Simon Vance – författare

A darkly luminous new anthology collecting the most terrifying horror stories by renowned female authors, presenting anew these forgotten classics to the modern reader

Readers are well aware that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; few know how many other tales of terror she created. In addition to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote some surprisingly effective horror stories. The year after Little Women appeared, Louisa May Alcott published one of the first mummy tales. These ladies weren’t alone. From the earliest days of gothic and horror fiction, women were exploring the frontiers of fear, dreaming dark dreams that will still keep you up at night.

More Deadly than the Male includes unexpected horror tales by Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and forgotten writers like Mary Cholmondely and Charlotte Riddell, whose work deserves a modern audience. Listeners will be drawn in by the familiar names and intrigued by their rare stories.

In The Beckside Boggle, Alice Rea brings a common piece of English folklore to hair-raising life, while Helene Blavatsky, best known as the founder of the spiritualist Theosophical Society, conjures up a solid and satisfying ghost story in The Cave of the Echoes. Edith Wharton’s great novel The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer prize, yet her horror stories are known only to a comparative few.

Listeners will discover lost and forgotten women who wrote horror every bit as effectively as their male contemporaries. They will learn about their lives and careers, the challenges they faced as women working in a male-dominated field, the way they overcame those challenges, and the way they approached the genre―which was often subtler, more psychological, and more disturbing.

"CSI meets the Age of Reason with a well-drawn, intriguing cast of characters" (Karen Harper) in Tessa Harris'' superbly plotted historical mystery series, featuring eighteenth-century anatomist and pioneering sleuth Dr. Thomas Silkstone.

In the notorious mental hospital known as Bedlam, Dr. Thomas Silkstone seeks out a patient with whom he is on intimate terms. But he is unprepared for the state in which he finds Lady Lydia Farrell. Shocked into action, Thomas vows to help free Lydia by appealing to the custodian of her affairs, Mr. Nicholas Lupton.

But when Silkstone arrives at the Boughton Estate to speak to Lupton, he finds that sweeping changes threaten to leave many villagers destitute. After a man dies in the woods, it appears that someone has turned to murder to avenge their cause. But for Thomas, a postmortem raises more questions than answers, and a second murder warns him of his potentially fatal situation. Soon he discovers a conspiracy far more sinister than anything he has ever faced.

“Pirates, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day conceptions in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard Pyle…It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination of interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any more than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct Indians and gun-fighters of the Great West.”

So writes Merle Johnson, who has here gathered together in one volume all of the nineteenth-century author-artist’s classic pirate stories that had been scattered through many magazines and books. Well-researched and with richly drawn characters, Pyle’s work will appeal to students of history and adventure lovers alike.

The words held within these pages, written over two and a half thousand years ago, ring just as true today as they did in fifth century BC China. Bestselling author and master storyteller James Clavell (Shōgun) brought The Art of War to greater prominence in the West in the 1980s and showed how the book’s instruction was applicable on a smaller scale and could be used for personal betterment. Clavell’s wonderfully evocative foreword and helpful notes throughout the text guide the reader through preparations and battle plans, correct use of weapons and knowing when to fight—and when not to fight.

With a deep understanding of both strategy and human nature, this military treatise illustrates the fine craft of knowing one’s enemy and oneself. From military officers to CEOs to those simply looking to be more powerful in their own life, The Art of War has become required reading for anyone seeking a path of success through the modern world.