Publisher's Synopsis
Most famous as a children's book writer who influenced J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, and P.L. Travers, Edith Nesbit has a second, darker reputation as the writer of some of the English language's most powerful supernatural horror. Nesbit's writing is absolutely crisp, evocative, and touching, and her legacy as both a children's writer and a master of horror is well deserved, if not far overdue. The stories in this book can best be described as raw - emotionally wringing, cruel, and richly ironic - but they are at times very tender, even in the harshest of her stories. While her worldview is largely cynical - at times even Lovecraftian - there is no doubt that at the core of her horror beats a heart - tremendously bruised, horribly misused, and shamefully denied a voice. But Nesbit's tales give voice to that heart, and its fleshy beat can be detected in an intensely intimate manner. Her stories are rife with predatory statues, demon lovers, ghostly sex, supernatural tragedies, unstoppable premonitions, haunted cars, weird tales, dark science fiction, haunted paintings, blood-sucking plants, maddening wax museum sleep overs, gothic farces, mad scientists, and brilliant, literary ghost stories that rival Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Charles Dickens. So as you turn this page and step into Nesbit's universe, anticipate a world of painful loss, anticipate a world of emotional vulnerability, and anticipate a world of hate, jealousy, love, affection, anxiety, guilt, and fragile hope - anticipate a world of terror and dread, of sex, violence, anticipate a world of supernatural aggression, predatory spirits, and intimate horror - anticipate the world of Edith Nesbit.TALES INCLUDED in this ANNOTATED EDITION: Man-Size in Marble The Ebony Frame John Charrington's Wedding Uncle Abraham's Romance From the Dead The Shadow The Mystery of the Semi-Detached The Mass for the Dead The Head The House of Silence The Power of Darkness In the Dark The Violet Car The Haunted Inheritance Number 17 The Third Drug The Five Senses The Pavilion The Haunted House
