Daisy Butcher (ed.) – Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic

Daisy Butcher (ed.) – Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic (British Library, 2019)

Enrique Bernardou

Cover design by Maurico Villamayor

Daisy Butcher – Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorne – Rappaccini’s Daughter
Arthur Conan Doyle – The American’s Tale
Lucy H. Hooper – Carnivorine
Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Giant Wistaria
H.G. Wells – The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
Edmond Nolcini – The Guardian of Mystery Island
M.R. James – The Ash Tree
Ambrose Bierce – A Vine on a House
Howard R. Garis – Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant
William Hope Hodgson – The Voice in the Night
Edith Nesbit – The Pavilion
H.C. McNeile – The Green Death
Abraham Merritt – The Woman of the Wood
Emma Vane – The Moaning Lily

Blurb:
Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) “killer plant” in fiction, film, and video games.
Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s giant wistaria and H. G. Wells’ hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood, and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit’s wandering creepers…
Every strain of vegetable threat (and one deadly fungus) can be found within this new collection, representing the very best tales from the undergrowth of Gothic fiction.

Jared Shurin & John J. Johnston [eds.] – Unearthed

Jared Shurin & John J. Johnston [eds.] – Unearthed   (Jurassic London, 2013)

Garen Ewing

John J. Johnston – Going Forth by Night (Introduction)

Guy Boothby – A Professor of Egyptology
Louisa May Alcott – Lost in a Pyramid
Arthur Conan Doyle – Lot No. 249
Edgar Allan Poe – Some Words with a Mummy
Herbert W. Crotzer – The Block of Bronze
George Griffith – The Death-Bridal of Nitocris
Théophile Gautier – The Mummy’s Foot
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Ring of Thoth
E. Heron and H. Heron – The Story of Baelbrow
Julian Hawthorne – The Unseen Man’s Story
Charles Bump – The Vanished Mummy

Richard Dalby – The Anthology Of Ghost Stories

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Anthology Of Ghost Stories (Tiger, 1994)

Robert Aickman – The Unsettled Dust
Louisa Baldwin – How He Left the Hotel
Nugent Barker – Whessoe
E.F. Benson – The Shuttered Room
Ambrose Bierce – An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Charles Birkin – Is there Anybody there?
Algenon Blackwood – The Whisperers
L.M. Boston – Curfew
A.M. Burrage – I’m Sure it was No. 31
Ramsey Campbell – The Guide
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Limping Ghost
Wilkie Collins – Mrs Zant and the Ghost
Basil Copper – The House by the Tarn
Ralph A. Cram – In Kropfsberg Keep
Daniel Defoe – The Ghost in all the Rooms
Charles Dickens – The Bagman’s Uncle
Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Bully of Brocas Court
Amelia B. Edwards – In the Confessional
Shamus Frazer – The Tune in Dan’s Cafe
John S. Glasby – Beyond the Bourne
William Hope Hodgson – The Valley of Lost Children
Fergus Hume – The Sand-Walker
Henry James – The Real Right Thing
M.R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House
Roger Johnson – The Wall-Painting
Rudyard Kipling – They
D.H. Lawrence – The Last Laugh
Margery Lawrence – Robin’s Rath
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dream
R.H. Malden – The Sundial
Richard Marsh – The Fifteenth Man
John Metcalfe – Brenner’s Boy
Edith Nesbit – Uncle Abraham’s Romance
Fitz-James O’Brien – What was It?
Vincent O’Sullivan – The Next Room
Roger Pater – The Footstep of the Aventine
Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Forrest Reid – Courage
Mrs J.H. Riddell – The Last of Squire Ennismore
L.T.C. Rolt – The Garside Fell Disaster
David G. Rowlands – The Tears of St. Agatha
Saki – The Soul of Laploshka

I’m guessing Tiger were an instant remainder imprint?

