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Forthcoming titles

(Book titles are subject to change)

A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

and many others

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Richard Marsh: Volume 3

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The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Richard Marsh: Volume 3
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Richard Marsh
Date Published: 2012/04
Page Count: 552
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-849-1
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-848-4

The third volume of a unique collection of bizarre tales from a master of the genre

Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of British born author Richard Bernard Heldman (1857-1916). His most famous work of supernatural fiction, The Beetle, was published in 1897, the same year as Bram Stoker’s tale of the vampire Count Dracula, and it is believed that initially Marsh’s book, which also features a bizarre and sinister figure capable of ‘shape shifting,’ was even more popular with readers than Stoker’s. Today Marsh’s book is still widely regarded as a classic of its genre. Although a prolific author who wrote in a number of genres including adventure fiction under his real name, Marsh is principally remembered as a writer of supernatural thrillers and his output in this field was prodigious. Most aficionados of the genre have heard of The Beetle, but this special Leonaur collection of the author’s excursions into the other worldly and strange extends to six satisfyingly substantial volumes containing many tales that will be unfamiliar to modern readers.
In volume three readers will find two novels, A Second Coming and A Duel, one novelette, ‘The Strange Occurrences in Canterstone Jail,’ and three short stories of the strange and unusual.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

At first she stood trembling, so that one might almost have expected to see her sink to the ground from sheer inability to stand. She stretched out her arms into the darkness, as if seeking for support, and found none. Then, putting her hands up to her face, she began to rub them up and down before her eyes, as if endeavouring to rub away some film which obscured her sight, and she began to cry, softly, beneath her breath. Then, dropping her hands to her sides, she began to see the things which were not, those visions which, in some form, are the inseparable companions of a mind diseased.<br>
“I am coming!—I heard you!—you need not call so loud!”<br>
The words were uttered not loudly, but with such clearness of intonation that, proceeding from her as she stood there all alone in the outer darkness, and addressed apparently to the circumambient air, they might have produced on unintentional listeners not an agreeable effect. She turned, making as if to insert the key which she still held into the lock of the door behind her, to find that the door already stood wide open, and that in the hall beyond there was a faint light which was just sufficient to render objects visible.<br>
In her normal condition the fact that the door had seemingly opened of its own accord would have occasioned her something more than wonder; she would at least have taken it for granted that somewhere in its immediate neighbourhood were helping hands; and she would promptly have set herself to discover to whom they belonged, and just where their owners might be found. In her then state no notion of the kind seemed to enter her brain. That the fact that the door was open occasioned her surprise was obvious; but it was surprise of a singular quality, and it was accompanied by abject terror. The woman seemed all at once to become stunted, to shrink into sheer physical insignificance.<br>
“Cuthbert Grahame,” she muttered, “why did you open the door? How did you get out of your bed to open the door?” With a sound which was part wail, part sob, she stumbled across the threshold into the hall. “Where shall I go? Shall I go into the room into which I first went on that first night? Perhaps I’ll be safe in there—perhaps I’ll be safe. I don’t want to go upstairs—not yet—not just yet. I daren’t—I daren’t. Listen! how he calls to me—how he calls.”<br>
She glanced up the staircase, which she approached even while she shrank from it, and she saw, in the dim, mysterious light, leaning over the banister, looking down at her from above, a woman’s face—Nannie Foreshaw. She did not stop to ask herself if the appearance might by any chance be real, a creature of warm flesh and blood. It was some moments before she realised who it was that looked at her. When she did, the presence there was so unexpected, so wholly unforeseen, and thrust so deeply at her conscience, that it is not impossible that the mere shock which resulted from the sight was sufficient to disintegrate her few remaining wits. She at once took it for granted that she was gazing at a spectre, a shade returned from the tomb to afflict her before her time. Cowering back against the wall, she broke into screams of agony.<br>
“Nannie! Nannie!—I didn’t kill you!—I didn’t kill you! Don’t look at me like that!—don’t! don’t! don’t!” Covering her face with her hands, she began to sob with such violence that one could see her shaking as she leaned against the wall. When, removing her hands, she again ventured to look up, there was no one there. “She’s gone! she’s gone!”<br>
The words were uttered with a gasp of relief which it was not pleasant to hear. For a moment it seemed as if she might be restored to something like her proper self. Then, while she seemed to waver, without apparent rhyme or reason, all her tremors returned. Again she broke into shrieks and cries.
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