Here are 100 books that The Face in the Glass fans have personally recommended if you like
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I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.
Robert Chambers (1865-1933) was one of the bestselling authors of the early twentieth century for novels - now largely forgettable - about shopgirls and adventurers. His fame in our century rests entirely on this book, which includes the four terrifying stories that make up the "King in Yellow" mythos, as well as several other haunted and haunting tales. This edition includes an introduction by Nic Pizzolatto, who included references to the book in his magnificent series True Detective.
The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published in 1895. The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories.
The first half of the book features highly esteemed weird stories, and the book has been described by critics as a classic in the field of the supernatural. There are ten stories, the first four of which ("The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon", and "The Yellow Sign") mention The King in Yellow, a…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.
Famous during her life for her social commentary novels like North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was also a spectacularly gifted author of ghost stories (Charles Dickens, in fact, frequently included her ghost tales in his periodical Household Words). This collection would be worth it for "The Old Nurse's Story" alone - considered to be one of the finest ghost stories ever written - but it contains other bone-chilling classics as well.
Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil doppelganger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like 'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories in this…
I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.
Ask any scholar of horror fiction to name the greatest ghost story writer of all time, and chances are good they'll come up with M. R. James (1862-1936). James, who is also highly regarded for his scholarly works and translations, was a provost at King's College, Cambridge who entertained students during the Christmas season with his ghost tales (honoring the old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas). His classics include such justifiably famous stories as "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and "Casting the Runes" (which was adapted into the classic 1957 movie Curse of the Demon). This edition also includes a superb introduction by David Morrell.
Dive into this collection of exquisite, classic horror stories-just make sure to have the lights on and the doors locked! First published in 1904, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary contains eight tales of supernatural horror by genre master M.R. James. Highly regarded as a masterwork of horror, this collection is a must-have for fans of the frightful. The stories in this collection include: "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book," "Lost Hearts," "The Mezzotint," "The Ash-Tree." "Number 13," "Count Magnus," "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad," and "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas."
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.
Fans of literary fiction may not even realize that Edith Wharton (1862-1937), author of novels like The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome, also loved to write ghost stories, which often revolve around themes of class and gender. This collection includes such gems as the truly unnerving "The Lady Maid's Bell," the eerie yet poignant "Afterward," and "All Souls," one of the most unusual Halloween tales ever penned.
Traumatised by ghost stories in her youth, Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton (1862 -1937) channelled her fear and obsession into creating a series of spine-tingling tales filled with spirits beyond the grave and other supernatural phenomena. While claiming not to believe in ghosts, paradoxically she did confess that she was frightened of them. Wharton imbues this potent irrational and imaginative fear into her ghostly fiction to great effect.
In this unique collection of finely wrought tales Wharton demonstrates her mastery of the ghost story genre. Amongst the many supernatural treats…
Since I was a child, Halloween and Christmas have held equally hallowed positions in my heart. When I learned of Krampus folklore in my teens, I was immediately fascinated. Krampus offered the best of both worlds—a dose of Halloween creepiness to counterbalance the bright jubilation of the winter holidays. Krampus Confidential, a middle-grade mystery, and adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, is my second children’s book that aims to introduce this magnificent creature to children in a way that doesn’t inspire nightmares. My first, Goodnight Krampus, is a board book for young readers that reimagines the monster as a rambunctious toddler who gives Santa a hard time by refusing to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.
Though the stories in this collection aren’t likely to scare you silly, they will almost certainly give you the creeps. The Victorians loved spending their cold, dark winter evenings with eerie tales of the unsettling, the uncanny, and the unholy. And who could blame them? The 13 tales collected here are diverse in content and tone, but they all offer an ideal candlelit escape when the days grow dark and the cold wind wails.
The first-ever collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals
During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of…
Ever since I read the work of Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and Georgette Heyer at an impressionable age, nineteenth-century England has fascinated me. My mother, a lifelong reader, is responsible for sparking this obsession. She never cared that I wanted to read “grown-up books” or later tried to discourage me from majoring in English. After college, I went on to teach British literature to high school students and to write two mystery series, one set during the Regency period, the other taking place half a century later. This new Victorian series introduces a bored spinster who finds her purpose in life as a detective.
Lady Audley’s Secret—another famous example of a Sensation novel or a thrilling tale with a central secret—kept me turning the pages into the middle of the night. Like Wilkie Collins, Braddon was an immensely popular novelist in the 1860s, churning out potboiler after potboiler and raking in a nice profit along the way.
“A book without a murder, a divorce, a seduction, or a bigamy is not apparently considered worth either writing or reading,” observed Fraser’s Magazine in what sounds to me like priggish disapproval. But I sympathize with those avid readers of the day—many of them women who were denied agency and full personhood.
Originally published in Robin Goodfellow magazine, Lady Audley's Secret is the essential work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and is considered a staple of sensation fiction. The story centers on a mysterious woman, whose dark past slowly comes to light.