If you’re looking for an A-S of great ghost story authors, this is one for you! At first glance a straight reprint of Richard Dalby’s Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories Vol 1, closer inspection reveals they’d not set aside enough pages so once we’re done with Saki’s story there’s no more room making the reference to Mark Twain on the cover entirely spurious. Worse, the stories gone AWOL include some of the best in the volume:
——————————————–
Sapper – The Old Dining-Room
Montague Summers – The Between-Maid
Mark Twain – A Ghost Story
Mark Valentine – The Folly
H. Russell Wakefield – Out of the Wrack I Rise
Karl Edward Wagner – In the Pines
Manly Wade Wellman – Where Angels Fear
Edward Lucas White – The House of the Nightmare
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
William J. Wintle – The Spectre Spiders

Rosemary Gray – Gripping Yarns

Rosemary Gray (ed.) – Gripping Yarns (Wordsworth Special Editions, 2008)

Anonymous – One Night Of Horror
————- The Pipe
————- The Puzzle
————- The Closed Cabinet
————- The Alibi
Stacey Aumonier – Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty
————- A Source Of Irritation
————- Where Was Wych Street?
Harold Auten – a Fight To The Finish
Etienne Barsony – The Dancing Bear
Jorgen Wilhelm Bergsoe – The Amputated Arms
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
————- A Tough Tussle
————- A Jug Of Syrup
————- The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
————- John Bartine’s Watch
Algernon Blackwood – a Silent Visitation
————- The Wood Of The Dead
————- A Suspicious Gift
————- Skeleton Lake : An Episode In Camp
George Brame – On The Belgian Coast
John Buchan – The Wind In The Portico
————- The Loathley Opposite
George Washington Cable – The Young Aunt With White Hair
Egerton Castle – The Baron’s Quarry
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Joseph Conrad – The Secret Sharer
————- A Smile Of Fortune
————- The Black Mate
A. R. Cooper – With The Foreign Legion In Gallipoli
Stephen Crane – Manacled
————- An Illusion In Black And White
————- Twelve O’Clock
F. Marion Crawford – By The Waters Of Paradise
Guy De Maupassant – The Wreck
————- The Terror
John Charles Dent – Gagtooth’s Image
Thomas De Quincey – The Avenger
Arthur Conan Doyle – A Foreign Office Romance
————- The Striped Chest
————- The Croxley Master
————- The New Catacomb
————- The King Of The Foxes
————- The Green Flag
————- The Lord Of Chateau Noir
————- The Three Correspondents
————- The Debut Of Bimbashi Joyce
————- The Doings Of Raffles Haw
Arthur Elck – The Tower Room
A. J. Evans – Exploits Of The Escaping Club
J. S. Fletcher – The Lighthouse On Shivering Sand
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – The Shadows On The Wall
E. W. Hornung – The Wrong House
————- The Rest Cure
————- A Bad Night
————- The Spoils Of Sacrilege
Bernard Severin Ingemann – The Sealed Room
Maurus Jokai – Thirteen At Table
Rudyard Kipling – My Own True Ghost Story
————- Bubbling-Well Road
————- At The End Of The Passage
————- The Return Of Imray
————- The City Of Dreadful Night
Leoplod Lewis – A Dreadful Bell
Jack London – Siwash
————- The Man With The Gash
————- Where The Trail Forks
Anselme Marchal – Hoodwinking The Germans
Ferenc Molnar – The Living Death
Frank Norris – A Memorandum Of Sudden Death
————- The Ghost In The Crosstrees
Fitz-James O’Brien – My Wife’s Temper
David Phillips – At A Sap-Head
William Pittinger – The Locomotive Chase In Georgia
A. O. Pollard – I Charge!
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
————- The Hounds Of Fate
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Pavilion On The Links
————- The Sire de Maletroit’s Door
Anthony Trollope – The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box
Edgar Wallace – The Lone House Mystery
————- The Dark Horse
————- Clues
————- Romance In It
————- A Certain Game
————- The Swift Walker
————- Nine Terrible Men
————- The Sickness-Mongo
Edith Wharton – A Bottle Of Perrier
————- The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
————- The Bolted Door
John Taylor Wood – Escape Of General Beckinridge
Walter Wood – How Trooper Potts Won The V.C. On Burnt Hill
E. D. Woodhall – Secret Service Days

Blurb
For those who sometimes long to escape the strictures of modern life or to inject a little more drama and excitement into their workday world, the remedy could be the collection of stories you hold in your hand. Here for the taking are tales of high adventure and low intrigue from masters of the genre like John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson, classics of crime and detection from veteran thriller writers like Edgar Wallace and Arthur Conan Doyle, spine-chillers from the pens of Ambrose Bierce and other purveyors of suspense and horror, and true accounts of courage and survival from heroic and intrepid individuals caught up in the rigours and insanity of war or battling against the elements on gruelling expeditions of discovery and exploration. Between the covers of this crowded volume, Wordsworth Editions has assembled from the work of famous, less well-known and totally unsung writers a treasure trove of rattling good yarns to fire the imagination, chill the blood and perhaps awaken (or reawaken) the spirit of adventure in any reader who dares to plunge in!

