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.

‘Sapper’ – Bulldog Drummond

‘Sapper’ (Herman Cyril McNeille) – Bulldog Drummond: The Carl Peterson Quartet (Wordsworth Editions, 2007)

Nesta Jennings Campbell, Shades Of Night

Blurb:

‘Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; but crime, of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential.’

Bulldog Drummond was the original daredevil adventurer who, with his various friends, made it their mission to fight all enemies of Britain in the uncertain years following the First World War. Fearless, resourceful and debonair, Drummond could easily have been the father of James Bond. In the first four novels of the series, Bulldog Drummond, The Black Gang, The Third Round, The Final Count, all of which are contained within this volume, Hugh Drummond finds himself pitting his wits again Carl Peterson, a criminal genius with an insatiable passion for power and world domination. He has the great facility of disguise and his chameleon appearances are one of the joys of these thrilling tales. Peterson’s constant companion is the sinister but beautiful Irma.

The Drummond books are exciting page-turning adventures for grown up boys and girls.

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)

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