British Library Publishing

The stars gave light enough for me to discern the figure as that of a man, but I could scarcely discover more. “Dark night, this,” I said. “Darker below,” he muttered, as though to himself; “darker, darker, darker.”Yorkshire: a land entwined with a distinctive tradition of uncanny literature and folklore, home to twilit towns thronging with restless ghosts, woods alive with the whispers of fairies and vast moorlands stalked by boggarts and barghests after dark. Exploring Yorkshire’s position as a heartland of British supernatural fiction, the stories and poems gathered here trace its weird literary heritage from medieval tales of shapeshifting spirits to the Gothic worlds of the Brontë sisters, and from wartime hauntings to modern folk horror. Including local legends from rare sources and unsettling stories from Arthur Machen, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Andrew Michael Hurley and many more, this collection offers glimpses of a stranger England hidden among the shadows of the dales.

"I think that it is desirable to discuss the affair - here, in the room in which the Bishop's body was found."A pernicious parson outwits the thieves of a priceless chalice from the parish treasury. A beloved vicar contemplates a perfect crime when a blackmailer comes knocking. Poisoned pen letters lead to a fall from grace for a rector's wife, and a suspicious fall from the second storey for the rector. Gathered here in this new collection are some of the greatest mystery tales in which the tendrils of crime steal into the churchyard, featuring clergymen and nuns as victims, amateur sleuths and villainous perpetrators of the devil's work. Replete with a fascinating introduction and notes from one of the guiding lights of crime fiction, Martin Edwards, this anthology delivers cosy brainteasers and fiendishly-fashioned stories with a sting in the tail, from a congregation of writers including Joyce Porter, H. C. Bailey, Cyril Hare and Edmund Crispin.

From the peaks of Eryri to dramatic coastlines, misty valleys and haunted mines, Wales is a land whose myth and folklore has long been reflected in a thriving storytelling tradition, with the dragons and sorcerers of the Mabinogion and Arthurian legend laying a path for later tales of the Tylwyth Teg, and the pitiless fair folk of Arthur Machen's fictional world. To show the breadth of the strange tales inspired by the Celtic history and local legends of Cymru, horror expert Aaron Worth presents an exciting new selection of Anglophone Welsh fiction, including folkloric retellings, classics of the early twentieth-century weird and chilling pieces by writers from beyond the country's borders. Featuring stories by Dylan Thomas, Christianna Brand, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Margiad Evans and many more, this collection welcomes you to the darker side of Cymru.

He looked up at the picture rail, and there was the hand holding on to a hook with three fingers, and slowly scratching the head of the parrot with the fourth. In 1919, W. F. Harvey published 'The Beast with Five Fingers', his quintessential tale of the disembodied hand with a murderous mind of its own, and its position as one of weird fiction's true classics was cemented by the 1946 film adaptation. Seeking to trace the origins of the haunted hand story back into the nineteenth century, and to showcase its influence on writers of weird fiction from the 1920s to the modern day, horror expert Brian J. Showers presents a new collection of classics from the well-thumbed oeuvres of Sheridan Le Fanu and Guy de Maupassant through to miniature masterpieces from the hands of Jean Ray, Mark Valentine and many more. Featuring ghostly hands, hands possessed by demons and unexplained hands where no hands should be, prepare to enter a world of nightmares run amok as the vice-grip of terror takes hold.

The diplomat Sir George Ramsden is returning to Britain from France with the mysterious "unicorn" in tow. The legendary thief Flamande has declared that he will be on the same flight as Ramsden, in disguise, and that the unicorn will be his. His arch-rival and head of the Srete Nationale, Gasquet, has assured the public that he too will be on the plane to thwart his nemesis. Meanwhile, holidaying in Paris, the ex-spy Kenwood Blake runs into Evelyn Cheyne and is swept into a perilous chase ending at the Chateau de l'Ile on a stormy night. Here, Ramsden's plane has made an emergency landing, and Henry Merrivale has joined the party. When the castle is cut off by the flooding river, the stage is set for a battle of wits between two masters of disguise in Flamande and Gasquet, as a bizarre and seemingly impossible murder among the party casts suspicion in every direction and the mystery of the unicorn is revealed. Carter Dickson's brilliantly intricate mystery was first published in Britain in 1936; it remains a testament to his unique talent for wrangling audacious levels of devilishness into a masterpiece.

