UNITED STATES AUTHOR · HORROR TALES · SHORT
Fitz-James O'Brien
Also known as: Fitz James O'Brien
Maria Concepcion walked carefully, keeping to the middle of the white dusty road, where the maguey thorns and the treacherous curved spines of organ cactus had not gathered so profusely.
— from Short stories
Most acclaimed
Classic Ghost Stories
Teig O'Kane and the corpse -- The ghost of fear / H.G. Wells -- The screaming skull / F. Marion Crawford -- Canon Alberic's scrap-book / M.R. James -- A true story / Benjamin Disraeli -- The phantom 'rickshaw / Rudyard Kipling -- The lagoon / Joseph Conrad -- On the water / Guy de Maupassant -- The captain's story / Rebecca Harding Davis -- The erl-king / Goethe -- The body-snatcher/ Robert Louis Stevenson -- The phantom coach / Amelia B. Edwards -- Ligeia / Edgar Allan Poe -- The legend of Macarger's gulch / Ambrose Bierce -- The old nurse's story / Elizabeth Gaskell -- August heat / W.F. Harvey -- How he left the hotel / Louisa Baldwin -- The man who went too far / E.F. Benson -- The hall bedroom/ Mary E. Wilkins -- The toll-house / W.W. Jacobs.
Short stories
For over three decades, Reynolds Price has been one of America's most distinguished writers, in a career that has been remarkable both for its virtuosity and for the variety of literary forms he has embraced. Now he shows himself as much a master of the story as he is of the novel, in a volume that presents fifty stories, including two early collections - The Names and Faces of Heroes and Permanent Errors - as well as more than two dozen new stories that have never been gathered together before. In his introduction, Mr. Price explains how, after the publication of his first two collections, he wrote no new stories for almost twenty years. "But once I needed - for unknown reasons in a new and radically altered life - to return to the story, it opened before me like a new chance...A collection like this then," he adds, "...will show a writer's pre-occupations in ways the novel severely rations (novels are partly made for that purpose - the release from self, long flights through the Other). John Keats's assertion that 'the excellence of every Art is its intensity' has served as a license and standard for me. From the start my stories were driven by heat - passion and mystery, often passion for the mystery I've found in particular rooms and spaces and the people they threaten or shelter - and my general aim is the transfer of a spell of keen witness, perceived by the reader as warranted in character and act.". There is, indeed, much for the reader to "witness" here of passion and mystery, of character and act. And the variety of stories - many of them set in Reynolds Price's native North Carolina, but a surprising number set in distant parts: Jerusalem in "An Early Christmas," the American Southwest in "Walking Lessons," and a number in Europe - will astonish even his most devoted readers. In short, The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price is as deeply rewarding a book as any he has yet published.
Ghost Stories
1999
An exciting collection of tales from the twilight world of haunted houses and hair-raising spectres is contained in this spine-chilling anthology. Includes: THE RIDDLE | Walter de la Mare THE MONKEY'S PAW | W. W. Jacobs A TOUGH TUSSLE | Ambrose Bierce THROUGH THE DOOR (from The Phantom Roundabout and Other Ghostly Stories) | Ruth Ainsworth A PAIR OF HANDS | Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE | E. Nesbit KROGER'S CHOICE | John Gordon MANY COLOURED GLASS (from Young Winter's Tales) | Lucy M. Boston THE CLOCK TOWER GHOST (from The Clock Tower Ghost) | Gene Kemp THE BROWN HAND | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle THE GORGE OF THE CHURELS | H. Russell Wakefield [THE TELL-TALE HEART]( | Edgar Allan Poe A KIND OF SWAN SONG | Helen Cresswell THE HAUNTED TRAILER | Robert Arthur THE STRANGER | Ambrose Bierce THE HAUNTED DOLL'S HOUSE | M. R. James THE [Landlady]( (from Kiss Kiss) | Roald Dahl BAD COMPANY | Walter de la Mare THE YELLOW CAT | Michael Joseph THE WOOING OF CHERRY BASNETT | Brian Alderson EXPIATION | E. F. Benson THE SHADOW-CAGE (from The Shadow-Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural) | Philippa Pearce THE MORTAL | Oliver Onions TEA AND EMPATHY | Paul Dorrell LAURA | Saki THE RED ROOM | H. G. Wells THE WELL | W. W. Jacobs THE SWAN CHILD (from A Whisper in the Night) | Joan Aiken