E.F. Benson – författare

‘His body was pressed against the wall at the head of the bed, and the face was a mask of agonised horror and fruitless entreaty. But the eyes were already glazed in death, and before Francis could reach the bed the body had toppled over and lay inert and lifeless. Even as he looked, he heard a limping step go down the passage outside.’ E. F. Benson was a master of the ghost story and now all his rich, imaginative, spine-tingling and beautifully written tales are presented together in this bumper collection. The range and variety of these spooky narratives is far broader and more adventurous than those of any other writer of supernatural fiction. Within the covers of this volume you will encounter revengeful spectres, vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous spectral worms and slugs and other entities of nameless dread. This is a classic collection that cannot fail to charm and chill.Stories include:The Room in the TowerThe Dust-CloudGavon’s EveThe Confession of Charles LinkworthAt Abdul Ali’s GraveThe Shootings Of AchnaleishHow Fear Departed from the Long GalleryCaterpillarsThe CatThe Bus-ConductorThe Man Who Went Too FarBetween the LightsOutside the DoorThe Terror by NightThe Other BedThe Thing in the HallThe House with the Brick-Kiln‘And the Dead Spake – ’The OutcastThe Horror-HornMachaonNegotium PerambulansAt the FarmhouseInscrutable DecreesThe GardenerMr Tilly’s SéanceMrs AmworthIn The TubeRoderick’s StoryReconciliationThe FaceSpinachBagnell TerraceA Tale of an Empty HouseNaboth’s VineyardExpiationHome, Sweet Home‘And No Bird Sings’The Corner HouseCorstophineThe TempleThe StepThe Bed by the WindowJames LampThe DanceThe Hanging of Alfred WadhamPiratesThe Wishing-WellThe Bath-ChairMonkeysChristopher Comes BackThe SanctuaryThursday EveningsThe Psychical Mallards

As it came closer Dick felt that shuddering faintness, which often affected him in the presence of cats, come over him, and he stamped and clapped his hands. At this it turned tail quickly: a sort of dark shadow streaked the garden-wall for a moment, and it vanished.A mother cat takes revenge for the death of its kitten, a ferocious feline creeps into a princess’s bedchamber at night to drain her blood, a young woman grows whiskers beneath the light of a full moon and frolics on the lawn…Aloof and haughty, slinking and sometimes sinister, cats are a mainstay of weird fiction for good reason: for all that we love them, they’re unknowable, unpredictable and a little uncanny. And so, cats loom large in this collection that ranges from the sinister stories of Victorian greats such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu through to twentieth-century tales from renowned authors Dorothy L Sayers, E F Benson and Gans T Field.

Reigning over a social merry-go-round of dinners and parties, Mrs Ames is the undisputed queen bee of Riseborough. That is, until vivacious new villager Mrs Evans catches the eye of both her son and her husband. Not content with captivating the men in her life, 'that wonderful creature' Mrs Evans becomes not just rival to Mrs Ames' marriage, but rival to her village throne. When the whole of Riseborough is invited to Mrs Evans' masked costume party, action must be taken. As the date looms, the irrepressible Mrs Ames resolves to seize the chance to win back her position, and thus, her man.