Rudyard Kipling wrote, “For the female of the species is more deadly than the male,” in his 1911 poem. It was not warriors or kings that need be feared, he suggested, but the women who worked in mischievous ways. Here editor Graeme Davis brings together ghostly horror stories penned by women from the long 19th century.
It’s amusing to look at my list and see how varied my it is: a Western, a copyediting book, French history, gothic fiction and more.
Alice James has jumped a cross-country train to escape from an unknown pursuer. Fighting off searing pain and feverish hallucinations, her Pullman porter insists she come to The Paragon Hotel to hide while she recuperates. This seems like a reasonable enough arrangement. But this is the 1920s, and Alice is white and The Paragon is only for blacks.
I’ve actually got a fair amount of time off work for this winter break and I’m so looking forward to some serious reading time. I’ll definitely be celebrating jolabokaflod as well. Here are some of the titles coming out this winter that I’ll be reading.
There is a contingent of readers and writers trying to bring back the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories around the fireplace. After all, A Christmas Carol is really a ghost story, and Christmas does fall during the darkest time of the year. And with the Icelandic tradition jolabokaflod taking hold here too, a good stack of ghastly reads is just the thing for the season.