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

Peter Haining – Murder On The Menu

Peter Haining (ed.) – Murder On The Menu: A Gourmet Guide To Death (Chancellor 1993: originally Souvenir, 1991)

Cover design: Slatter-Anderson

Peter Haining – Introduction

I. Specialities de la Maison: Stories By Some Famous Authors

Stanley Ellin – The Speciality Of The House
Ruth Rendell – Bribery And Corruption
Paul Gallico – Chef d’Oeuvre
Oliver La Farge – La Specialite de M Duclos
L. P. Hartley – Three, or Four, for Dinner
Gaston Leroux – A Terrible Tale
Damon Runyon – So You Won’t Talk!
Patricia Highsmith – Sauce for the Goose
P. D. James – A Very Commonplace Murder

II. Entrees Historigues: Tales From The Culinary Past.

August Derleth – A Dinner at Imola
Robert Bloch – The Feast in the Abbey
Alphonse Daudet – The Three Low Masses
Alexander Pushkin – The Coffin-Maker
Washington Irving – Guests from Gibbet Island
Richard Dehan – The Compleat Housewife
Walter Besant & James Rice – The Case of Mr Lucraft
G. B. Stern – The Man who Couldn’t Taste Pepper
Roger Zelazny – Final Dining

III. Just Desserts. A Section Of Detective Cases

Agatha Christie – Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds
H. C. Bailey – The Long Dinner
Nicholas Blake – The Assassins’ Club
Roy Vickers – Dinner for Two
Michael Gilbert – A Case for Gourmets
Lawrence G. Blochman – Rum for Dinner
Georges Simenon – Under the Hammer
Rex Stout – Poison a la Carte
Roald Dahl – Lamb to the Slaughter

Blurb:
Murder On The Menu is a mouth-watering collection of short stories from the masters of mystery, where food and death meet with devastating effect.

Peter Haining – Summoned From The Tomb Digit, 1966

Peter Haining (ed) – Summoned From The Tomb (Digit, 1966)

Introduction – Peter Haining

Robert Bloch – Hell On Earth *
Washington Irving – Guests From Gibbet Island
Bram Stoker – The Judges House
J. S. Le Fanu – The Bully Of Chapelizod
Ivar Jorgensen – The Curse  *
Alexander Pushkin – The Coffin-Maker
Clive Pemberton – “Purple Eyes” *
Ambrose Bierce – A Watcher By The Dead
August Derleth – The Whippoorwills In The Hills
Edgar Allan Poe – Hop-Frog

A “Screaming Shuddering Spine-chilling TEN horror classics by the great masters of suspense” no less, including three stories (*) which didn’t make it into the later, much expanded hardback (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1973).  Groovy graveyard cover artwork too!

See also the Summoned From The Tomb thread on the Vault of Evil forum.

Dennis Wheatley – Uncanny Tales 1

Dennis Wheatley (ed.) – Uncanny Tales 1 [# 9] (Sphere, 1974)

Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Mrs Oliphant – The Open Door
Washington Irving – The Spectre Bridegroom
Edgar Allen Poe – Ligeia
Théophile Gautier – Clarimonde

Thanks to Bob Rothwell of Dennis Wheatly Info for providing the list of contents. RIP, Bob.

Great Ghost Stories

R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Stephen Jones (eds.) – Great Ghost Stories (Cemetery Dance, Carroll & Graf, 2004)

Les Edwards

Foreword – Stephen Jones
Introduction – R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Amelia B. Edwards – The Four-Fifteen Express
Richard Middleton – On the Brighton Road
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
G. B. S.- The Whittaker’s Ghost
S. Baring-Gould – The Leaden Ring
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Ghost Stories Of The Tiled House
F. Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile
Daniel Defoe – The Ghost of Dorothy Dingley
Anon – The Dead Man Of Varley Grange
E. Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
Sydney J. Bounds – The Night Walkers
Amyas Northcote – Brickett Bottom
John Kendrick Bangs – The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
Stephen King – The Reaper’s Image
Jerome K. Jerome – Christmas Eve in the Blue Chamber
Steve Rasnic Tem – Housewarming
Ramsey Campbell – The Ferries
Tina Rath – The Fetch
Washington Irving – Guests From Gibbet Island
Garry Kilworth – The Tryst
Guy de Maupassant – An Apparition
Brian Lumley – Aunt Hester
Tony Richards – Our Lady Of The Shadows
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – She Walks on Dry Land

Can anyone see the sense in this? Take a series of everyman pocket paperbacks like The Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories, which, in their day were available in just about every newsagent and supermarket up and down the country, and like as not got several people on here reading the stuff. Make a random selection from volumes 17-20. Get Les Edwards to design you a terrific cover, fully in sympathy with the original series. Now, have the thing printed, making sure it’s as unnecessarily bulky as possible, and run off just enough copies so that it sells out prior to publication. Appealing to the “I’ve still got my factory sealed, never been opened, worth a bomb!” non-reading market is all very well, but it’s also driving another stake into the heart of what’s supposed to be ‘popular fiction’. Hope they won an award for it.

Anyway, here’s the Blurb:

Eerie atmospherics, a sense of foreboding, then the unease, a chill, a shudder, ghosts, terror — again and again, in the twenty-five superbly scary tales of this standout anthology, they’re conjured artfully, both by modern masters of the macabre, among them Stephen King, Garry Kilworth, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Tony Richards, and by literary greats like Ambrose Bierce, Washington Irving, Sir Water Scott, and J Sheridan Le Fanu. Culled from the renowned Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories series, which was edited from 1972 to 1984 by horror fiction writer and erudite anthologist R Chetwynd-Hayes, these highly original, and often long-obscure tales reflect the enduring fascination in our literary tradition with phantoms, specters, ghouls, and wraiths. There’s a fetch (i.e., doppelganger) too — in Tina Rath’s nasty take on a violent husband, his shrinking wife, and a scheming woman. And behind Guy de Maupassant’s simply titled “An Apparition” lurks a tale that Chetwynd-Hayes places among the top ten most terrifying ghost stories ever written. From Daniel Defoe’s engaging period piece, “The Ghost of Dorothy Dingley,” set in 1665, to the subtle slice of contemporary ghostly life in Stephen King’s “The Reaper’s Image,” dread takes many fearsome guises in the three centuries of chilling fiction collected here, and solace lies only at the feet of a very dark angel.

Anthology Of Fear

Anthology Of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories For Winter Nights (Marshall Cavendish, 1988)

Mary Braddon – The Cold Embrace
Mary Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Washington Irving – Guests From Gibbets Island
Washington Irving – The Lady With The Velvet Collar
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
M. R. James – Count Magnus
M. R. James – The Mezzotint
M. R. James – ‘Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad”
J. S. Le Fanu – The Sexton’s Adventure
J. S. Le Fanu – Carmilla
Frederick Marryat – The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains
Edith Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Edith Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Bram Stoker – The Squaw
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Edith Wharton – The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Edith Wharton – Afterward