Marjorie Bowen – författare

"She said once she heard some people told to get an airing in a closed carriage and that her life had been like that, trying to get fresh air, but always closed up, in a box."As warm sunshine bathes the streets of Paris in the late 1800s, the lively young debutante May meets the cotton-broker John Tyler. Far from a picturesque romance, life with the boorish broker turns sour as they move to Manchester and May finds herself trapped in a world of hostile servants and neglect. When Tyler meets his end from an overdose of arsenic the drug which he was so fond of prescribing himself as a kind of panacea May is dragged into a trial coloured by the public's hunger to paint her as a beguiling murderess.Based on the real-life murder trial of Florence Maybrick in 1899, this novel spins the gripping tale of a case clouded by sensation, its unsolved mysteries, and the untold story of the human being at its heart. First published in 1943, it was filmed as The Mark of Cain in 1947.

"I hear from Mrs Barlow, who is a good gossip, that your mother and your sister are both ill. You must, then, have very little company." "Very little human company," she replied.On a moonlit night, a man dressed as the Devil arrives at the door of the ill-omened Holcot Grange the hereditary owner of the manor which has been uninhabited for two generations, he has come to escape his past and proceeds to reclaim his seat. But the tenants are not passive to his new tenure. As he is enthralled by the aura of one of the current denizens, the otherworldly Julia Roseingrave, a sultry romance begins to bubble, overlooked always by the shadow of conflict and the spectre of death.A deliciously atmospheric novella blending witchcraft and superstition with the Gothic trappings of a cursed love, this edition will also be complete with a number of companion short stories by Marjorie Bowen.

The wine looked a thick amber colour, powdered with gold. Lally thought of the doctor's story of the two men who had followed this woman to the forest and afterwards died miserably. Perhaps it was here that she had brought them. Following a scandal in the Duke's court, roguish officer Lally Duchene is dismissed to a new post at a small monastery and asylum deep in the forests of the Rheingau. Disregarding the local superstitions about the dangers of ghosts and nixies in the woods and vineyards, his days slip by in a haze of daydreams.But there something stirring in this woodland idyll. Among the patients is a woman possessing an overpowering, otherworldly aura, and the vestiges of a sinister paganism leer from beneath the holy facades. As the wine harvest approaches and figures from Lally's past find themselves drawn to the monastery, the forces of nature awaken and the countryside erupts in an intoxicating carnage of ancient rites.First published in 1921, this rare historical mystery of pagan weirdness rife in nineteenth-century Germany returns to print for the first time since it's original publication.

From the peaks of Eryri to dramatic coastlines, misty valleys and haunted mines, Wales is a land whose myth and folklore has long been reflected in a thriving storytelling tradition, with the dragons and sorcerers of the Mabinogion and Arthurian legend laying a path for later tales of the Tylwyth Teg, and the pitiless fair folk of Arthur Machen's fictional world.To show the breadth of the strange tales inspired by the Celtic history and local legends of Cymru, horror expert Aaron Worth presents an exciting new selection of Anglophone Welsh fiction, including folkloric retellings, classics of the early twentieth-century weird and chilling pieces by writers from beyond the country's borders. Featuring stories by Dylan Thomas, Christianna Brand, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Margiad Evans and many more, this collection welcomes you to the darker side of Cymru.