Tanya Kirk – författare

Festive cheer turns to maddening fear in this new collection of seasonal hauntings, presenting the best Christmas ghost stories from the 1850s to the 1960s. The traditional trappings of the holiday are turned upside down as restless spirits disrupt the merry games of the living, Christmas trees teem with spiteful pagan presences and the Devil himself treads the boards at the village pantomime. As the cold night of winter closes in and the glow of the hearth begins to flicker and fade, the uninvited visitors gather in the dark in this distinctive assortment of haunting tales.

'The tiles of the hall floor were as pretty as ever, as cold as ever, and bore, as always on Christmas Eve, the trickling pattern of dark blood.'The gifts are unwrapped, the feast has been consumed and the fire is well fed - but the ghosts are still hungry. The ghosts are at the door.Welcome to a new collection of Christmas nightmares, ushering in a fresh host of ghastly phantoms and otherworldly intruders bent on ruining, or partaking in, the most wonderful time of the year. With classic tales from Algernon Blackwood, Elizabeth Bowen, Charlotte Riddell and L. P. Hartley jostling with rare pieces from the sleeping periodicals and literary magazines of the British Library collections, it's time to open the door and let the real festivities begin.

'Like any other boy I expected ghost stories at Christmas, that was the time for them. What I had not expected, and now feared, was that such things should actually become real.'Strange things happen on the dark wintry nights of December. Welcome to a new collection of haunting Christmas tales, ranging from traditional Victorian chillers to weird and uncanny episodes by twentieth-century horror masters including Daphne du Maurier and Robert Aickman.Lurking in the blizzard are menacing cat spirits, vengeful trees, malignant forces on the mountainside and a skater skirting the line between the mortal and spiritual realms. Wrap up warm - and prepare for the longest nights of all.

"But something odd does happen here at Christmas time. When I first heard the story, I thought it was an old wives' tale, but-well, these old houses-you hear strange things-" He lifted his shoulders and stared into the fire..."From the troves of the British Library collections comes a new volume for Christmas nights-when the boundary between the mundane and the unearthly is ever so thin-ushering in a new throng of revenants, demons, spectres and shades drawn to the glow of the hearth. Included within are eighteen classic stories ranging from 1864 to 1974, with vintage Victorian chillers nestled alongside unsettling modern pieces from L. P. Hartley and Mildred Clingerman; lost tales from rare anthologies and periodicals; weird episodes from unexpected authors such as Winston Graham and D. H. Lawrence; stories simmering with a twisted humour from Elizabeth Bowen and Celia Fremlin and many more haunting seasonal treats.

'Fantasy, we know, from the oldest stories in the oldest languages, has always been with us.' - Neil Gaiman, 'Preface'Fantasy is an expansive genre, encompassing sprawling epics, ancient folklore, impossible worlds and forays into the dark and horrifying. In this new volume, twenty authors have mustered for a journey across four vast realms: Fairy and Folk Tales, Epics and Quests, the Weird and Uncanny, and Portals and Worlds. Prepare to delve into the heart of Fantasy, with explorations of the art of world-building, the undying appeal of the quest narrative, the diversity and interconnectedness of the world's fairy stories and weird tales, and the unique power of the uncanny in videogames. Here, you will find contributions from a host of writers including Maria Dahvana Headley, China Mieville, Sofia Samatar, Marina Warner and Terri Windling, alongside sage insights from expert British Library curators and Fantasy literature specialists.Featuring awe-inspiring illustrations and representing the gamut of fantastic creativity from Gilgamesh to Ursula K. Le Guin, from Beowulf to the Brontes, and from The Dark Crystal to the Dark Souls franchise, Realms of Imagination is a treasure trove of new perspectives and fresh discoveries.

As he turned over its stiff and yellow pages, he noticed with pleasure the smell of corruption that had first repelled him in these decaying volumes, a smell, he now thought, of ancient and secret knowledge... Researchers prying into an obscure manuscript come face to face with its ghoulish guardian. A bookseller digging through an attic disturbs something far more dangerous than dust. An uncanny tome tempts its reader onto a path of untold evil. Welcome to The Haunted Library, a collection of fourteen tales steeped in the dark psychic traces found in the stacks and shelves of libraries, bookshops, and other troves of hidden knowledge. Including stories from rare pulp magazines, classics from the minds of M. R. James, L. P. Hartley and Margaret Irwin, and modern chillers from Penelope Lively and C. J. Faraday, this volume invites you into a hushed realm of cursed authors, ghostly bibliophiles, and readers haunted by the weird powers of the written word.