Weird Women & Haunted Houses
As much as I rarely buy newly published books, I make exceptions for curations of ghost stories and new printings of old, often forgotten work. This is a special Halloween review of Weird Women and Haunted Houses.
UK
Books written by British, Irish, and Scottish authors from the United Kingdom. Usually written in English.
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Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson
It might seem strange, and I’m sure it’s not a preference that many people share, but sometimes when I feel my worst — very anxious, very depressed, very not well — and can’t sleep, scary stories are what I turn to. There’s something about ghosts, goblins, vampires, and spooky houses in settings a hundred and fifty years old that draws me out of the racing thoughts my brain gets stuck in. This is a review of Horror Stories.
The Woman in Black
I’ve met people that swear by Camp Crystal Lake and others that don Freddy’s classic bladed gloves or put on the Ghostface mask from the Scream series. But nothing really gives me that feeling of decay, destruction, and ghostliness like stories, films, and books that have Victorian settings. This is a review of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black.
Uncle Silas
What do you think of when you think of Gothic mystery? A mysterious death followed by a mysterious will? Opium? Scary governesses? Some kind of murder plot? Graves? Estranged uncles? Gypsies? Creepy cousins? Murder? Gambling debts? Estates badly managed?
Did you say all of the above?
This is a review of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The little details and techniques matter, and can be the difference between a good book and an unforgettable one. This book changed the way I saw font, style, technique, and it showed me the power of humour to be as immortal as literature itself. This is a review of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
Lark Rise to Candleford
These novels aren’t exactly ‘novels’ per se, in the sense that they are not traditionally structured narratives. Instead, they are more of a collection of stories about rural life in the later nineteenth century. This is a review of Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford.
Of Human Bondage
I was first introduced to this book via the 1934 film of the same name that was very loosely based on it. We watched it on Turner Classic Movies one evening and I thought perhaps that the novel would fill in some of the gaps that I saw in the film. This is a review of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
The Beggar’s Opera
I’d actually heard of this book several years before finding it by chance on the shelf of the local bookstore. I couldn’t resist purchasing it, if only to find out why it was so heavily referenced. This is a review of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
Don’t Look Now
This week’s Halloween in August pick is from a classic horror writer. It’s a collection of five stories all of them sharing a tone of unease, some with themes of the supernatural, others more about a mystery. This is a review of Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now.
They
I found this copy in the antiquarian section of a used bookstore in a nearby city and it was a surprise. I’d never heard of the story before, but I couldn’t resist the beautifully bound book, with gold lettering, and a generous amount of very lush colour plates. This is a review of Rudyard Kipling’s They.