Sphere Books

‘’Tuppence for a bag of salt, tuppence for a bag of pins. Tuppence for a dead man’s hand, tuppence and I’ll eat thy sins.’’

Well, I thought I would finish this collection within three days but work and life in general got in the way. This was for the better since I had the chance to truly savour each story, to fully experience the darkness and the eerie silence of each tale. As February ends and the nights get shorter and shorter, this beautiful volume seems only appropriate for show more me to bid goodbye to an excellent winter (reading-wise, mind you…)

Mainly set during the days leading to Christmas, in a variety of places and eras, these stories will transport you to haunted mansions and theatres, to wuthering moors and threatening marshes, to foreboding churches and graveyards. Spirits that seek justice and mortals that seek wealth or validation will lead you to a wintery world where the holly and the ivy bear blood and not white blossoms…

Host (Kiran Millwood Hargrave): An affluent couple wants to communicate with the spirit of their daughter. They obey the medium’s wishes, but their despair will cause all Hell to break loose. There’s been a plethora of medium stories lately, but this one is quite unusual, and atmospheric.

Inferno (Laura Shepherd-Robinson): A man who tries to escape from the sins he has committed, finds refuge in a strange villa in Lake Garda, inhabited by an enchanting young woman and an elderly servant. The end will shock you and the story itself is a masterpiece of twists and psychological terror.

‘’All the children in town knew the story of the Old Play, even if they’d never seen it. Parents would tell it to them at bedtime. Everyone knew the plot - how the beautiful Maiden Queen was bewitched by the Tuppenny Hag and put to sleep in the faraway world. How the Tuppenny Hag tempted the Beggar to take the Maiden Queen’s golden locker, which he did so as to feed his starving family. How the Greenwood Folk offered to guide him out of the forest but led him to the Magistrate instead, who pronounced him a sentence of death.’’

The Old Play (Andrew Michael Hurley): Oh, my God, what a story! An actor, who has a few demons to fight, prepares for the annual performance of a strange Christmas play. However, tonight’s show is special…I’ve always thought there is something eerie when it comes to the backstage energy and the preparation of a play and here this aura of uneasiness and nervousness is communicated to perfection. One of the most unique stories I’ve ever read.

‘’Nobody should be in the attic. Nobody should be sewing on the machine. It simply cannot be. And yet it rumbles on. Outside the wind is blundering about the house, and the sea on my horizon is roaring, but still the rattle of the sewing machine penetrates it all, persistent, accusatory, until I press the pillow over my head to block it out, and still the noise comes and comes. Even when I take the laudanum I keep at my bedside the rhythm penetrates its fog: ‘It’s me,’ it seems to purr. ‘It’s me, it’s me, it’s me.’’

A Double Thread (Imogen Hermes Gowar): A selfish woman has moved to Penzance, haunted by a family scandal. Her one concern is the outstanding silk gown she wants to prepare for Christmas. Her new seamstress is impeccable but even that is not enough for such an entitled, spoiled human being. Even though the ending may seem predictable, Imogen Hermes Gowar creates an eerie story and a protagonist that is insufferable, yet fascinating.

The Salt Miracles (Natasha Pulley): A priest travels to the remote island of St Hilda in Scotland to investigate a series of strange occurrences, characterised as ‘miracles’.
This story had so much potential. Had a truly talented writer written this tale, it would have been a masterpiece. But now? I feel that Natasha Pulley needs to stop treating every theme as material for readers who only read idiotic YA ‘books’. How she teaches Creative Writing is utterly beyond me. The story is supposedly set in the era of Arthur Conan Doyle and the language is like a composition of a 10-year-old pupil. Or perhaps, even worse. Her incompetence turned an eerie folk tale into a pitiful comedy…

Banished (Elizabeth Macneal): A healer is summoned by a powerful man to exorcize the troubling ghost of his wife. The woman doesn’t know that she has stepped into the heart of a terrible case of injustice, cruelty and revenge. A remarkable story set in Edinburgh during the 1700s based on a true incident.

The Gargoyle (Bridget Collins): Jesus, what a story! Do you know the feeling when you watch a really good horror film and you just know there is something worrying even though the frame only shows thick darkness and nothing else? That’s how effective this story is. You’ll walk through the eerie graveyard, and you’ll listen to the rain on the window and you’ll smell old house decay, while you’re sympathizing with the writer who tries to exorcize her demons through her work.

The Master of the House (Stuart Turton): I’m sorry but if I were Thomas, I’d choose to flee with the Devil too! Set in 1901, this rather unusual, yet no less terrifying story, is a mad mix of A Christmas Carol and The Omen, forming a hallucinatory Gothic fantasy.

