Step deeper into the shadows with a haunting collection of classic supernatural fiction. The Book of Shadows Vol. 2 brings together eerie and atmospheric stories by Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells, Robert W. Chambers, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Arthur Machen, Mary Webb, John Buchan, William Fryer Harvey, and Sir Hugh Walpole. This diverse anthology explores the unsettling territory between the familiar and the unknown. Its stories feature ghosts, haunted locations, mysterious occurrences, supernatu...

Precious Bane was written by Mary Webb and first published in 1924. Narrated by the central character Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives her inner beauty but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and only one man can save her and take her away to the happiness she believes she can never possess because of her harelip. A forgotten classic set in rural Shropshire at the turn of the 19th c...

Hazel Woodus lives with her father, a coffin-maker and beekeeper, on a Shropshire hill, keeps a tame fox, and is wanted by two men — a minister and the master of the hunt. Webb wrote Shropshire as she saw it, while Graves' disease disfigured her; she died at forty-six almost unread, and was famous six months later when the Prime Minister praised her in a speech. The fox is not a symbol.

Mary Gladys Meredith was born on 25th March 1881 at Leighton Lodge in the village of Leighton, near Shrewsbury in Shropshire.Mary was home-schooled by her father before being sent to a finishing school in Southport in 1895. Her longs walks in the countryside helped her develop a heightened sense of observation and description, of both people and places, which later infused both her poetry and prose.When she was 20 she developed symptoms of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorde...

Mary Gladys Meredith was born on 25th March 1881 at Leighton Lodge in the village of Leighton, near Shrewsbury in Shropshire.Mary was home-schooled by her father before being sent to a finishing school in Southport in 1895. Her longs walks in the countryside helped her develop a heightened sense of observation and description, of both people and places, which later infused both her poetry and prose.When she was 20 she developed symptoms of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorde...

This is the story of us all at Sarn, of Mother and Gideon and me, and Jancis, and Wizard Beguildy, and the two or three other folk that lived in those parts, that I did set out to tell. There were but a few, and maybe always will be, for there’s a discouragement about the place. It may be the water lapping, year in and year out—everywhere you look and listen, water; or the big trees waiting and considering on your right hand and on your left; or the unbreathing quiet of the place, as if it...

A vivid, emotional stage version of Mary Webb's novel of rural passion, premiered by Shared Experience Theatre Company.Incorporating traditional dances and folk songs, Gone to Earth tells the story of Hazel, an innocent and free-spirited seventeen-year-old child of nature living in rural Shropshire. But when both the wicked squire and the altruistic minister fall in love with her, she is drawn into a world of earthly passions which threatens to destroy her – as simply and ...

At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Deborah Arden is living with her father John, mother Patty and younger brother Joe in their cottage high up on the exposed moorland hilltops of Shropshire. Their farm is given over to the sheep her father cares for with great tenderness. Their life is simple and their concerns are those of the people of the land. Nature rules their world, and they respond by working alongside its almost unanswerable power on the farm. Patty's argumentative pr...

The arrival of Ralph Elmer at the "Mermaid's Rest" disrupts the quiet love between eighteen-year-old farmer's daughter Gillian Lovekin and Robert Rideout, her father's shepherd.

The interwar English novelist and poet Mary Webb is best known for her masterpiece ‘Precious Bane’ and for her lyrical style, conveying a rich and intense impression of her beloved Shropshire countryside home. Though in her lifetime her novels suffered neglect, a reappraisal of her work after her early death has drawn comparisons with the works of Thomas Hardy, sharing a love of nature and a sense of impending doom. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Webb...

A collection of tender meditations on the restorative power of nature, Mary Webb’s beautiful poems and lyrical essays were written from a place of profound love for the English countryside.“That is Mary Webb—one who had discovered ‘the core of sweetness in much bitter’—and while her poetry and prose reflect life’s tragedy, the light of a thankful heart shines forth.”Composed during a period of personal convalescence, this collection of evocative po...

"Some Spirits Return Not for Rest, but for Reckoning." The journey into the twilight world of S. Baring-Gould continues. In this second volume of his celebrated supernatural works, the master of the Victorian "weird tale" delves even deeper into the shadows of the English countryside. These are stories for the dead of winter—narratives where the past is a living, breathing entity that refuses to stay buried beneath the floorboards of history. The Architect of Atmospheric Terror: Baring-Gou...