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.

Susan Hill (ed.) – Ghost Stories

Susan Hill (ed.) – Ghost Stories  (Hamish Hamilton, 1983)

Susan Hill – Introduction

Algernon Blackwood – Keeping His Promise
Elizabeth Bowen – The Demon Lover
Rhoda Broughton – The Man with the Nose
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Charles Dickens – The Signal-Man
Mrs. Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
Henry James – Sir Edmund Orme
M. R. James – “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
Rudyard Kipling – “They”
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The White Cat of Drumgunniol
H. G. Wells – The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost
Edith Wharton – All Souls’

Alan C Jenkins (ed.) – Thin Air

Alan C Jenkins (ed.) – Thin Air   (Blackie, 1966)

Alan C. Jenkins – Introduction
M. R. James- The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
Algernon Blackwood – Running Wolf
Andrew Lang – The Ghost of Glam
S. L. Sadhu – The Haunted Mosque
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
Sir Arthur Grimble – The Whistling Ghosts
Elliott O’Donnell – A Ghost in the Ring
Warren Armstrong  – A Phantom of the Seas
Francis Hayley Bell – The Unforgiving Garden
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
H. G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
W. H. Barrett – The Ghost of a Saint
Rudyard Kipling – My Own True Ghost Story
Charles Downing – The Death Watch
Saki – The Open Window
Guy de Maupassant – An Apparition
Washington Irving – The Spectre Bridegroom
William Fryer Harvey  – Sambo
 Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Richard Middleton – The Ghost Ship
Hugh Walpole – A Little Ghost
Charles Dickens – The Signal-Man
E. F. Benson – The House with the Brick-Kiln
Arthur Quiller-Couch  – A Pair of Hands
Oliver Onions – Phantas
A. E. D. Smith – The Coat
Roger Lancelyn Green – The Story of Admetus
Ambrose Bierce – The Stranger
Geoffrey Palmer & Noel Lloyd – The Haunted Forest
Alexander Woollcott  – Full Fathom Five

Elizabeth Lee (ed.) – Spine Chillers

Elizabeth Lee (ed.) – Spine Chillers: an Anthology of Mystery and Horror  (Elek, 1961)

Edgar Allan Poe – The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe – The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Charles Dickens  – No. 1 Branch Line, the Signalman
Charles Dickens  – The Trial for Murder (Aka To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt)
Wilkie Collins – A Terribly Strange Bed
Sir Walter Besant & James Rice – The Case of Mr. Lucraft
Ambrose Bierce – A Watcher by the Dead
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
E. Nesbit – Man-Size in Marble
E. Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
M. R. James –  The Mezzotint
Arthur Machen – The Novel of the White Powder
H. G. Wells – Pollock and the Porroh Man
H. G. Wells – The Red Room
Edward Lucas White – Lukundoo
E. F. Benson – In the Tube
E. F. Benson – At the Farmhouse
Vincent O’Sullivan – When I Was Dead
Vincent O’Sullivan – The Business of Madame Jahn
Algernon Blackwood – The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York
Oliver Onions – Benlian
Oliver Onions – Phantas
May Sinclair – Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched
William Hope Hodgson – The Voice in the Night
Lord Dunsany – The Bureau d’Echange de Maux
H. Russell Wakefield  – That Dieth Not
H. P. Lovecraft- The Thing on the Doorstep
H. P. Lovecraft – Cool Air
H. P. Lovecraft – The Outsider
L. P. Hartley – A Visitor from Down Under
William Faulkner – A Rose for Emily
Elizabeth Bowen – The Cat Jumps
Pamela Hansford Johnson – Ghost of Honour
Robert Bloch – Catnip
Robert Bloch – Enoch
Muriel Spark – The Portobello Road
Ray Bradbury – Skeleton

Anonymous – Tales Of Horror & Mystery

Anonymous – Tales Of Horror & Mystery (Dean, 1993)

Luis Rey

Horror Stories

Roald Dahl – The Landlady
Walter De La Mare – The Riddle
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Ruth Ainsworth – Through The Door
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
Helen Cresswell – A Kind Of Swan Song
Gene Kemp – The Clock Tower Ghost
Robert Arthur – The Haunted Trailer
Ambrose Bierce – The Stranger
Walter De La Mare – Bad Company
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
W. W. Jacobs – The Well
Saki – Laura
Joan Aiken – The Swan Child
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brown Hand
H. G. Wells – The Red Room

Mystery Stories

Joan Aiken – The Blade
M. R. James – Lost Hearts
Charles Dickens – The Signalman
Oscar Wilde – The Picture Of Dorian Gray (Extract)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Silver Mirror
Bret Harte – The Stolen Cigar Case
Honore De Balzac – The Mysterious Mansion
Nicholas Fisk – Sweets From A Stranger
Roald Dahl – The Hitch-Hiker
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque Of The Red Death
Karen Blixen – The Sailor Boy’s Tale
Guy de Maupassant – The Horla
Theophile Gautier – The Mummy’s Foot

Blurb:
“It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous.”

This anthology contains more than thirty spine-chilling stories by contemporary and classic writers, drawing us into a world of ghosts, demons and horrific happenings.

In Walter de la Mare’s Bad Company who is the evil-looking stranger on the Underground who leads us to a frightening discovery? And in Roald Dahl’s The Landlady what sinister secret is the mysterious proprietress of the guesthouse witholding from her unsuspecting guest?

These startling and compelling stories by some of the world’s greatest writers will enthrall readers to the very last page.

Horror Stories: By The Greatest Masters Of The Gruesome

Anonymous (ed.) – Horror Stories: By The Greatest Masters Of The Gruesome (Paul Elek Bestseller Library, 1962)

Alexander Woolcott – Midnight Sonata
Arthur Machen – The Novel Of The Black Seal
E. F. Benson – Mrs. Amworth
F. Marion Crawford – The Upper Berth
H. P. Lovecraft – The Dunwich Horror
Guy de Maupassant – Was It a Dream?
Bram Stoker – The Judges House
Charles Collins & Charles Dickens – The Trial For Murder
J. F. Sullivan – The Man With A Malady
Anonymous – Sawney Beane and His Family
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
A. J. Alan – The Hair
Fitz-James O’Brien – What Was It?
H. G. Wells – The Cone
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Blurb

Warning
If these tales are read late at night when the reader is alone in the house, the publishers will not he responsible for the consequences.

and nor will i be held accountable for posting ’em here!

Perhaps the most interesting thing to be said for this selection is that the contents are identical to  The Arrow Book Of Horror Stories (1965)

Lucy Berman – The Creepy-Crawly Book

Lucy Berman – The Creepy-Crawly Book (Target, 1973)

Lucy Berman – The Legend of Arachne
Sir Walter Scott – The Legend of Robert Bruce and the Spider
H. G. Wells – The Valley of Spiders
Leonard Clark – Good Company
Thomas Bulfinch – The Legend of Cadmus
Rudyard Kipling – Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
David Starr Jordan – Old Rattler and the King Snake
Ogden Nash – The Cobra (verse)
Carl Sandburg – Worms and the Wind
Lucy Berman – The Legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin
Bernhardt J. Hurwood – The Curse of Mouse Tower
Henry Williamson – The Mouse
William Beebe – The Vampire Bats
Joan Beadon – Rats
Randall Jarrell – Bats
Lewis Carroll – The Mouse’s Tail
Richard Henwood – The Scorpion
Gerald Durrell – Wilhelmina
Hanns Heinz Ewers – The Ants
Ogden Nash – The Ant (verse)
Ogden Nash – The Termite (verse)
Lucy Berman – The Legends of the Kraken and the Hydra
Jules Verne – The Squid (extract from [i]Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea[/i])
Victor Hugo – The Octopus
Lord Alfred Tennyson – The Kraken (verse)

Blurb:

What living thing would you LEAST like to be left alone with in a room late at night?
A large, hairy, tropical spider?
A poisonous snake?
A large rat? – with red eyes of course!
Or would you go in for smaller fry like a mouse, or a scorpion, or an ant?
Are these unpleasant creatures in every case as nasty as they seem?
Read the book and find out ….

Strictly for older boys and girls!

see also Vault’s Creepy Crawly Book thread

thanks to The Coffin Flies  and Allthingshorror for the table of contents and scans.

Anon – A Century Of Thrillers: Second Series

Anon – A Century Of Thrillers: Second Series (Daily Express, 1935)

Somerset Maugham – The Taipan
Donn Byrne – Tale Of The Piper
George Eliot – The Lifted Veil
M. R. James – Number 13
M. R. James – Rats
M. R. James – Count Magnus
G. K. Chesterton – The Queer Feet
H. G. Wells – Pollock And The Porrah Man
A. J. Alan – My Adventure In Norfolk
Sax Rohmer – Tcheriapin
J. S. Fletcher – The Ivory God
Daniel Defoe – The Apparition Of Mrs Veal
E. F. Benson – The Thing In The Hall
Guy De Maupassant – Night
Guy De Maupassant – The Drowned Man
Guy De Maupassant – Who Knows?
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Oscar Wilde – The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe – The Fall Of The House Of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe – The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands
O. Henry – The Last Leaf
W. W. Jacobs – The Well
Charles Dickens – The Haunted Man And The Ghost’s Bargain
Ambrose Bierce – Moxon’s Master
Ambrose Bierce – The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
Ambrose Bierce – The Damned Thing
W. F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
F. Marion Crawford – The Upper Berth
F. Marion Crawford – Man Overboard!
N. A. Temple Ellis – Diver’s Drops
Sydney Parkman – The Cards
Ashton Wolfe – The Knights Of The Silver Dagger
Frederick Marryat – The Werewolf
J. S. LeFanu – Shalken The Painter
J. S. LeFanu – Carmilla
J. S. LeFanu – The Familiar
Wilkie Collins – Gabriel’s Marriage
Mrs. Gaskell – The Sexton’s Hero

Dorothy L. Sayers – Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror: 3rd Series

Dorothy L. Sayers – Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror: 3rd Series (Gollancz, 1934)

Help! Cover Wanted!

1. Detection  and Mystery

2. Mystery and Horror

A.J. Alan – The 19 Club
Martin Armstrong – Sombrero
John  Betjeman – Lord Mount Prospect
Algernon Blackwood – The Wendigo
Ann Bridge – The Song in the House
D.K. Broster – Couching at the Door
Thomas Burke – The Dumb Wife
A.M. Burrage – The Bargain
A.E. Coppard – Arabesque: the Mouse
Oswald Couldrey – The Mistaken Fury
E. M. Delafield – Sophy Mason Comes Back
Lord Dunsany – Our Distant Cousins
J.F. Dwyer – A Jungle Graduate
Leonora Gregory – The Scoop
Alan Griff – The House of Desolation
L.P. Hartley – The Island
W.F. Harvey – Double Demon
Margaret Irwin – The Book
W.W. Jacobs – The Interruption
M.R. James – The Diary of Mr. Poynter
Cyril Landon – You’ll Come to the Tree in the End
John Metcalfe – Time-Fuse
J. C. Moore – Decay
Claire D. Pollexen – Stowaway
Arthur Quilter-Couch – A Pair of Hands
R.E. Roberts – The Hill
Naomi Royde-Smith – The Pattern
Herbert Shaw – What Can a Dead Man Do?
V. Sheehan – The Virtuoso
Lady Eleanor Smith – No Ships Pass
Sir Frederick Treves – The Idol With Hands of Clay
H. R. Wakefield – The Frontier Guards
H.G. Wells – The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham
B. A. Williams – Witch-Trot Pond
Clarence Winchester – Anniversary

Dorothy L Sayers – Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror: 2nd Series

Dorothy L Sayers (ed.) –  Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror: 2nd Series (Gollancz, July, 1931)

Help! Cover Wanted!

Dorothy L. Sayers – Introduction

1. Detection & Mystery (25 stories by Sayers, M. P. Shiel, H. C. Bailey, Robert Barr, Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes & Co.)

2. Mystery and Horror:

A.J. Alan – My Adventure in Norfolk
Stacy Aumonier – Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty
R. H. Barham – The Leech of Folkestone
Max Beerbohm – A.V. Laider
E.F. Benson – The Room in the Tower
J.D. Beresford – Cut-Throat Farm
Ambrose  Bierce – The Damned Thing
Algernon Blackwood – Secret Worship
Mrs. E. Bland  (Edith Nesbit) – No. 17
Douglas G. Browne – The Queer Door
A.M. Burrage – The Waxwork
Wilkie Collins – Mad Monkton
Alan Cunningham – The Haunted Ships
Clemence Dane – The King Waits
Walter de la Mare – The Tree
S.L. Dennis – The Second Awakening of a Magician
Charles Dickens – No.1 Branch Line: The Signalman
Ford Madox Ford – Reisenberg
Violet Hunt – The Prayer
W.F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
Holloway Horn – The Old Man
W.W. Jacobs – The Well
Edgar Jepson – The Resurgent Mysteries
J.S. Le Fanu – Mr. Justice Harbottle
E. Bulwer-Lytton – The Haunted and the Haunters
Arthur Machen – The Great Return
Frederick Marryat – The Story of the Greek Slave
John Masefield – Anty Blight
John Metcalfe – The Double Admiral
Mrs. Oliphant – The Library Window
Barry Pain – Rose,  Rose
Eden Phillpotts – The Iron Pineapple
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Sir A. Quiller-Couch – The Roll-Call of the Reef
Naomi Royde-Smith – Mangaroo
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
M. P. Shiel – The Primate of the Rose
Henry Spicer – Called to the Rescue
Hugh Walpole – The Enemy
H. G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
Edward Lucas White – Lukundoo