«World's Greatest Horror Stories», by Chase Cooper, W. F. Harvey, E. F. Benson, Eleanor Scott, Harriet Prescott Spofford, M. R. James. This digital edition brings together the text and its chapter structure for continuous reading. Contents include: World's Greatest Horror Stories, Narrated by Chase Cooper ; August Heat, by W. F. Harvey ; Berenice, Edgar Allan Poe ; Casting the Runes, M. R James ; Caterpillars, by E. F. Benson.

A vanished lover on a lonely coast, a letter of wounded jealousy, and a trail of social reinvention set this novel's emotional machinery in motion. From the first panic over C.'s disappearance to the revelation that she has fled to E. in heartbreak, the story exposes a narrator whose romantic imagination is always at odds with real feeling. As H. pursues the truth, he finds Madame Carlitz transformed: she has abandoned the stage, sold her theatre lease, and is preparing to marry Lord V., a...

On a summer day thick with waiting, Naomi Pentreath clings to the hope that her lost lover will return and prove his devotion, even as the beauty of the garden only sharpens her inner desolation. Around her, the household is strained by quiet resentments: Cynthia seeks Jim's easy affection, Jim grumbles with blunt humor about Judith's tight control and the family's joyless economy, and Naomi's loneliness deepens into jealousy as she watches Cynthia's gentle loveliness and senses why anothe...

A violent storm over the Devon coast throws Combhaven into fear, exposing the town's resentments, class divisions, and uneasy religious life. In the Ring of Bells tavern, fishermen gossip about the wealthy old Squire, his sons, and the hoarding of power and money, until Joshua Haggard enters—a commanding preacher, shrewd shopkeeper, and the moral force of the community. Devout, disciplined, and fiercely practical, Joshua stands at the center of a world divided between Methodist zeal and An...

The Cloven Foot follows the fortunes of John Treverton, who is at a very low point in his life. He has squandered his small inheritance and has had to sell his commission as a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment. Though he has been making a small amount of money from drawing comic sketches, he is feeling desperate and miserable when a telegram unexpectedly summons him to the death-bed of his wealthy uncle Jasper. The dying man tells him that he will will his estate to the younger man...

On a calm Sunday at Penmoyle, Joshua Haggard's preaching fills the church with force and grandeur, urging sacrifice, faith, and tangible offerings for a new chapel. By invoking Solomon's temple, he turns a practical fund-raising appeal into a vision of sacred beauty, and the villagers respond with pride as much as piety. Cynthia, listening in awe, begins to see Joshua as a figure of rare greatness, almost saintly in his conviction and power. When the service gives way to tea, village polit...

Mildred's quiet journey through a French asylum opens into a gallery of damaged lives: a woman who believes herself the Blessed Virgin, and Maria Castellani, a once-celebrated opera singer whose fierce vanity, theatrical pride, and sudden tenderness reveal a spirit still ruled by music and memory. As Maria sings, her brilliance and instability become inseparable, and the doctor's account of Paolo Castellani's exploitation and abandonment shows how fame, beauty, and devotion can curdle into...

In the glittering drawing rooms of London high society, where dinners are staged like performances and reputation is worth more than gold, Lady Maulevrier reigns with dazzling composure. Beautiful, intelligent, and utterly self-possessed, she moves through gossip, music, and political chatter as if nothing can touch her—even as whispers gather around her husband's disgrace in India. At last she reveals the shocking truth: Lord Maulevrier has resigned his post and is on his way home, bringi...

M. E. Braddon's Vixen begins in the moonlit New Forest, where Roderick Vawdrey catches sight of Violet Tempest—the fearless, freckled fifteen-year-old everyone calls Vixen—leaping a gate on her gray pony with reckless grace. Bright, teasing, and impossible to resist, she banters her way into his company and draws him back to Abbey House, where old family history, rambling stables, loyal dogs, and country-house comfort frame her vivid, unruly charm. Inside the Tempest household, Vixen's lov...

Francis Tredethlyn begins the book as a private soldier and servant to a languid young ensign at the Port Arthur convict settlement in Tasmania; the rest follows the soldier and his officer home to England, where the clod turns out to be the better man. Braddon wrote three novels a year for decades and this is the machinery running smoothly.

A wronged heir, a stolen fortune and a woman who will not stop until the truth is out - Braddon in her sensation-novel manner, written at the rate of two or three books a year.

A young wife in a Cornish valley is drawn into a friendship her husband has forbidden, and a death follows that the coroner explains too easily. Mary Braddon wrote eighty novels after "Lady Audley's Secret" and never lost the sensation writer's grip on a secret. The river and the tides do a good deal of the plotting.