Peter Haining – The Ancient Mystery Reader

Peter Haining  (ed.) – The Ancient Mystery Reader: Strange Stories of the Unknown & The Unsolved (Gollancz, 1975: Sphere 2 vols, 1978)

H. G. Wells – The Grisly Folk
Lafcadio Hearn – The Mound Builders
B. Traven – A New God Was Born
Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton – The Coming Race
Arthur Machen – The Shining Pyramid
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Terror of Blue John Gap
Sax Rohmer – The Valley of the Sorceress
Edgar Allan Poe – Ms. Found in a Bottle
Geoffrey Household – The Lost Continent
Clark Ashton Smith – An Offering to the Moon
A. Merritt – The Moon Pool
H. P. Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulhu
Leslie Charteris – The Convenient Monster
Gerald Kersh – Men Without Bones
William Sambrot – Creature of the Snows
Harry Harrison – The Secret of Stonehenge
Robert Bloch – The Bald-Headed Mirage
Theodore Sturgeon – The Cave of History

Thanks to Steve Goodwin

Jack Adrian – Strange Tales from the Strand

Jack Adrian (ed.) – Strange Tales from the Strand (Oxford University Press, 1991)

Mick Brownfield

Julian Symons – Foreword
Jack Adrian – Introduction

Graham Greene – All But Empty (March 1947)
J. B. Harris-Burland – Lord Beden’s Motor (Dec. 1901)
Hugh Walpole – The Tarn (Dec. 1923)
Rina Ramsay – Resurgam ( Aug. 1915)
F. Tennyson Jesse – The Railway Carriage (Nov. 1931)
Beverley Nichols – The Bell (Aug. 1946)
W. W. Jacobs – His Brother’s Keeper (Dec. 1922)
Sapper – Touch And Go (Feb. 1926)
W. L. George – Waxworks (July 1922)
B. L. Jacot – White Spectre (Jan. 1950)
D. H. Lawrence – ‘Tickets, Please!’ (Apr 1919)
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam – A Torture By Hope (June 1891)
L. T. Meade – A Horrible Fright (Oct. 1894)
H. Greenhough Smith – The Case Of Roger Carboyne (Sept. 1892)
Ianthe Jerrold – The Orchestra Of Death (Dec 1918)
C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne – The Lizard (June 1898)
L. G. Moberly – Inexplicable (Dec. 1917)
L. de Giberne Sieveking – The Prophetic Camera (The English Review, Nov. 1922)
Henry A. Hering – Cavalanci’s Curse (March 1899)
H. G. Wells – The Queer Story Of Brownlow’s Newspaper (Ladies Home Journal, Feb. 1932)
Edgar Wallace – The Black Grippe (March 1920)
Morley Roberts – The Fog (Oct. 1908)
Grant Allen – The Thames Valley Catastrophe (Dec. 1897)
Martin Swayne – A Sense Of The Future (Aug 1924)
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Silver Mirror (Aug. 1908)
E. Bland (Edith Nesbit) – The Haunted House (Dec. 1913)
Arthur Conan Doyle – How It Happened (Sept. 1913)
Edith Nesbit – The Power of Darkness (April 1905)
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Horror of the Heights (Nov 1913)

David Stuart Davis – Return From The Dead

David Stuart Davis (ed.) – Return From The Dead (Wordsworth Editions, 2006)

Bram Stoker – The Jewel of the Seven Stars
Jane Webb – The Mummy
Edgar Allen Poe – Some Words with a Mummy
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Ring of Thoth
Arthur Conan Doyle – Lot 249

Blurb:

A collection of Mummy stories selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies

Beware, the Dead are coming back! This is a unique and fascinating collection of early mummy stories that helped to establish the chilling concept of the Dead returning to life as a potent sub-genre of horror fiction.