‘’She dances with it out across the lawn, down the slope, loving the cold air on her face and the crunch underfoot. Only her footprints in this bright frozen world. She misses a catch and the ball rolls down the path and under the gate. The girl gives chase. Ignoring the calls of the nanny, the gardener, she bolts through the gate and out into the wide-open space of the marshland, benign under the sun-dazzled sky. A place of wading birds, waving reeds, low hillocks, rushes rustling, greedy pools, sucking earth, the closing of the day, hot panic, missed footing, the winter moon, dead calm.’’

Ada Lark (Jess Kidd): Written in Jess Kidd’s signature present tense style, this is the haunting story of a gifted child and a trap in the form of a seance. But spirits and children have a mind of their own…

‘’But I get stronger with each of your deceptions. And you get thinner and thinner. Soon there will be nothing of you left.’’

Jenkin (Catriona Ward): How would you like to be haunted by a strange cat-like creature which would appear when you behave in a ‘dishonest’ way? An outstanding story, full of twists and true pain that you simply HAVE TO read.

‘’Widow’s Walk. The townsfolk called it this on account of the churchyard on the other side of the hedge, where, buried in a line spanning the length of it, were the graves of unfortunate women who had lost their lives in some unhappy way, each and every one of them a widow.’’

Widow’s Walk (Susan Stokes-Chapman): A French woman, who has followed her husband to England, is now alone. Struggling with the aftermath of this loss, her only consolation is her art, her beautiful fans, beloved by the high society of the city. But when she comes home every night, a dark presence is lurking in the shadows of her chamber, and someone is following her, night after night, as she passes through Widow’s Walk.
Although I was able to suspect the route the story would take, the closure was no less shocking. A darkly beautiful, haunting Christmas tale.

Carol of the Bells and Chains (Laura Purcell): It’s no wonder that in a collection full of excellent stories, Laura Purcell’s tale is the jewel in the crown. She takes a governess (whose life seems to be filled with secrets), troublesome children and the terrifying legend of Krampus and creates a quintessentially British masterpiece.

I was amazed to read a reviewer’s opinion that stated how ‘’similar these stories felt’. Are we even serious? Excuse me. Having read most novels by the writers whose stories grace this collection, I can assure you that their distinctive voices can be heard loud and clear. Unless you read smut and YA in which case this volume is not for your little minds.

Keep these exceptional collections coming, please. They are Christmas presents in print.

‘’It was a blessed sight that greeted me: fires blazing in the hearts, a plate of steaming mince pies, so hot that I scalded my mouth. Garlands were slung from the picture rails, in great big bushels - holy and ivy for eternal life, the berries for Jesus’ shed blood - and the air was thick with the scent of ground cloves and ginger.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com show less

‘’If you’re awake and wanting something with all your heart - what if, late at night, something hears, and answers - ?’’

The third volume, following The Haunting Season and The Winter Spirits, is no less exciting or haunting. In fact, I found it to be the darkest of the three, death and loss at the heart of every story. Definitely not a light read, but who cares about light reads, anyway? Right?

‘’What a gift life is, and how cheaply I have held it.’’

The Doll’s House show more (Elizabeth Macneal): Verity is given a special gift by her father before he departs on an expedition. A dollhouse that is a replica of their own residence and a tiny notebook. Soon, Verity begins to feel that something strange is happening with her father’s gift; he seems to have found a way to communicate with her. But the poor child is trapped between a weakling of a mother and a tyrannical governess…

Macneal has created a story that M.R. James would be proud of. A tale that froze my heart. In the end, the greatest terror is the absence of your beloved father…

‘’I was trying to summon the ghost. This is the best hour to do it. The witching hour.’’

The Second Witness (Laura Shepherd - Robinson): Two opposite personalities are required to investigate a suspicious death and a potential haunting. Barnard, a staunch believer in science who vehemently denies the existence of the supernatural, and Amelia, who solves murders by contacting the Other Side. Set in the 1780s, this story reads like a fast-paced thriller. The ending? My Lord! It will leave you…haunted.

‘’It’s funny, isn’t it, how the days when everything changes are the most ordinary of all.’’

23 Bridge Street (Stacey Halls): Nelly loses her best friend overnight. The house is empty; Winnie had to leave in a hurry, and Nelly has been left behind, wondering why everyone seems to know what happened yet is unwilling to tell her. Least of all, her parents. The problem is that the family can hear weeping sounds from the empty house next door, and the gramophone keeps playing and playing…An atmospheric story that keeps you guessing.

