James Skipp Borlase

Valancourt Books has published a volume of Victorian era ghost stories for several years. This is the fourth year that have enjoyed reading them. I have to say thought that this time I got the impression that they have selected some stories that would not have made the cut in previous years. This could be that they decided to stick with the works of just one author, Australian [author:James Skipp Borlase|14760959], rather than a collection of several different authors as they have in the show more past. Several of the stories had an eerily similar theme, that of a young and handsome suitor attempting to disrupt the forced marriage of a beautiful maiden to a villainous fat old rich guy. One or two stories along those lines would have been fine but after a while I began to wonder why Borlase was so obsessed about this subject.

As the author spent many years in Australia I thought that most of the stories would be set there but only one was, and that one, although excellent, was not a ghost story.

Bottom line: I enjoyed these stories, but not as much as I did the first three volumes of Victorian Christmas ghost stories that Valancourt has collected. I suspect that next Christmas I may read the copy of [book:The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 1|52490433], that is on my bookshelf instead. show less