The main feature on the mummy bill, The Jewel of the Seven Stars by Bram Stoker, is generally regarded as his best work after Dracula. A weird mixture of adventure, the supernatural and science fiction is found in Jane Webb’s The Mummy, a tale written in 1827 but set in 2126. Some Words with a Mummy is by the great horror writer Edgar Allen Poe. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Ring of Thoth is the classic mummy tale and was the basis for the 1932 movie ‘The Mummy’ starring Boris Karloff and, indeed most mummy films ever since. Lot 249, another Doyle chiller, completes this collection, which is guaranteed to entertain and possibly prompt a nightmare.

Richard Dalby – Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 1

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories: Volume 1 (Robinson 1990)

Preface

Robert Aickman – The Unsettled Dust
Louisa Baldwin – How He Left the Hotel
Nugent Barker – Whessoe
E.F. Benson – The Shuttered Room
Ambrose Bierce – An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Charles Birkin – Is there Anybody there?
Algenon Blackwood – The Whisperers
L.M. Boston – Curfew
A.M. Burrage – I’m Sure it was No. 31
Ramsay Campbell – The Guide
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Limping Ghost
Wilkie Collins – Mrs Zant and the Ghost
Basil Copper – The House by the Tarn
Ralph A. Cram – In Kropfsberg Keep
Daniel Defoe – The Ghost in all the Rooms
Charles Dickens – The Bagman’s Uncle
Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Bully of Brocas Court
Amelia B. Edwards – In the Confessional
Shamus Frazer – The Tune in Dan’s Cafe
John S. Glasby – Beyond the Bourne
William Hope Hodgson – The Valley of Lost Children
Fergus Hume – The Sand-Walker
Henry James – The Real Right Thing
M.R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House
Roger Johnson – The Wall-Painting
Rudyard Kipling – They
D.H. Lawrence – The Last Laugh
Margery Lawrence – Robin’s Rath
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dream
R.H. Malden – The Sundial
Richard Marsh – The Fifteenth Man
John Metcalfe – Brenner’s Boy
Edith Nesbit – Uncle Abraham’s Romance
Fitz-James O’Brien – What was It?
Vincent O’Sullivan – The Next Room
Roger Pater – The Footstep of the Aventine
Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Forrest Reid – Courage
Mrs J.H. Riddell – The Last of Squire Ennismore
L.T.C. Rolte – The Garside Fell Disaster
David G. Rowlands – The Tears of St. Agatha
Saki – The Soul of Laploshka
Sapper – The Old Dining-Room
Montague Summers – The Between-Maid
Mark Twain – A Ghost Story
Mark Valentine – The Folly
H. Russell Wakefield – Out of the Wrack I Rise
Karl Edward Wagner – In the Pines
Manly Wade Wellman – Where Angels Fear
Edward Lucas White – The House of the Nightmare
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
William J. Wintle – The Spectre Spiders

Richard Dalby – Dracula’s Brood

Richard Dalby (ed.) – Dracula’s Brood: Rare Vampire Stories by Friends and Contemporaries of Bram Stoker (Crucible, 1987, Equation, 1989)

Introduction – Richard Dalby

William Gilbert – The Last Lords of Gardonal
Eliza Lynn Linton – The Fate of Madame Cabanel
Phil Robinson – The Man-Eating Tree
Vasile Alecsandrai – The Vampyre
Anne Crawford – A Mystery of the Campagna
Julian Hawthorne – Ken’s Mystery
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Parasite
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Good Lady Ducayne
Mary Cholmondeley – Let Loose
Vincent O’Sullivan – Will
H. B. Marriott Watson – The Stone Chamber
Hume Nisbet – The Vampire Maid
Hume Nisbet – The Old Portrait
Vernon Lee – Marsyas in Flanders
Louise J. Strong – An Unscientific Story
Sabine Baring-Gould – A Dead Finger
Horacio Quiroga – The Feather Pillow
Algernon Blackwood – The Singular Death of Morton
Alice & Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire
Ulric Daubeny – The Sumach
M. R. James – Wailing Well
Edward Heron-Allen – Another Squaw?
E. R. Punshon – The Living Stone
Frederick Cowles – Princess Of Darkness

