2023/140: The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights — various authors
My bells tinkled and rang. The pine needles pattered across the floor. If I squinted, I could just see the blue edge of her, dancing in a fury, whirling with her hands out, breathing her spite against the walls. The plaster bubbled and split. ['Banished', Elizabeth Macneal: loc. 1925]
A follow-up to last year's The Haunting Season, this collection features twelve stories by contemporary authors working in the Gothic / historical / fantastical / weird milieu: the settings are historical and mostly British, though Catriona Ward's 'Jenkin' is set in Maine, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson's 'Inferno' takes place in late eighteenth-century Italy. Despite the subtitle, not all of the stories feature ghosts.( Read more... )