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A fascinating and varied collection of 50 great classic short stories, including ghost stories, crimes, humorous tales and passionate romance.

A gripping collection of classic spy stories by some of the great early masters of espionage fiction: 'The Secret of the Black Bag' by William Le Queux, 'How I Became a Secret Agent' by Dr. A. K. Graves, 'The Secret of the Smoked Spectacles' by William Le Queux,'The 39 Steps' by John Buchan, 'Matahari and Some Other Women Spies' by Sir Basil Thomson, 'The Secret of Dr. Vaux’s Intrigue' by William Le Queux.

Robert Barr (1849-1912) was a Scottish-Canadian short story writer and novelist, born in Glasgow, Scotland. 'The Hour-Glass' is a mysterious ghost story. An avid antique collector buys an ancient and defective hourglass from a curiosity shop. When he takes it home and starts to examine it, he is startled by a strange visitor who claims to be the real owner of the hourglass. His story is a very bizarre one.

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English author, journalist and film critic. Many of her books, including her extensive oeuvre of ghost stories, involve a circus or gypsy setting, based on her own research and her (unsubstantiated) belief that she had a Romany great grandmother. Satan's Circus is a creepy tale of a circus run by a sinister and manipulative couple, Carl and Lya Brandt. When a new circus hand, Anatole, joins the troupe in North Africa, he is assigned to work with the menagerie.

Hector Hugh Munro, who wrote under the pseudonym "Saki" tells the tale of a modern werewolf. "There is a wild beast in your woods" observes the artist Cunningham to his friend van Cheele. It turns out that Cunningham is right. The next day, van Cheele finds a naked feral child in the woods, who speaks in a very disturbing way about eating flesh and hunting four-footed at night. Strangest of all is an uncanny remark about having eaten child's flesh recently.

'The Bowmen' is perhaps the most famous of Machen's tales. It is the iconic story of an incident from the First World War trenches. Faced with inevitable death and defeat, a battalion of English soldiers is saved by the mysterious and miraculous intervention of Saint George and a company of English bowmen who had last fought at Agincourt.

Poe's brilliant account of committing a perfect murder from within the paranoid brain of the murderer.

The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Never more so than in this collection of 30 weird and macabre tales.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842 - circa 1914) was an American author, journalist, short story writer and satirist who disappeared in 1913 under mysterious circumstances and was never seen again. "John Bartine's Watch" is the strange and terrifying tale of an evening guest who reacts with horror when his host asks him the time. But why is John Bartine so reluctant to look at his own watch?

A king on his deathbed is granted one hour after death in which he may return to his kingdom. If during that hour, he finds three people who would wish him alive again, then he can indeed come back to life. The hour is spent learning some hard truths, uncovering false friends and finding surprising support where he least expects it. The ending includes a bitter twist.

'The Green Bicycle Mystery' is Jepson's account of a true unsolved murder case. Bella Wright was found lying dead beside her bicycle on a lonely country lane in Leicestershire. She had been shot through the head. The last person seen in her company was a man on a green bicycle. When months later a green bicycle is dredged from a canal, the police are hot on the track of the mystery man.

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an English author of horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Hodgson used his experiences at sea to lend authentic detail to his short horror stories, many of which are set on the ocean. He became one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. He died in World War I at age 40. 'A Tropical Horror' is the vivid story of a ship which is attacked by a hideous sea serpent.

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), an American writer. O. Henry's short stories are loved for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings. The Ransom of Red Chief is a tale of a kidnapping. A couple of desperados abduct the 10-year-old son of the richest man in a village in the Deep South. But the pair soon discover that they have taken on far more than they had bargained for.

'The Bronze Ring' is a story in which a princess falls in love with the son of the palace gardener, although her father wishes her to marry the son of his Prime Minister. The King devises a quest for the two suitors and attempts to engineer the situation so that the rich youth will win. But the gardener's son does a good deed to an old woman, who in return helps him win a magic ring which will grant wishes. But the youth's adventures are not over when he marries the princess. The ring is stolen, and he must enlist the aid of some very clever mice to get it back.

William Chambers Morrow (1854-1923) was an American author famed for his short stories of horror and suspense. 'The Permanent Stiletto' is the story of a young man who has been stabbed close to the heart with a stiletto. The blade has pierced the aorta and come out the other side. To withdraw the blade would mean the man would bleed to death...but so long as the blade is in place, it is blocking off the wound. The only solution is to leave the blade in place...after which the young man will live his life on a knife edge.

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885) was a Norwegian writer, scholar and collector of traditional folktales. 'An Old Fashioned Christmas Eve' describes a young Norwegian soldier recovering from an illness who finds himself stranded on Christmas Eve with a family who sit around the fire telling a series of quite extraordinary folktales and ghost stories.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. 'All Souls' is a creepy Hallowe'en story about a woman who lives with her servants in a remote house in Connecticut. One weekend at the end of October, she has an accident and breaks her ankle...and then follow the most terrifying and mysterious 36 hours of her life.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 1882-1941) was an English writer and one of the preeminent modernists of the 20th century. 'The String Quartet' is a beautifully written and evocative stream of semiconscious thought stimulated by listening to a string quartet playing a piece by Mozart.

On 28 May, 1828, a boy of around 16 appeared in the Bavarian city of Nuremburg holding a letter in his hand. The lad was unable to speak, apart from three odd phrases which he repeated parrot-like, one of which was: "Want to be a soldier, as father was." The letter, addressed to the captain of the local infantry regiment, told a bizarre story. It appeared that the boy had been kept shut up in isolation in the dark for his entire life, had never learned to speak and knew nothing of the world.

The deceptively mild mannered detective, Mr. J.G. Reeder devises a cunning plan to set a thief to catch a murderer.