Mike Ashley [ed.] – The Platform Edge

Mike Ashley [ed.] – The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways (British Library, 2019)

Enrique Bernardou

Mike Ashley – Introduction

Departures in the Light:

Victor L. Whitechurch – The Strange Story of Engine Number 651
Zoe Dana Underhill – The Conductor’s Story
Anonymous – A Desperate Run
W. G. Kelly – A Smoking Ghost
L. G. Moberby – A Strange Night
Huan Mee – The Tragedy in the Train
Mary Louisa Molesworth – The Man with the Cough
Perceval Landon – Tailhead
Edgar Wallace – The Barford Snake
Dinah Castle – A Ghost on the Train

Approaches in the Dark:

Rosemary Timperley – The Underground People
T. G. Jackson – A Romance of the Piccadilly Tube
E. F. Benson – In The Tube
A. J. Deutsch – A Subway Named Möbius
Michael Vincent – The Last Train
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Underground

Return to the Light?

F. Scott Fitzgerald – A Short Trip Home
Ramsey Campbell – The Companion

Blurb:
The Platform Edge is a collection of the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks.
In this express service into the unknown, passengers join the jostling of the daily commute, a subway car disappears into another dimension without a trace, while a tragic derailment on a lonely hillside in the Alps torments the locals with its nightly repetition.
From the open railways of Europe and America to the pressing dark of the London Underground, The Platform Edge is the perfect travelling companion for unforgettable journeys into the supernatural.

Mike Ashley [ed.] – Doorway To Dilemma

Mike Ashley [ed.] – Doorway To Dilemma: Bewildering Tales of Dark Fantasy (British Library, 2019)

Mauricio Villamayer

Mike Ashley – Introduction

Fitz- James O’ Brien – What Was It?
Morley Roberts – The Anticipator
Frank R. Stockton – The Lady, or the Tiger?
Frank R. Stockton – The Discourager of Hesitancy
Arthur Machen – The White People
Mary E. Wilkins – The Prism
Cleveland Moffat – The Mysterious Card
Cleveland Moffat – The Mysterious Card Unveiled
H. G. Wells – A Moonlight Fable
Catherine Wells – Fear
Madeline Yale Wynne – The Little Room
Madeline Yale Wynne – The Sequel to the Little Room
David H. Keller – The Thing in the Cellar
Thomas Burke – Johnson Looked Back” – THOMAS BURKE
Muriel Campbell Dyar – The Woman in Red
Muriel Campbell Dyar – Unmasked
Lucy Clifford – The New Mother
Lord Dunsany – The Hoard of the Gibbelins
Mary E. Counselman – The Three Marked Pennies

Blurb:

“The events which I purpose detailing are of so extraordinary a character that I am quite prepared to meet with an unusual amount of incredulity and scorn…”

Welcome to the realm of Dark Fantasy, where the weird prevails and accounts of unanswerable dilemma find their home. Gathered within these pages are twisted yarns, encounters with logic-defying creatures and nightmarish fables certain to perplex and beguile.

So join us as we journey across the threshold, deep into the Library’s vaults where nineteen deliciously dark and totally dumbfounding stories await. These tales, plucked from long-lost literary magazines and anthologies spring to life again to embody this most mesmerising of genres.

About the author: Mike Ashley is one of the foremost historians of popular fiction with a specialism in the rare and forgotten short fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His Tales of the Weird anthologies include Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories and The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways.

Mike Ashley [ed.] – Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories

Mike Ashley [ed.] – Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories (British Library, 2018)

Mike Ashley – Introduction

Hugh E. Wright – On the Embankment
Elsie Norris – The Mystery of the Gables
Austin Philips – The Missing Word
Huan Mee – Phantom Death
Firth Scott – The Wraith of the Rapier
James Barr – The Soul of Maddalina Tonelli
Jack Edwards – Haunted!
Percy James Brebner – Our Strange Traveller
Guy Thorne – A Regent of Love Rhymes
Francis Xavier – Amid the Trees
Mary Schultze – The River’s Edge
Mary Reynolds – A Futile Ghost
Lumley Deakin – Ghosts
Elizabeth Jordan – Kearney
Philippa Forest – When Spirits Steal
Eric Purves – The House of the Black Evil
E. F. Benson – The Woman in the Veil
F. Britten Austin – The Treasure of the Tombs

Blurb:
A figure emerges from a painting to pursue a bitter vengeance: the last transmission at a dying man haunts the airwaves, seeking to reveal his murderer; a treasure hunt disturbs an ancient presence in the silence of a lost tomb…
From the vaults of the British Library comes a new anthology celebrating the best works of forgotten, never before republished supernatural fiction from the early 20th century.
Waiting within are malevolent spirits eager to possess the living and mysterious spectral guardians — a diverse host of phantoms exhumed from the rare pages of literary magazines and newspaper serials to thrill once more.

Mike Ashley is the author and editor of more than one hundred books, and is one of the foremost historians of popular fiction. He is series consultant for British Library Science Fiction Classics and his books include Adventures in The Strand, Out of This World, and The Age of Storytellers: British Popular Fiction Magazines 1880-1950. His multi-volume history of science fiction magazines is published by Liverpool University Press.