Lady Audley is a former governess who marries the wealthy widower, Sir Michael Audley. She thoroughly enjoys the life of privilege and status associated with her new husband. Although she appears beautiful and polished, Lady Audley is more than meets the eye. She has a dark secret that could jeopardize everything she's worked for. To maintain her facade, she plots…
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I grew up listening to my family’s "true" ghost stories, each creepy tale ending with a declaration that "there are no such things as ghosts." As a teenager, I devoured books of folklore, with all their tales of ghosts, witches, and long-legetty beasties: and also many books about paranormal research. As an adult, I’m a complete unbeliever but still very fond of both reading and writing ghost stories!
I once made the mistake of reading several of James’ ghost stories, one after another, while alone in the house.
I was making a cup of coffee when something started scratching stealthily at the inside of a cupboard door. I had to lower myself from the ceiling before I discovered that some scrunched carrier bags hung inside the cupboard had unscrunched, causing the ghostly scratching. But that’s why I love James’ ghost stories.
The second in a series of republished classic literature, The Ghost Stories of M. R. James collects the tales that best illustrate his quiet mastery of the ghost story form. Running through each of these stories is a slowly escalating sense of unease and dread, which ultimately shifts into the wildly uncanny. James' characters exist in a world of ancient objects whose atrocious histories begin to repeat when they are disturbed, and the blinkered repression common to James' narratives only amplifies the shock of the spectral appearance.
During Covid, I gave myself the Story-a-Month Challenge. I started a story on the first day of each month and stopped on the last day. A subconscious theme emerged: the struggles of grown people and their parents, done fantastically. By year’s end, I had twelve stories, placed in magazines somewhere. I collected them, adding earlier stories, longer and with younger protagonists, but with the same theme of arrested development. I called the book “Adult Children,” a wry reference to offspring of alcoholics (I am one). Also subconscious: my inspiration from other authors of fantastical collections, some of whom I’ve included here.
These days, “folk horror” is a popular term for movies like Midsommer and The Witch.
In the early twentieth century, M. R. James is said to have invented this genre and revitalized the ghost story as a form. His memorably unsettling work often involves academics, scholars, and researchers confronting an uncanny, bucolic world.
The most renowned stories in this collection include “Casting the Runes” (a reviewer of an occult book learns an earlier critic died mysteriously), “The Mezzotint” (an upsetting engraving changes each time a curator looks at it), and “Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (a professor dubious of the existence of ghosts fatefully finds an ancient whistle on vacation).
When we think of ghost stories, we tend to think of cub scouts cringing by a fire, s'mores at the ready, as some aging camp counselor tries to scare them witless with yet another tale from the crypt. But as Michael Chabon's marvelous introduction reminds us, the ghost story was once integral to the genre of the short story. Indeed, as he points out, it can be argued that the ghost story was the genre. Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"-most of the early short story writers wrote ghost stories as a matter of course.…
I’ve been a fan of horror stories since I was a kid. As an introverted and shy kid, I used to joke with my best friend about how I felt like a ghost and wished I had the power to be invisible. After I became a children’s book author/illustrator, I became fascinated with ghost picture books and started collecting them. Ghost picture books not only fulfilled my spooky necessities but also gave me warmth and heartfelt emotions.
A delightful, funny story of friendship, ghost chores, a spooky house and a professional haunter.
Meet Sir Simon, Super Scarer. He's a professional ghost who has been transferred to his first house. And just in time! He was getting tired of haunting bus stops and forests and potatoes. And to top it off, this house is occupied by an old lady -- they're the easiest to haunt!
But things don't go as planned when it turns out a KID comes with this old lady. Chester spots Simon immediately and peppers him with questions. Simon is exasperated. . . until he…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I write adventure and mystery stories for children aged 9 - 13, involving battles with mythical creatures, dangerous pacts with demons, and other supernatural chills. My first book, Ante’s Inferno, won the People’s Book Prize and a Silver Wishing Shelf Award. For The Fall of a Sparrow, I drew on my love of ghost stories, not just for their scariness but also for their emotional complexity: ghosts don’t haunt just for the sake of it. They need something only the main character can give. Friendship, perhaps, a companion in their loneliness… or something much darker. Here’s my choice of classic stories in which ghosts pursue a wide – and sometimes terrifying – variety of agendas.
More of a supernatural mystery than a ghost story perhaps, but since the sinister magic that besets 13-year-old Aveline arises from a witch long buried in the cold, dark side of the churchyard, this fast-paced, imaginative tale qualifies as both. Particularly striking is that you can read it as a simple, scary ghost story – or as an unnerving portrait of someone with a narcissistic personality, alternating charm, menaces, and pathos to unsettle Aveline and bring her under her spell. Brrrr.
Aveline is thrilled when she discovers that the holiday cottage her mum has rented for the summer is beside a stone circle. Thousands of years old, the local villagers refer to the ancient structure as the Witch Stones, and Aveline cannot wait to learn more about them.
Then Aveline meets Hazel. Impossibly cool, mysterious yet friendly, Aveline soon falls under Hazel's spell. In fact, Hazel is quite unlike anyone Aveline has ever met before, but she can't work out why. Will Aveline discover the truth about Hazel, before it's too late?