‘’I mean, I’ve kept the house dark and cold, just as the others seem to like it,’ he said. ‘But she hasn’t come.’’

The Bugle and the Drum (Andrew Michael Hurley): A young man meets a very interesting toymaker and sees potential for a successful investment. But a visit to his house, welcomed by the toymaker’s children in the most peculiar of ways, will bring him within the heart of a story of loss, sorrow and a strange game between the living and the dead.

Extraordinary story, like the offspring of Angela Carter and Robert Aickman.

Two Go Together (Imogen Hermes Gowar): You can’t read a story that starts with a mother who has just lost her child without feeling that a thorny vine has wrapped around your heart. In a town in Massachusetts where people believe that one death must be followed by another, a coffin maker has to make the coffin for a little girl born out of wedlock.

Even though I saw the ‘twist’ clearly from the start, it was heartwrenching. Heartwrenching to watch the depth of the male hypocrisy that never ceases to amaze me, no matter how often I have experienced it in my life…

Some of you should have raised your sons better…

The Signal Bells (Natasha Pulley): A shepherdess in Wales ventures into a mine, the site of a local tragedy, to save a man in danger; the signal bells are her only hope.

I never liked Pulley’s stories but this one? Superb. You can feel the cold, the darkness, the suffocating scenery. A mine built over the Devil’s dwelling in a land already rich in myths, from Arthur to witches. Folk Horror, the dark side of Christmas, an astonishing ending…

‘’I do not think God is here.’’
Can there be more terrifying words?

A Midnight Visitor (Susan Stokes - Chapman): A fortune teller receives a midnight visitor, a strange woman with formidable features. Noelle is trying to make ends meet after a man betrayed her and is struggling to give her clients what they want. One more lie, one more false hope, a straw to grasp. But this visitor is different…The Tarot cards start narrating a story and Noelle doesn’t have to lie anymore…

The atmosphere and the sense of setting in this story are beyond description.

‘’Why do you wake me? Leave me to my dark blanket. Leave me to my black hollow.’’

An Artful Curse (Jess Kidd): Two formidable women - one of them considered a witch - are trying to find their missing friend. Her husband is the primary suspect, but perhaps they’ll need to look for her beyond this world. Set in Ireland, this is a tale of corruption and malice, rich in Irish superstitions and female rage.

An Age of Evil (Stuart Turton): A heinous crime was committed in 1932. A mother and her children were found murdered. Who had the cruelty to do such a horrible act? Why was the house they were found in considered unlucky? Cursed? On Christmas Day of all days?
A superb story told in transcripts, letters, texts. Extremely unique, written in Turton’s distinctive style.

Feast (Kiran Millwood Hargrave): This story uses a number of tropes within 30 pages. The boarding school, girls in adolescence, sapphic romance, sexual abuse, 30s vibes, pagan rituals.
Yes, I was exhausted too. I have found Millwood Hargrave’s writing difficult to resonate with my tastes as a reader. This one was an absolute failure as far as I am concerned.

The Terror By Night (Bridget Collins): A light calling out in the darkness…Isn’t that what we are looking for, especially during the early morning hours when we can’t sleep, when our thoughts become tyrants that return again to torment us, as Emily Brontë wrote? And when a kindred spirit is awake too, don’t we (almost violently) desire to reach out and share our loneliness? Our craving?

But sometimes we should not answer that call. It demands a price we may not be able to pay. In this excellent story, a member of the academic community receives a peculiar visitor who is afraid of something lurking in the darkness.

Dark Academia in all its glory in a tale that contains more layers than the ones found in an ordinary ghost story.

Macaw (Catriona Ward): No, definitely not. I don’t know what this story wanted to achieve, mixing familials, pagan customs of the countryside, traces of the Bluebeard tale, but the result was atrocious. Incoherent and boring, with ridiculous dialogue and a ridiculous parrot.

Dr Thrale’s Notebook (Michelle Paver): A complex story set in Svalbard, steeped in Lapland folklore. Too complex, in my opinion.

In all of the stories included in the collection, the real terror, the real horror doesn't come from the supernatural. It's not the ghosts and the darkness of the night. The actual danger comes from the land of the living and the darkness of the soul.
Husbands brutally punish their wives and mistresses, some mothers abandon their children while others have to experience the most excruciating pain imaginable. Spells, curses, souls that try to communicate from the Great Beyond.
An atmospheric collection with stories by the finest writers of the genre, a perfect company for the darkest nights.
‘’...they have a different language, the dead.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

In need of a break from the summer heat I delved in to The Haunting Season with it's cold, driving rain, drifting snow storms, and of course ghostly apparitions.
In my favorite stories I discovered a haunted wheel chair, met a new mother anxious to protect her child, a woman seeking shelter from her abusive husband, who finds help not from family but from an unexpected entity, and a recovering alcoholic who meets an influence much darker than the drink.

