The thrill and chill of the ghost story is displayed in all its variety and vitality through this marvellous anthology. Ranging from the early 19th century to the 1960s, the collection reveals the development of the genre, and showcases many of its greatest expositors - from Sir Walter Scott, H. G. Wells, M. R. James, T. H. White, Walter de la Mare, and Elizabeth Bowen in the UK to Edith Wharton in America. Though its heyday coincided with the golden age of Empire in the nineteenth century, the ghost story enjoyed a second flowering between the two World Wars and its popularity is as great as ever.

Collection of thirty-five English ghost stories written during the Victorian Era.

Tells stories about all kinds of ghosts, including children, snooker-players, ventriloquist's dummies, and warriors.

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.

This selection of forty-two stories written between 1829 and 1968 is the first to present the full range and vitality of the English tradition of literary ghost fiction. Fully satisfying what Virginia Woolf called 'the strange human craving for the pleasure of being afraid', it demonstratesthe traditions historical development as well as its major themes, and characteristics. The fictional ghost story is dominated by English authors, from J. S. Le Fanu and M. R. James to Walter de la Mare and Robert Aickman, and by American authors, such as Edith Wharton, writing in the English tradition. As the editors stress in their informative introduction, a good ghost story,though it may raise many profound questions about life and death, entertains as much as it unsettles us. Featuring such authors as Algernon Blackwood, H. Russell Wakefield, Henry James, and Elizabeth Bowen, this anthology combines a serious literary purpose with the plain intention of arousingpleasing fear at the doings of the dead.

This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.