Anita Desai

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Stella Gibbons

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous 'rackman'. He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit...

Starlight

Erin Morgenstern

A beautiful hardback edition of the modern fantasy classic, from the bestselling author of The Starless Sea. 
 
'The only response to this novel is simply: wow. It is a breathtaking feat of imagination, a flight of fancy that pulls you in and wraps you up in its spell' The Times 
 
The circus arrives without warning. 
 
It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon an iron gates reads: 
 
Opens at Nightfall 
Closes at Dawn 
 
Full of breath-taking amazements, Le Cirque des Rêves seems to cast a spell over all who wander its circular paths. But behind the glittering acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists a fierce competition is underway. 
 
Celia and Marco are two young magicians in the Circus, who have been trained since childhood for a deadly duel. With the lives of everyone at the Circus of Dreams at stake, they must test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love. 
 
The circus is open. 
Get ready to enter the fantastical world of the Night Circus. 
 
'Lush, evocative, dreamlike...a magical, coming-of-age story' Sunday Times 
 
'A beguiling, gripping read... Morgenstern has crafted a thrilling and transporting tale' Economist 
 
Vintage Quarterbound Classics: Bound to be beautiful

The Night Circus

Vintage Quarterbound Classics

Marlen Haushofer

Claustrophobic and shattering, this is the story of one ordinary woman unable to save a teenager in her care. It is the story of Stella... 
 
Stella is a friend's nineteen-year-old daughter who has come to live with Anna and her family. Unloved and neglected, Stella's presence disturbs the already tense and tumultuous household. She lodges uncomfortably in their lives, whilst Anna struggles to bring warmth and welcome to the home. Her son continues to be gloomy and her daughter oblivious. Meanwhile Richard, Anna's adulterous husband, pretends not to notice Stella at all… 
 
Marlen Haushofer, author of The Wall, is the undisputed mistress of sustained dread and this gripping short novel deserves to be rediscovered. 
 
TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE 
 
'This potent 1958 novella from Austrian writer Haushofer takes the form of a mother’s agitated confession... This one hits hard' Publisher's Weekly 
 
'Chillingly unillusioned... A fable about the habitual moral inertia of educated people' London Review of Books 
 
‘Haushofer is a rather terrifying writer… Killing Stella limns a world of guilty secrets and repressions’ New Yorker

Killing Stella

W. Somerset Maugham

Set in the bohemian café society of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, Maugham's exploration of hypnotism and the occult was inspired by the sinister black magician Aleister Crowley. At the start of this compulsive gothic horror story, Arthur and his beautiful, innocent fiancée Margaret look forward to an idyllic life together, until they encounter the mesmerising and repulsive Oliver Haddo...

The Magician

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors.

The original feminist horror story, about a woman driven to the brink - and beyond. 
 
In the throes of a ‘temporary nervous depression’ following childbirth, a woman is brought by her physician husband to recuperate in an isolated New England mansion. 
 
There she is barred from her work of writing and encouraged to simply get better. Sequestered in the old nursery at the top of the house, with barred windows and a bed nailed to the floor, she has little to do but examine the strange wallpaper that surrounds her – and appears to shift before her very eyes. 
 
Here accompanied by Gilman’s key wider stories, The Yellow Wall-Paper endures as a groundbreaking, deeply disturbing classic of feminist horror. 
 
'A great work of literature, the product of a questing, burning intellect' Maggie O’Farrell 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Yellow Wall-Paper

Intan Paramaditha

In this dazzling debut story collection from celebrated Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha, fairytale, taboo, lust and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix. 
 
A black velvet butterfly darts out of a cave. Menstrual blood pools in the backseat of a car. Rats pour forth from an open doorway. 
 
These stories set in the Indonesian everyday – in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Melding horror and myth, this is subversive feminist fiction at its finest, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave. 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Apple and Knife

Georges Perec

Anton Vowl is missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any hint as to his location and, insidiously, a ghost, from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow. This virtuoso story, chock-full of plots and subplots, shows the skill of both author and translator who impart all the action without a crucial grammatical prop: the letter 'e'.

