The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories

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.

The Wordsworth Complete Works provide comprehensive collections of great authors in one volume. The series includes William Shakespeare and the original Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Presents a collection of Celtic tales of the macabre, drawn from varied literary tradition of a culture enchanted by things supernatural. This work features the writing of such masters of the genre as Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Patrick Kennedy, Thomas Crofton Croker, and George Moore.

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.

Edith Nesbit, best known as the author of The Railway Children and other children's classics, was also the mistress of the ghost story and tales of terror. In this collection, we encounter love that transcends the grave, reanimated corpses, vampiric vines, vengeful ghosts and other dark stories to make you feel fearful.

Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction.