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.

Dorothy L. Sayers – Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery & Horror

Dorothy L. Sayers – Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery & Horror (Gollancz, September 1928)

Margaret Oliphant – The Open Door
Charles Dickens – Story of the Bagman’s Uncle
Charles Collins & Charles Dickens- The Trial for Murder
M. R. James – Martin’s Close
Oliver Onions – Phantas
Robert Hichens – How Love Came to Professor Guildea
Saki – The Open Window
Arthur Machen – The Black Seal
Sax Rohmer – Tcheriapin
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
A. J. Alan – The Hair
E. F. Benson – Mrs. Amworth
Ambrose Bierce – Moxon’s Master
Jerome J. Jerome – The Dancing Partner
Robert Louis Stevenson – Thrawn Janet
R. H. Benson – Father Meuron’s Tale
Marjorie Bowen – The Avenging of Ann Leete
J. F. Sullivan –  The Man With A Malady
William Fryer Harvey – August Heat
Morley Roberts – The Anticipator
Joseph Conrad – The Brute
May Sinclair – Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea
J. D. Beresford – The Misanthrope
John Metcalfe – The Bad Lands
Alfred M. Burrage – Nobody’s House
Arthur Quiller-Couch – The Seventh Man
N. Royde-Smith – Proof
Walter de la Mare – Seaton’s Aunt
Michael Arlen – The Gentleman From America
R. Ellis Roberts – The Narrow Way
Traditional – Sawney Beane
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
Violet Hunt – The Corsican Sisters
Barry Pain – The End of A Show
H. G. Wells – The Cone
Ethel Colburn Mayne – The Separate Room

The first of three epic volumes in this classic series; stories listed are the Mystery & Horror content only.  Series II and III to follow ASAP

C. A. Dawson Scott & Ernest Rhys – Twenty And Three Stories

C. A. Dawson Scott & Ernest Rhys (eds.) – Twenty And Three Stories: By Twenty And Three Authors (Thornton Butterworth, 1924)

 

Introduction: Ernest Rhys & C. A. Dawson Scott

Edith Wharton – Kerfol
L. de Bra – A Life – A Bowl Of Rice
W. B. Yeats – The Crucifixion Of The Outcast
The Marquess Curzon Of Kedleston – The Drums Of Kairwan
T. F. Powys – Alleluia
A. E. W. Mason – Hatteras
Elinor Mordaunt – Hodge
Thomas Burke – The Chink And The Child
Robert Hichens – The Nomad
Cutcliffe Hyne – The Ransom
Edwin Pugh – The Other Twin
Morley Roberts – Grear’s Dam
Ward Muir – The Reward Of Enterprise
H. de Vere Stackpoole -The King Of Maleka
Algernon Blackwood – Violence
A. Conan-Doyle – Captain Sharkey
Arthur Lynch – The Sentimental Mortgage
Ellis Roberts – The Narrow Way
Louis Golding – The Call Of The Hand
Walter De La Mare – The Creatures
W. Somerset Maugham – The Taipan
John Masefield – Davy Jones’ Gift
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw

“The New Terror is apt to be more psychical, more psychological perhaps, than the old. The method of the latter is based on EDGAR POE and the writers for Blackwoods Magazine, while the former is akin to the Russians, to SOLOGUB and TCHEKKOV.”

Strong mixed bag of Ghost stories, mysteries and thrillers – “stories of sensation” as the authors put it – with enough of a horror bent to be included here. A companion piece to their Thirty And One Stories of the previous year which is more diverse in its approach but still finds time to include genre contributions from Percival Gibbon, Violet Hunt, May Sinclair and H. G. Wells of those I recognise.

James Doig – Australian Nightmares

James Doig (ed.) – Australian Nightmares (Equilibrium, 2008)

Mary Fortune (1833-1910?) – The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale
Charles Junor (?-1901) – The Silent Sepulchre
Ernest Favenc (1845-1908) – What the Rats Brought
Ernest Favenc (1845-1908) – On the Island of Shadows
Hume Nisbet (1849-1923) – The Odic Touch
J.A. Barry (1850-1911) – Told in the Corona’s Cabin
Rosa Praed (1851-1935) – The House of Ill Omen
Morley Roberts (1857-1942) – A Thing of Wax
James Edmund (1859-1933) – The Prophetic Horror of the Great Experiment
James Edmund (1859-1933) – The Precipitous Details of the High Mountain and the Three Skeletons
Lionel Sparrow (1867-1936) – The Strange Case of Alan Heriot
Beatrice Grimshaw (1871-1953) – The Blanket Fiend
James Francis Dwyer (1874-1952) – The Phantom Ship of Dirk Van Tromp
Helen Simpson (1897-1940) – The Pledge
Vernon Knowles (1899-1968) – The House that Took Revenge
Vernon Knowles (1899-1968) – The Watch
Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) – The Story of the Waxworks
Roger Dard (1920-1996) – The Undying One

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)