‘Ghost Stories’ – Charles Dickens
Throughout his career, Charles Dickens often turned his hand to fashioning short pieces of ghostly fiction, and began the tradition of ‘the ghost story at Christmas’.
Many of his supernatural tales are presented here, including the brilliant novella ‘The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain’, which deserves to be as well-known as ‘A Christmas Carol’.
While we aim to send a shiver down the spine, they are not without the usual traits of Dicken’s flamboyant style: his subtle wit, biting irony, humorous incidents and moral observations.
‘The Burning Chambers’ – Kate Mosse
Carcassonne, 1562. Ninteen-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at his dad’s bookstore. Sealed with a distinctive family crest, it contains just five words: SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LIVE.
But before Minou can decipher the mysterious message, a chance encounter with a young Huguenot covert, Piet Reydon, changes her destiny forever. For Piet has a dangerous mission of his own, and he will need Minou’s help is he is to get out of La Cité alive…
A thrilling adventure, and a heartbreaking love story, ‘The Burning Chamber’ is a historical novel of excitement conspiracy and danger like no others…
‘The Greenage Summer’ – Rumer Godden
When their mother is suddenly taken ill on holiday, five siblings are left to fend for themselves at the elegant, faded hotel, Le Oeillets. Under the increasingly jealous gaze of the glamorous patronne, Mademoiselle Zizi, the children gravitate towards her mysterious and charming lover, Eliot, for comfort. And, amongst the gnarled trees of the old orchards, thirteen-year-old Cecil watches from the sidelines as her achingly beautiful sister, Joss, is drawn into the heart of a toxic affair.