Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English author, journalist and film critic famous for her supernatural stories. No Ships Pass is a strange tale of a shipwrecked sailor who manages to swim to a remote tropical island. He discovers, to his surprise, that he is not the first sailor to alight there. There are already four castaways ashore...and mysteriously some of them have been there for a very long time. Up to 140 years, in fact. Before long he realises that there is somethin...

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English writer, famous for her supernatural stories.'Mrs. Raeburn's Waxwork' is an eerie tale about Patrick Lamb, who takes a job as custodian of Mugivan's waxwork exhibition. In the part of the exhibition where all the murderers and freaks are displayed, there is one figure which fascinates him. It is the figure of Mrs. Raeburn, the poisoner.Every evening as it gets dark, the figure seems to be alive - its expressions change s...

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English author, journalist and film critic. Many of her books, including her extensive oeuvre of ghost stories, involve a circus or gypsy setting, based on her own research and her (unsubstantiated) belief that she had a Romany great grandmother.Satan's Circus is a creepy tale of a circus run by a sinister and manipulative couple, Carl and Lya Brandt. When a new circus hand, Anatole, joins the troupe in North Africa, he is assigned to ...

A rich and varied collection of classic short stories by British writers:'Quality' by John Galsworthy'The Mark on the Wall' by Virginia Woolf'The Horse Dealer’s Daughter' by D. H. Lawrence'The Ticking of the Clock' by Louisa Baldwin'The Fiddler of the Reels' by Thomas Hardy'The Return' by R. Murray Gilchrist'Kew Gardens' by Virginia Woolf'Seashore Macabre' by Hugh Walpole'Satan’s Circus' by Eleanor Smith'The Coffin Merc...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in England on the 7th August 1902 into a privileged family steeped in titles and politics.Part of her education was at Miss Douglas's school at Queen's Gate. Here she met and befriended several other young women that the British tabloid press would later call the ‘Bright Young Things’, a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.Smith's paternal great-grandmother, was said to have been a...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes.Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore them...

Let’s be clear. We are all equal under the law. However, even in these more modern times that is not an absolute and still remains a distant ambition for many.In the days when Britain ruled the waves and bestrode the world as its policeman and plunderer in chief it also subjugated half of its own people to second class status. Women were chattel and property. There were some exceptions based on wealth and birthright but for the overwhelming majority your lot was to fall in with the...

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in England on the 7th August 1902 into a privileged family steeped in titles and politics.Part of her education was at Miss Douglas's school at Queen's Gate. Here she met and befriended several other young women that the British tabloid press would later call the ‘Bright Young Things’, a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.Smith's paternal great-grandmother, was said to have been a...

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in England on the 7th August 1902 into a privileged family steeped in titles and politics.Part of her education was at Miss Douglas's school at Queen's Gate. Here she met and befriended several other young women that the British tabloid press would later call the ‘Bright Young Things’, a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.Smith's paternal great-grandmother, was said to have been a...

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in England on the 7th August 1902 into a privileged family steeped in titles and politics.Part of her education was at Miss Douglas's school at Queen's Gate. Here she met and befriended several other young women that the British tabloid press would later call the ‘Bright Young Things’, a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.Smith's paternal great-grandmother, was said to have been a...