A Void

Jewelle Gomez

In this radically reimagined vampire myth, the night hides many things... 
 
Louisiana, 1850. A young girl escapes slavery and is taken in by two mysterious women. 
 
Rumoured to be witches, the pair travel only at night, dress in men's clothing and seem to know others' innermost thoughts. But the girl sees the promise of true freedom in their dark glittering eyes: the promise to 'share the blood' and live forever. They name her Gilda. 
 
Over the next two hundred years, Gilda moves through unseen spaces: through antebellum brothels, hair salons and jazz clubs, searching for a way to exist in the world. But can Gilda truly outrun the darkness of history and face a future where the lives of everyone she loves are at stake? 
 
'A groundbreaking work of Afrofuturism before the term was even coined' Guardian 
 
'A lush, exciting, inspiring read' Sarah Waters 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Gilda Stories

Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife, invites you to creep through haunted houses and commune with the undead in this anthology of all things ghostly. 
 
 
Haunted houses, spectral chills, and of course, the odd cat. . . 
 
In this volume, Audrey Niffenegger has brought together her selection of the very creepiest, weirdest and wittiest ghost stories around. 
 
Scare yourself silly with old favourites by Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James. Entertain the unnerving with tales from Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link and Audrey Niffenegger herself. And as bedtime nears, allay your fears with funny new writing from Amy Giacalone and the classic wit of Saki. 
 
 
When the nights draw in and the fire burns low, enjoy the eeriness, the dread and the comedy of all things ghostly.

Ghostly

A Collection of Ghost Stories

John Fowles

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EVIE WYLD 
 
'There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller' New York Times 
 
Weird, withdrawn, and unloved, Fred is a young collector of butterflies. One day his eye alights on a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda, and an obsession starts to form. So when Fred wins some money he decides to use the money to compensate for his unfair start and to get what he really wants - Miranda. If she could only get to know him she might start to love him. And so with the meticulous attention to detail of an experienced collector he calmly plans her abduction.

The Collector

Ottessa Moshfegh

Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. 
 
While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods near her home, Vesta comes across a chilling handwritten note. 
 
Shaky even on her best days, Vesta is also alone, and new to the area, having moved here after the death of her husband. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession: who was Magda and how did she meet her fate? 
 
From the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen comes this razor-sharp, chilling and darkly hilarious novel about the stories we tell ourselves and how we strive to obscure the truth. 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in. 
 
PRAISE FOR DEATH IN HER HANDS: 
 
'This is a story about what might happen when a woman takes charge' The Times 
'Routinely hailed as one of the most exciting young American authors working today' Guardian 
'A new kind of murder mystery' New Yorker 
'A fine line between shocking realism and the absurd' New Statesman 
'A brilliant off-kilter detective story' Evening Standard 
'A beautiful novel' Sunday Times 
'Dark, devious' Observer

Death in Her Hands

Henry James

*The inspiration behind Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor* 
 
Discover Henry James's most famous and terrifying story in an edition which also includes a unique selection of his best loved ghost stories. 
 
 A young governess is sent to a great country house to care for two orphaned children. To begin with Flora and Miles seem to be model pupils but gradually the governess starts to suspect that something is very wrong with them. As she sets out to uncover the corrupt secrets of the house she becomes more and more convinced that something evil is watching her. 
 
'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar Wilde

The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories

The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, The Friends of the Friends and The Jolly Corner

E F Benson

Sherlock star Mark Gatiss selects and introduces chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story - E.F. Benson. 
 
There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy Tube platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden, inexplicable chill. There's no need for a ticking clock, a limping footstep, or a knock at the door to start you trembling. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all.

Ghost Stories

Selected and Introduced by Mark Gatiss

Edgar Allan Poe

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES 
Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. 
 