Eliza Lynn Linton – The Fate Of Madame Cabenal: Pievrot, a hamlet in Brittany. Jules Cabanel, father of his housekeeper Adele’s child, returns from Paris with an English bride. Adele welcomes her new mistress with a bouquet of scarlet poppies, belladonna and aconite, and, in concert with Martin Briolic, is soon plotting her rivals downfall. The high rate of infant mortality in the region gives them all the ammunition they need …

Frederick Cowles – Princess Of Darkness: Now we’re in Budapest, and the clutches of the 400 year old Transylvanian Princess Bessenyei, so no prizes for guessing she’s a full on vampire with all the trappings. Wherever she goes, she leaves a trail of dead lovers in her wake until Harry Gorton, an English diplomat, teams up with his occultist friend Istvan Zichy join forces against her. A marvelous pulp romp with a suspenseful climax, and it’s possible you won’t double guess the ending.

E. R. Punshon – The Living Stone: “What could any man do against fifty tons of granite made animate?” Good question, especially when it flings itself upon you with a great leap and gluts on your blood. The professor, researching human sacrifice in Cornwall, stakes out the ‘hunting stone’ in Missing Lane following a series of mysterious disappearances in the locality.

Hume Nisbet – The Old Portrait: Utterly charming Victorian horror. When he scrubs away the “bloated, piggish visage of a landlord” from the canvas, he discovers the masterly portrait of a beautiful woman underneath. Fascinated, he spends Christmas Eve gazing at his find. Come midnight, and the lovely lady comes floating out of the frame..

Hume Nisbet – The Vampire Maid: A reclusive artist takes up residence in a cottage and falls for the attractive invalid Ariadne Brunnell. Her health begins to return.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Good Lady Ducayne: Bella lands the position of ladies maid to the ancient, wizened Adelaide Ducayne, and spends the winter touring Italy with her and sinister physician Dr. Parravicini. The old girl’s is soon dramatically improved, although Bella isn’t feeling too clever ….

Edward Heron-Allen – Another Squaw?: Title alludes to Stokers horrible tale of the American tourist, the cat and the Iron Maiden. This one is set at a Marine Biological Station, and relates the events leading to the death of Jennifer Pendeen B.Sc., savaged by an Angler fish.

Mary Cholmondeley – Let Loose: Wet-Waste-On-The-Wold, Yorkshire. When Sir Roger Despard, a man of many vices, lay on his deathbed, he did so denying God and his Angels, declaring that all were damned as he, and that Satan was strangling him to death. Taking a knife, he cut off his hand and swore an oath that, if he were to go down and burn in hell, his hand would roam the earth and throttle others as he was being throttled. Thirty years after his death, a young man persuades an old clergyman to open the crypt …

Horacio Quiroga – The Feather Pillow: Even given the heady standards set by the The Living Stone, The Sumach (an excellent ‘vampire tree’ outing) and Another Squaw?, this one is pretty bizarre. Recently wed, Alicia is wasting away before the eyes of her dominant husband. What could be causing her illness? (Clue: it isn’t a haunted hot-water bottle).

Alice & Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire: Hereditary vampirism in the Scottish Highlands. Paul marries beautiful redhead Jessica MacThane, the last of her clan, who bears a striking resemblance to her ancestress, Zaida the witch, the wife of a murderer. Since Zaida’s day, the legend has persisted of “a pale woman clad in white, flitting about the cottages at night, and where she passed, sickness and death were sure to intervene …”

H. B. Marriott Watson – The Stone Chamber: Utterbourne Village, Devon. Rupert Marvin, an eighteenth century rake and murderer, does his little bit to upset the wedding plans of the besotted Warrington and Marion. You’ll most likely prefer Warrington when he’s demonically possessed by the vampire, boozing, cursing and pawing every woman in sight. Not a patch on the same author’s The Devil On The Marsh, but good fun none-the-less.

Sabine Baring Gould – The Dead Finger: When it comes to leftie-haters, very few could outdo Dennis Wheatley, but the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould certainly gave it his best shot in this 1904 shocker. Who is to blame for the vampiric digit which persecutes our narrator so? As the undead himself explains: whinging paupers!

“Folk once called us Anarchists, Nihilists, Socialists, Levelers, now they call us the Influenza …. we the social failures, the generally discontented, coming up out of our cheap and nasty graves in the form of physical disease.”

I’d so have that engraved on my headstone if only I could afford one!

see also the Dracula’s Brood thread on the Vault forum