Actual opening line of the novel is: "To J. Halford, Esq. Dear Halford, when we were together last..."This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter.

    Including four previously uncollected stories, this new complete edition reveals Graham Greene in a range of contrasting moods, sometimes cynical and witty, sometimes searching and philosophical. Each of these forty-nine stories confirms V. S. Pritchett’s declaration that Greene is “a master of storytelling.”This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Pico Iyer.

    For this superbly disquieting collection, he selected fourteen of his favorite tales by such authors as E.F. Benson, Rosemary Timperley, and Edith WhartonIncludes:"W.S." L.P. Hartley"Harry" Rosemary Timperley"The Corner Shop" Cynthia Asquith"In the Tube" E.F. Benson"Christmas Meeting" Rosemary Timperley"Elias and the Draug" Jonas Lie"Playmates" A.M. Burrage"Ringing the Changes" Robert Aickman"The Telephone" Mary Treadgold"The Ghost of a Hand" J. Sheridan Le Fanu"The Sweeper" A.M. Burrage"Afterward" Edith Wharton"On the Brighton Road" Richard Middleton"The Upper Berth" F. Marion Crawford

    Most do not know, however, that its author, W.W. Jacobs, was an immensely popular writer from the 1890s through the Second World War, selling many tens of thousands of copies of his 13 short story collections. His craftsmanship was admired by such authors as G.K. Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh. Jacobs mostly wrote humorous short stories about humble seafaring folk, but "The Monkey's Paw" is by no means his only tale of the macabre. This collection contains 18 stories with subjects including haunted houses, vengeful ghosts, guilty murderers and people faking supernatural phenomena. "The Monkey's Paw" is, of course, a moral tale about how there's always a price to pay if you interfere with what's natural. It's not a mere object lesson, though: the powerful mood of mourning and despair is what makes it so memorable. Jacobs also emphasizes the dangers of mocking the supernatural. In the superb tale "The Toll House," for example, four men pull the familiar stunt of staying in a supposedly haunted house overnight. They tease each other while drinking whiskey and playing cards to while away the time, and one of them tugs on the servants' bell as a joke. Later on the man who pulled the bell is all alone in the dark, pursued by ominous footsteps, rushing about in a panicky search for the stairs. And in "Jerry Bundler," an actor tries to pull a prank on a man who is fearful of ghosts by dressing up as a renowned local spirit. He pays for his impudence in a way that is not supernatural, but the reader's left wondering what forces contrived the tragic chain of events. It's a delightful collection of stories, distinguished by Jacobs's ability to infuse horror into the simplest, most prosaic of situations, his excellent sense of pacing in the short story form, and his sardonic sense of humor. --Fiona Webster

    This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.