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer of uncommon talent; in The Murders in the Rue Morgue he created the genre of detective fiction while his genius for finding the strangeness lurking within us all has been an influence on everyone from Freud to Hollywood. This complete collection of all his short stories and novellas contains well-known tales 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart' alongside hidden gems that both unsettle and enthrall the reader.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Selected Stories

Oscar Wilde

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Oscar Wilde's decadent and disturbing novel of youth, beauty and corruption, complete with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt lifestyle and untouched by age. But up in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his portrait tells a different story... 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilkie Collins

An enjoyable 19th century read following doomed happenings and grisly, secret premonitions. 
 
 An eminent doctor is visited by a desperate woman with a question: am I evil, or insane? 
 
When the letters from Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered. 
 
In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies. 
 
How are these little mysteries connected? Spend the night in Room 14 of Venice’s finest hotel, and find out the truth – if you dare… 
 
INCLUDES THE GHOST STORY ‘THE DREAM WOMAN’

The Haunted Hotel

Lisa Tuttle

Deeply unnerving and utterly original - the book you will need to talk about. 
 
A writer decides to write her next book about a female author and artist unjustly forgotten by history. But what starts as an exciting research project rapidly unravels towards breakdown and horror. 
 
The subject is to be Helen Ralston, an early twentieth-century author who has been systematically written out of history. The narrator sets about investigating her story as an artist, writer and muse to a much more famous man. Amazingly Ralston turns out to be still alive, and although elderly and frail a series of interviews begin. But a tale about the historic erasure of female voices starts to break down into something even more sinister, bizarre and all-consuming as the narrator uncovers unnerving parallels between Ralston's story and her own... 
 
‘Short, uncanny provocative’ Lauren Elkin, New York Times 
 
‘A slippery, endlessly unpackable novella’ Daily Mail

My Death

Robert Louis Stevenson

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's dark, suspenseful work of genius about the good and bad within us all, complete with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Dr Jekyll has been experimenting with his identity. He has developed a drug which separates the two sides of his nature and allows him occasionally to abandon himself to his most corrupt inclinations as the monstrous Mr Hyde. But gradually he begins to find that the journey back to goodness becomes more and more difficult, and the risk that Mr Hyde will break free entirely from Dr Jekyll's control puts all of London in grave peril. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories

Colson Whitehead

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES 
Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. 
 
From the author of the Man Booker longlisted The Underground Railroad 
 
A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. The worst of the plague is now past, and Manhattan is slowly being resettled. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka 'Zone One' and teams of civilian volunteers are clearing out the remaining infected 'stragglers'. 
 
Mark Spitz is a member of one of these taskforces and over three surreal days he undertakes the mundane mission of malfunctioning zombie removal, the rigours of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and attempting to come to terms with a fallen world. 
 
But then things start to go terribly wrong... 
 
'A dark futuristic satire laced with fiendish humour' The Times

Zone One

Gaston Leroux

Discover the classic Gothic horror novel of haunted cellars, opera, murder and unrequited love that inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running west end hit. 
 
Christine is a beautiful young singer at the Paris Opera. She is watched by the Opera's 'phantom' - a mysterious masked figure who terrorises the Opera's management and players. With the Phantom's help, Christine rises to become the Opera's star performer, but when the Phantom demands her heart in return, Christine is torn between gratitude and pity for her strange benefactor, and love for her childhood sweetheart, Raoul.

The Phantom of the Opera

Bram Stoker

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Bram Stoker's terrifying gothic novel, the book that invented the world's most famous vampire, complete with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
A young lawyer on an assignment finds himself imprisoned in a Transylvanian castle by his mysterious host. Back at home his fiancée and friends are menaced by a malevolent force which seems intent on imposing suffering and destruction. Can the devil really have arrived on England's shores? And what is it that he hungers for so desperately? 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

Dracula

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Poe's most macabre and irresistible stories with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Edgar Allan Poe's stories uncover the deeply unnerving strangeness lurking within us all. His genius for horror and suspense went on to influence the world, from Freud to Hollywood. This complete collection of his best short stories contains the well-known works 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart' alongside a wide range of delightfully terrifying tales to unsettle and enthrall. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories

Kingsley Amis

Like all good coaching inns, The Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers. All while the skeletons in Allington's own cupboard rattle to get out.