"Much more than a ghost story... One might say that Fox is haunted by the spirit of the place and time of which she writes, and she is able to reproduce in a remarkable way that sense of foreboding and mystery that all of us have experienced." The ArgusWhere once a Romano-British settlement sprawled across the hills in the north of England, there lies a modern town. Caught in a tense struggle between the growth of the university and industrial expansion, its fate veers towards the uncanny when a discovery is made beneath the old town hall. Into the possession of the university comes the skeleton of a woman, found buried along with a mysterious tablet bearing a cryptic message, and as the ratcheting tension between the townspeople is compounded by an unseasonal heat and sightings of a shadowlike figure haunting the streets, the vengeful grip of a long-buried curse pushes the town towards a night of flames and carnage.

This elusive creature was originally thought to inhabit the edge of the known world. Biblical and classical material, travellers' tales, clerical writings and theological speculation influenced the perceived appearance of this noble beast, but the graceful white horse with a single long horn remains is most recognizable embodiment. The medieval unicorn became a potent symbol of religious and secular love which has continued to inspire poets, writers and artists. As belief in the unicorn's reality waned, a renewed interest in the medieval past provided a context for it to flourish once again as a subject for art, literature and mystical meditation. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalism infused pictorial and poetic unicorn imagery with an aura of romantic nostalgia that paved the way for its dramatic revival: it gained wings and took flight within the genre of fantasy literature. More recently unicorns have inspired a variety of contemporary trends, from merchandising to financial rhetoric, and the 'animal that never was' shows no sign of disappearing.

"If Carolus Deene catches so much as a whiff of murder he will be on the scent with all the persistence and gusto of a dachshund in search of truffles."While Senior History Master of Queen's School, Newminster, Carolus Deene has a troubling hobby as a criminologist and sometime sleuth. Even more troublingly, he has jaundice. But with the papers shouting of the crimewave sweeping the seaside resorts of England, sending him to the coast to recover is too risky for the Headmaster he will be much further from trouble in the inland spa resort of Buddington. But before long Buddington is rocked by a twisted double-murder two elderly women found dead on the same night at the same time, each with a white lily by their side. Perhaps things are looking up for the curious Deen? irst published in 1960, Leo Bruce's classic mystery hums with his trademark wit and comedic flair, centred around an intelligent puzzle and a memorable cast of Buddington's best.

In our modern age fairies are diminutive, winged spirits associated with the innocence of childhood, or else the brooding heroes of popular romantasy books. But the fairies of the British Isles have taken many guises. To the early Britons they were fallen angels or relegated pagan gods, denizens of a strange world parallel to our own. In whispered tales, they can be found orchestrating shipwrecks, blinding queens, kidnapping musicians for their secret revels, and luring human lovers into the greenwood with their seductive beauty and beguiling promises. Their changeability has made them mainstays of the fantasy genre: at once capricious and ethereal, wielding arcane laws to reward and exploit human nature, and dolling out blessings and curses in equal measure. From protective fairy godmothers to uncanny fairy changelings, and from Tam Lin to Tinkerbell, Carolyne Larrington unravels a plethora of fairy tales in this shimmering guide to the fae, accompanied with beautiful illustrations from the British Library collections.

It had taken, at most, three seconds for the elevator to pass downwards from the sixteenth to the twelfth ... Mr Meldrum had ceased to be, and something hideously different took his place. A man convinced that he has developed a phantom beak edges towards a terrible metamorphosis. Interlopers dismissing the superstitions of hare-women in the countryside pay for their scepticism with blood. The cruel jokes of a girl at the village festival of the Green Man lead her to a crueller transfiguring in the woods. Tracing the quintessential horror concept of the strange transformation from the Victorian era through to the modern day, horror writer, expert and enthusiast Mark Morris presents a thrilling selection of metamorphic tales. Including stories of bestial shapeshifters such as the tiger-men, fox spirits and werewolves of world folklore, this collection also presents some of the weirder shifts of the horror genre, where a flatworm masquerades as a boy, a girl becomes one with a bridge, and a babe-in-arms and her beekeeper father come to reflect the creatures of the hives.

