for fans of the genre.

‘A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity.’ Sarah Waters A sudden death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of love letters. Dusty with age, they reveal an illicit affair between the celebrated Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen, and the academic Humphry House - Julia’s grandfather. So begins a life-changing quest to discover and understand this affair, one with profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least her grandmother, Madeline. Using fascinating unpublished correspondence, Julia follows the lives of three very different characters through some of the most dramatic decades of the twentieth century: from the rarefied air of Oxford in the 1930s and the Anglo-Irish Big House, to the last days of Empire in India and into the Second World War. The story opens up a lost world, one with complex and often surprising attitudes to love and sex, work and home, duty and ambition, and to writing itself, spiced throughout with social history and a celebrated supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf. Inspired by Bowen’s own obsession with place and memory, Julia travels to all the locations in the letters - from Kolkata to Cambridge; from Ireland to Texas weaving present-day storytelling with historical narrative and literary exploration. From an assured, elegant new voice, The Shadowy Third is a beautifully written investigation of family, love, and the lasting power of literature. Praise for The Shadowy Third ‘Julia Parry has a fascinating tale to tell, and she does so with a compelling immediacy and also with admirable finesse. Bowen fans will be in her debt; and those interested in the milieux she frequented.’ Peter J. Conradi ‘The Shadowy Third is the intimate portrait of a love triangle, with the novelist Elizabeth Bowen as one of the protagonists. It is also a work of discovery, using letters with sensitivity and intelligence, rebuilding a lost world with imaginative flair, seeing Bowen and her world with insight, and the lives of Julia Parry’s own grandparents with a sharp eye for detail and a skill at telling a fascinating story.‘ Colm Tóibín, author of The Empty Family ‘A vivid picture of an important and immensely gifted writer in love.’ Joseph O’Connor ‘A compelling story of marriage, passion and betrayal that reads like a richly textured novel. With skill, wit, and empathy, Parry takes readers on a compelling journey to find the truth of her grandfather’s love affair with a famous novelist. Gripping, poignant, and fascinating.’ Charlotte Gordon, author of Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley Parry is a spirited narrator who is clearly a great admirer of Bowen's fiction but isn't blindsided by this, remaining admirably nuanced as she gives a judicious moment-by-moment account of these complicated characters over the decades.’ Lara Feigel, Spectator 'Fascinating and poetic.' Ian D’Alton, Irish Times ‘An essay of rare sensitivity and intelligent reflection... Julia Parry's elegantly written The Shadowy Third uncovers the love triangle that consumed the novelist – and her grandmother.’ Rupert Christiansen, Telegraph ‘As literary discoveries go, it’s a big one: the discovery in her uncle’s attic by Julia Parry, a secondary school English teacher, of the forgotten correspondence between her grandfather, the literary critic Humphry House, and the famous 20th-century Anglo-Irish novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen. Parry is an engaging writer, deliciously alert to the echoes and parallels that sometimes feel like ancestral instructions on how to approach the material.' Lucy Atkins, The Sunday Times 'Parry is an intrepid narrator, with a beguiling style... she marshals her facts and impressions with energy and assiduity.’ Patricia Craig, TLS 'Bowen devotees will find fascinating insights. Anyone who has yet to discover her sublime fiction, meanwhile, has so much to look forward to.’ Saga

One of Elizabeth Bowen’s most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen’s celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother’s. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains. For Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the relations between Leopold, Henrietta’s agitated hostess Naomi Fisher, Leopold’ s mysterious mother, his dead father, and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalizingly. And when Henrietta leaves the house that evening, it is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge usually reserved only for adults.

Ellen Glasgow was an influential female writer, and an important chronicler of the old South. 'The Shadowy Third', first published in 1923, represents an excellent early example of the 'Southern Gothic' genre. Many of the earliest ghost stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Ellen Glasgow wrote only thirteen short stories during her long career, seven of which appeared in 'The Shadowy Third'. Published in 1923 by Doubleday, Page & Company, it was the only collection of short stories published during her lifetime. Of the seven tales it contains, only four are supernatural, but all have an eerie quality to them; in fact, 'Jordan's End', a non-ghost story, is the most ghostly story that the author ever wrote. This new edition contains the seven stories included in the first edition and adds to those tales a seventeen-page biographical essay by Gina R. Collia, 'Ellen Glasgow: The Solitary Spirit'.

"I've loved every one of Susanna's books! She has bedrock research and a butterfly's delicate touch with characters—sure recipe for historical fiction that sucks you in and won't let go!"—DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlander Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea, in this darkly romantic novel of historical fiction by bestselling author Susanna Kearsley. The invincible ninth Roman Legion marches from York to fight the Northern tribes, and then vanishes from the pages of history. When Verity Grey goes looking for them in modern-day Scotland, she may find more than she bargained for. Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it—not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades. Here on the windswept Scottish shores, Verity may find the answer to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the historical record. Or she may uncover secrets from the romantic past that were buried for a reason. Fans of historical romance will be completely transported by The Shadowy Horses, an exquisite novel of Scottish historical fiction. Also by Susanna Kearsley: The Winter Sea A Desperate Fortune The Firebird The Rose Garden The Splendour Falls Season of Storms Mariana Named of the Dragon Bellewether

The Shadowy Third, first published in 1946, is a fast-paced noir mystery centering on New York City lawyer, David Calder, and his search for a stolen priceless violin. Author Marco Page (pseudonym of Harry Kurnitz, 1908-1968) was an American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter, writing more than 40 movie scripts during his prolific career.