The Green Man

Susan Hill

A beautiful hardback edition of the famously terrifying ghost story, The Woman in Black, together with four other spine-chilling tales in one beautiful volume. 
 
Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House. The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose. 
 
This illustrated edition includes four of Susan Hill's scariest ghost stories: Dolly, The Man in the Picture, Printer's Devil Court and The Small Hand. 
 
'Heartstoppingly chilling' Daily Express 
 
'No one chills the heart like Susan Hill' Daily Telegraph 
 
VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful 
 
Illustrated by Nick Tankard

The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories

A special edition of the classic gothic novel

M. R. James

A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A bed that hasn’t been slept in is crumpled and distressed come the morning. A skeletal figure creeps closer and closer to the house where an unsuspecting family lie sleeping. In these chilling tales of the supernatural, M. R. James proves he truly is the master of the ghost story. 
 
Selected from the book Ghost Stories by M.R. James 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
Drinking by John Cheever 
Summer by Laurie Lee 
Friendship by Rose Tremain 
Love by Jeanette Winterson

Ghosts

Mary Shelley

A beautiful new edition of Mary Shelley's Gothic horror classic, Frankenstein 
 
INCLUDES A CULTURAL HISTORY OF FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER BY JEANETTE WINTERSON 
 
Navigating the Arctic, the captain of a ship rescues a man wandering near death across the ice caps. How the man got there reveals itself a story of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein pushed moral boundaries in order to cross the final frontier and create life. But his creation is a monster stitched together from grave-plundered body parts who has no place in the world, and his existence can only lead to tragedy. 
 
**One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Frankenstein

Mikhail Bulgakov

in Bulgakov's allegorical masterpiece of Stalin&rsquo;s regime the devil is making a personal appearance in Moscow. 
 
He is accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order are in disarray. Only the Master, a writer and a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil&rsquo;s onslaught. 
 
&lsquo;Stunning, superb...Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest&rsquo; Independent 
 
&lsquo;A masterpiece &ndash; a classic of twentieth-century fiction&rsquo; New York Times 
 
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL GLENNY, INTRODUCED BY WILL SELF

The Master and Margarita

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's ghost stories whisper of passion, exile, and the things we cannot forget 
 
From bleak New England farms to glittering drawing rooms, Wharton summons hauntings that speak less of horror than of human yearning. This collection includes some of her most powerful supernatural tales, written with elegance and chill. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Bewitched

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, the story of the inventor who unleashed a monster, with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Navigating the Arctic, the captain of a ship rescues a man wandering near death across the ice caps. How the man got there reveals itself in a story of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein pushed moral boundaries in order to cross the final frontier and create life. But his creation is a monster stitched together from grave-plundered body parts who has no place in the world, and his existence can only lead to tragedy. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

A bad thing about dying is that I'm starting to feel as though I'm being erased. 
 
When Elspeth Noblin dies she leaves her beautiful flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina Poole, on the condition that their mother is never allowed to cross the threshold. But until the solicitor's letter falls through the door of their suburban American home, either Julia nor Valentina knew their aunt existed. 
 
The twins hope that in London their own, separate, lives can finally begin but they have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them and works in the cemetery itself. 
 
As the twins unravel the secrets of their aunt, who doesn't seem quite ready to leave her flat, even after death, Niffenegger weaves together a delicious and deadly ghost story about love, loss and identity. 
 
'A ghostly love story and a lovely ghost story' - Tatler 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Her Fearful Symmetry

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Here, from Anita Desai to Salman Rushdie, are five books about families, India, marriage and the rest, to keep you going as the series moves on.

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