"She said once she heard some people told to get an airing in a closed carriage and that her life had been like that, trying to get fresh air, but always closed up, in a box."As warm sunshine bathes the streets of Paris in the late 1800s, the lively young debutante May meets the cotton-broker John Tyler. Far from a picturesque romance, life with the boorish broker turns sour as they move to Manchester and May finds herself trapped in a world of hostile servants and neglect. When Tyler meets his end from an overdose of arsenic the drug which he was so fond of prescribing himself as a kind of panacea May is dragged into a trial coloured by the public's hunger to paint her as a beguiling murderess. Based on the real-life murder trial of Florence Maybrick in 1899, this novel spins the gripping tale of a case clouded by sensation, its unsolved mysteries, and the untold story of the human being at its heart. First published in 1943, it was filmed as The Mark of Cain in 1947.

When morning broke, the ravages of this strange visitant were but too visible graves had been opened, and the remains of the dead, frightfully torn and mutilated, lay scattered upon the earth. A village is driven to a murderous frenzy by the wolf walking among them. In the dead of night, a sleepwalking monk reenacts a scene of violence glimpsed as a child. A lycanthropist draws closer to a monstrous truth while investigating a spate of grisly grave-robbings. In the nineteenth century, Catherine Crowe's name was synonymous with haunting accounts of 'real' ghost stories, glimpses of the 'night side of nature' and well-wrought Gothic tales, earning her a reputation comparable to Dickens' to the Victorian readership. This new collection edited by Crowe expert Ruth Heholt features Crowe's unique, journalistic short tales of real ghost sightings alongside her Gothic stories written for popular periodicals, showcasing her singular gifts as one of the great storytellers of the Victorian era.

Fall head over heels with this collection of unconventionaland heartfelt romances that will leave you longing for more. From icons offeminist literature to forgotten Chinese modernists, these women writers chartevolutions of love across lifetimes, from the first flush of youth to growingold together. This new anthology gathers the talents of Margaret Atwood,Virginia Woolf, Amy Bloom, E. M. Delafield, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Taylor,Mary Lavin, Ling Shuhua, Jessamyn West and Carol Shields. This anthology brings together forgotten and celebratedfemale masters of the short story format. In the spirit of the Women Writersseries, these stories first appeared in books and periodicals published in thetwentieth century. The result is a carefully curated collection of stories thatsketch evolving understandings of love and female agency, as their heroinesnavigate romance and commitment, idealism and realism, innocence andexperience.

In the village of Brimberley, the worst thing on the horizon seems to be the chance of being outshone by the rival village choir of Bramshott. But that is until Brimberley's lead tenor is blown up in his home by an explosion that rocks the whole community. As an amateur coalition of the motorcycling choir leader Liz, her ex-commando son and a retired general begins to piece together this strange crime, mystery upon mystery compounds in a case involving dark secrets buried in the turmoil of the Second World War, parochial grudges, a burglar whose reputation borders on the mythical, and a volatile killer poised to strike again. First published in 1955, this classic village mystery with elements of WW2 spy fiction showcases Gilbert's ingenious plotting and ability to blow the reader's assumptions sky high.

Trouble is brewing once more for the Hoggetts and their friend Chief Inspector Macdonald in Lunesdale, deep in the Lancashire fell country. The treacherous slopes and still waters of a quarry pool have become the backdrop for strange happenings by night, and after an architect surveying the area is nearly hoisted into the cold waters by an unseen assailant, the suspicions of local farmers become a matter for the CID. Lorac's authentic writing of the Lunesdale countryside is paired with a twisting plot in this classic of lake district crime fiction, first published in 1949.

John Travers has been hanged for the murder of his mother-in-law Helga, but to those who knew him something is amiss. Driven by justice and a sense of uncanny forces at work, John's friend Doctor Toogood recounts a haunting tale of love and jealousy under the fell influence of a shadowy and implacable evil. First published in 1927, this novel by husband-and-wife writing duo Rosalie and Edward Synton (real surname Corse-Scott) has been lost for nearly a century and returns now from the Library collections to deliver its occult thrills anew.