Sign-In
Cart
Short Fiction
Paperback
Publisher Price: $37.95
Publisher: Lushena Books
Published: Nov 26 2025
Pages: 374
Weight: 1.28
Height: 1.02 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
M. R. James's short fiction consists of atmospheric, subtly terrifying ghost stories that helped define the modern English ghost tale. His works typically feature scholarly protagonists-antiquarians, historians, or academics-who stumble upon mysterious old objects, manuscripts, or ruins. These discoveries awaken malevolent supernatural forces that had been quietly waiting in the shadows.
James's stories rely less on overt horror and more on suggestion, slow-building dread, and vividly eerie imagery. Themes of forbidden knowledge, the dangers of curiosity, and the lingering presence of the past recur throughout. Famous stories like Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, Casting the Runes, and The Mezzotint showcase his signature style: meticulously detailed settings, antiquarian charm, and chilling, unforgettable encounters with the uncanny.
Overall, his short fiction blends scholarship with supernatural menace, creating ghost stories that feel intimate, intelligent, and disturbingly plausible.
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paperback