Showing titles in Ghosts

The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon.

It's 1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who took that fateful trip and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.

Nola Trenholm may not be psychic herself, but she’s spent enough time around people who are to know when ghosts are present, and there are definitely a few lingering spirits in her recently purchased Creole cottage in New Orleans. Something, or someone, is keeping them tethered to this world. And not all of them are benign. But with the sudden return of Sunny Ryan, Beau Ryan’s long-lost sister, Nola has plenty to distract her from her ghostly housemates.

This choice collection of spine tingling tales runs the gamut from slightly spooky to "I'm sleeping with all the lights on tonight!" A splendid grouping of tales from the pens of some of the great writers of the past. Enjoy these classic stories alone or with a friend, whenever your ears are free.

For millennia men have strutted their pride over the fragile surface of the Earth, arrogantly proclaiming themselves masters of creation. But now their feeble investigations have disturbed the planet's original rulers far beneath the globe's crust.

The compliance officer for a First Nations band has been shot in the head and left for dead. Unable to cross over to the great hunting grounds, Billy Ghostkeeper must stay and discover who murdered him and why. Through strange, funny, and sometimes harrowing adventures, Billy and his gang of “detectives” discover there could be three reasons why he was killed. It could be that the culprit is a dangerous person or group willing to do anything or sacrifice anyone in order to keep control of the band's natural resources.

Oliver Dalrymple, nicknamed Boo because of his pale complexion and staticky hair, is an outcast at his Illinois middle school - more interested in biology and chemistry than the friendship of other kids. But after a tragic accident, Boo wakes up to find himself in a very strange sort of heaven: a town populated by only 13-year-old Americans.

Having been abandoned on the steps of an orphanage as an infant, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony assumed all his life that his mother had simply given him up. But when he receives an anonymous note suggesting that foul play may have led to his mother's disappearance, he sees only one option: to return to the rural Irish village where he was born and find out what really happened 26 years ago.

Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor. But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband.

Ever since she was a child, Stacey Hanson has had strange dreams - and sometimes they come true. Her skills and experience led her straight to the FBI's Krewe of Hunters. Now a serial killer is stalking Washington, DC, and people are scared. And it will be Stacey's first case. Special Agent Keenan Wallace isn't exactly thrilled to be teamed up with a rookie, but they're going to have to get past their mutual friction if they want to stop a brutal killer.

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force. Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence. Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels.

The Carnacki institute exists to do something about ghosts. Lay them to rest, send them packing, or kick their nasty ectoplasmic arses with extreme prejudice. The institute’s operatives are the best of the best. JC Chance: sharp, brave, charming, and almost unbearably arrogant; Melody Chambers: science geek, techno-wizard extraordinaire who keeps the antisupernatual equipment running smoothly; and Happy Jack Palmer: the telepath with the gloomy disposition, the last person anyone would want navigating through their head.

1875. With their father missing and their mother suddenly passing, Esme and Gabriel are forced to track down their estranged grandfather in Lincolnshire. Cold and unwelcoming, he is reluctant to take them in, but aware of his standing as the village vicar, he knows must protect his reputation, and allow the children to stay with him. Esme's relief at finding refuge soon turns to despair when Gabriel is sent to boarding school, leaving her alone in their grandfather's unhappy home. But the house isn't as empty as it first appeared.

A terrifying ghost story from the Queen of Icelandic crime, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, author of the Thora Gudmundsdottir novels. The crunching noise had resumed, now accompanied by a disgusting, indefinable smell. It could best be described as a blend of kelp and rotten meat. The voice spoke again, now slightly louder and clearer: Don't go. Don't go yet. I'm not finished.

In Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, Lori's twins are now toddlers, walking and talking enough to drive her nearly stir crazy. So she jumps at the offer of a break - a trip to evaluate a rare-book collection in a remote and misty corner of Northumberland. On a dark and stormy night in late October, she sets out for Wyrdhurst Hall, the grim neo-Gothic castle owned by newlyweds Nicole and Jared Hollander. On the way there she encounters Adam Chase, a charming, handsome stranger who knows more than he's telling about the hall's mysterious secrets....

Mark Gatiss ( Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones) reads chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story: E. F. Benson. There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy train platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden inexplicable chill.

A self-proclaimed skeptic, the food writer dismissed rumors of a mischievous resident poltergeist named Lucy when he moved in, but he quickly found himself at a loss to explain the disembodied footsteps and mysterious odors that seemed to plague the old house. Soon, he was talking to neighbors and fellow homeowners, and it seemed that everyone had stories of strange events and supernatural occurrences in their own dwellings. As a result, David set out to document and research these reports...

When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson’s life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael’s mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely. How could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape?

A wealthy and depressed man (thanks to the economy, he's not quite rich enough to expand his cache of paintings by Vincent Van Guy, the famed Dutch realist) bound for Christmas in the tropics is abruptly summoned home to North Dakota to visit an ailing aunt. He arrives just in time to be trapped there by a blizzard. The electricity goes out, and when it does, figures from his childhood appear, and historical figures too, for a festive candlelit holiday.