I instantly fell in love with this enchanting book.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a writer I have long admired, but this was the first time I had read any of his books aimed at younger readers. As with all of his adult books, I knew that I had embarked upon a very special journey before finishing the first page.
I found the plot so intriguing and delightfully impossible to second-guess. It took all of my willpower to keep my urge to read the story through the night in check in order to fully savour it.
I am far from a young reader myself, but thankfully young enough at heart to be captivated by this magical read which is by turns thrilling, scary, and heartbreaking.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind comes a chilling mystery about one magical summer that turns into a nightmare . . .
When fourteen-year-old Irene Sauvelle moves with her family to Cape House on the coast of Normandy, she's immediately taken by the beauty of the place--its expansive cliffs, coasts, and harbors. There, she meets a local boy named Ishmael, and the two soon fall in love. But a dark plot is about to unfold involving a reclusive toymaker who lives in a gigantic mansion filled with mechanical beings and shadows of the past.
Lettice Gailbraith was one of the finest writers of ghostly short stories of the Victorian era.
Frustratingly, I had previously only been able to find a few stories by this underappreciated writer in scattered anthologies, so to finally have all of her supernatural fiction in one volume is a real treat. Despite being written in the late 1800s, I found all of the stories refreshingly modern in style and totally gripping.
For me, a very important bonus of this collection is the revelation of the true identity and life story of the writer who hid behind the pen name of Lettice Gailbraith, along with a complete bibliography. Writing about this important book makes me want to immediately sit down and read it again.
Edited and with a Biography by Alastair Gunn
Foreword by Melissa Edmundson
Lettice Galbraith’s collection of supernatural tales, New Ghost Stories, first appeared in 1893 and became one of the most popular (and most reprinted) ghostly collections of the final decade of the 19th century.
This volume from Wimbourne Books contains all the tales from New Ghost Stories (”The Case of Lady Lukestan”, The Trainer’s Ghost, The Ghost in the Chair, In the Séance Room, The Missing Model and The Ghost’s Revenge), as well as the later story The Blue Room, and the previously unpublished tale, The Ghost of Vittoria…
This book patiently waited thirty years for me to read it. That is how much time elapsed between me buying this handsome 1950s edition, which is actually Wilde’s 1891 collection of fairytales "A House of Pomegranates" retitled.
I have long admired Wilde the man, but it is only now that I am fully appreciating Wilde the writer. I was so moved by these exquisitely written stories. I think that they represent Wilde at his very best and reveal much about the deeply sensitive man that he was.
I have read many books about this fascinating writer, but I have come closest to understanding who and what he really was through reading this beautiful collection.
Oscar Wilde was already famous as a brilliant wit and raconteur when he first began to publish his short stories in the late 1880s. They have never lacked readers and admirers, George Orwell and W. B. Yeats among them. The stories give free rein to Wilde's originality, literary skill, and sophistication. They include poignant fairy-tales such as 'The Happy Prince' and 'The Selfish Giant', and the extravagant comedy and social observation of 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' and 'The Canterville Ghost'. They also encompass the daring narrative experiments of 'The Portrait of Mr.…
Ghostly Tales of Japan explores the darker side of a country where the supernatural is accepted as an everyday fact of life. From the ancient past to the present day, this eerie collection takes the reader on a journey into a realm of shadows separated from our own world by a gossamer-thin veil. In the tradition of kaidan storytelling, these thirty original tales tell of terrifying supernatural revenge, ghostly visitations, and shape-shifting yokai. By turns horrifying, moving, and whimsical, they offer a tantalizing glimpse of a hidden world that is always just one mistep away for the unwary.