These chilling stories are a perfect show more way to welcome in the shorter days and colder nights. Not all of the spirits have evil intent, but even a well meaning warning of impending doom can be frightening when it comes from beyond the grave.

I would recommend it to all who enjoy a good old fashioned ghost story.

I received an advance copy for review. show less

‘’He stared down at the trees, feeling a kind of vertigo that was not quite fear. The unearthly light - the dark shapes against the moon-drenched sky - the clarity of outline, the density of the shadows…He felt the space contract, so that for a sickly second the chess pieces were both huge and small enough to fit in his hand. He shut his eyes, but it made him dizzy and he hastily opened them again. The shadows flickered against the pale glare of the moon, seeming to shift.’’

A show more Study in Black and White by Bridget Collins: A house with strange chess pieces of topiary is like a beacon of happiness to the chess aficionado of our story. But the house cannot welcome him. Pawns are moving, untouched, and an old leather armchair may not be as empty as it looks. A brilliant story in which sheer terror is revealed layer after layer, piece by piece…

‘’We arrived in the driving rain, a real rage of a storm that scared the horses. The night was black, and as water sluiced across the windows of the carriage I thought, ‘the flood has come to sweep us all away’, and pressed little Stanley closer to my bosom, but he was fast asleep and never noticed. It’s a judgment on me, I thought, but did not cry because if my father noticed at all, he would only remark, ‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’’’

Thwaite’s Tenant by Imogen Hermes Gowar: A young woman desperately tries to escape her cruel husband. When her own father accuses her of being unreasonable and traps her into staying in a dilapidated estate, Lucinda realises that the ghost of a wronged woman is her only escape. An atmospheric story with an extremely satisfactory closure.

The Eel Singers by Natasha Pulley: This is a story from Pulley’s Filigree Street universe into which I haven’t delved and judging by the awfully disjointed writing, I don’t think I ever will. Not even the marshes and the haunting songs could salvage this one, in my opinion. And spare us with the footnotes!

‘’Walter, dear,’ says a waspish voice, ‘I’ve had quite enough of being spectated at. How about you get on with bringing me back to life?’’

Lily Wilt by Jess Kidd: A young man, infatuated with an enchanting but quite dead girl, experiments with dark forces in his attempt to bring her back to life. Brilliant, chilling, sinister Gothic atmosphere created by Jess Kidd.

‘’The first sensation was a prickle upon her cheek. Then Evelyn became aware of her ears; ringing, stinging. Her limbs felt numb.
She seemed to be somewhere damp and bitterly cold. When she tried to move, pain shot through her leg and made her gasp. Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing…nothing. A great, colourless expanse.
Perhaps she had died. She was in purgatory, and the needles running down her spine were the payment for her sins.’’

The Chillingham Chair by Laura Purcell: A young woman is given a wheeling chair by her future brother-in-law. As she tries to recover from a strange accident, ignored and ridiculed by her cruel family, Evelyn unearths a dark, deadly secret that threatens her safety. Sublime storytelling and a lesson on How Laura Purcell Creates Wonders in Under 40 Pages…

The Hanging of the Greens by Andrew Micahel Hurley: In my humble opinion, this is one was horrible. It tried too hard, it achieved nothing. I can’t fathom the reason why this was included in the collection. All I know is that Hurley’s writing isn’t my cup of tea at all.

‘’This is the valley of thick forest, wild and brown and shadowed, like something from a fairytale.’’

Confinement by Kiran Millwood Hargrave: Outstanding! Simply outstanding! A young mother finds herself threatened by the vindictive spirit of a witch and her long days of confinement become even darker. Kiran Millwood Hargrave delivers a supremely haunting and poignant story about motherhood and the cold, cold winter.

‘’All of Britain, Victor thinks, is being exhumed.’’

Monster by Elizabeth Macneal: What better way to end a marvellous, eerie collection? In this striking story by Elizabeth Macneal, a selfish scientist (or so he’d like to call himself…) is on the hunt for a relic, the great discovery that will change his life. But the seaside community with its myths of selkies and the sing of the winds and the loathing towards cruel strangers will hive him what he truly deserves. A story that is both sensual and frightening.

A collection for long winter nights and dark deeds…

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less