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A fascinating collection of tales from some of Great Britain's finest classic authors.

The magic Psammead is back! This time the four children, Cyril, Robert, Anthea and Jane are stuck in London for the Summer, when they come across the Psammead (or wish-giving sand-fairy), imprisoned in a pet shop. They manage to free him, and he tells them where they can get hold of a magic amulet which will bring them their hearts' desire. Unfortunately when the amulet is secured, it is incomplete. They and the Psammead must travel back into ancient history to see the part of the amulet which was lost.

Edith Nesbit was to children in the early 20th century what J.K. Rowling is to today's young generation. Magic, mythical creatures, time travel, charms, words of power... Nesbit's stories have it all. This recording is the complete collection of Edith Nesbit's Psammead series, comprising three captivating stories:Five Children and It.The story begins when a group of five children - Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb - move from London to the countryside of Kent.

First written in 1904, this is one of Edith Nesbit's best-loved children's stories. It it the second story about a group of five children - Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb - who live in London. One day their mother buys a new carpet for the nursery which mysteriously contains a stone egg. When the egg falls into the fire by accident, nobody can possibly imagine what adventures will be unleashed.

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) is one of the greatest of the Victorian mystery writers. For several years he was on the editorial staff of Dickens' magazine All Year Round and became Dickens' close friend and collaborator. Alongside his great novels, Collins was the author of a great many superb short stories, mostly concerned with either the supernatural or crime.

A glittering collection of some of the world's finest short stories.

The definitive collection of traditional Celtic fairy tales. Joseph Jacobs' 1892 anthology of the most enduring folklore from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall is a delight for both young and old. Leprechauns, giants, witches, princesses, castles, and sea monsters all abound in this compendium of the best mythology Britain and Ireland have to offer.

Edith Nesbit's classic story of three children whose lives are turned upside down when their father suddenly goes away and they have to move to the country. They are captivated by the local railway and make friends with the local station staff and the old gentleman who travels daily on the train.The children experience all kinds of adventures, but the biggest adventure is the one which they do not even understand themselves... the reason for their father's absence and the mysterious quest to bring him home. A captivating story for all ages.

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal - the redness and the horror of blood. To avoid the terrible plague which is devastating his kingdom, Prince Prospero locks himself with 1000 revellers in his castle and holds one hedonistic party after another. For months they celebrate their crazed feasts, until one night a stranger appears at the festivities... a stranger who strikes fear into the hearts of all present. Terrifying!

A gripping collection of weird and fantastical stories of supernatural and unbelievable happenings. "Pomegranate Seed" by Edith Wharton; "The Tiger" by Hugh Walpole; "When I Was Dead" by Vincent O'Sullivan; "The Fire" by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne; "Satan's Circus" by Eleanor Smith; "The Coffin Merchant" by Richard Middleton; and more tall stories....

Our story begins in 1785 when a young seafarer, Captain Thornhill, disappears while visiting the shop of a barber in London, a certain Sweeney Todd whose shop in Fleet Street is situated by St. Dunstan's church, just round the corner from the famous and popular meat pie shop run by Mrs. Lovett. Thornhill was carrying a string of pearls as a gift for Johanna Oakley, the sweetheart of his friend Mark Ingestrie who is missing, presumed lost at sea.

A spine-tingling collection of the greatest short stories by the father of science fiction, H. G. Wells. 'The Time Machine', 'The Empire of the Ants', 'The Crystal Egg', 'The Sea-Raiders', 'The Door in the Wall', 'A Dream of Armageddon', 'The Country of the Blind', 'Under the Knife', 'The Stolen Body', 'The Plattner Story', 'The Stolen Bacillus', 'The Magic Shop', 'The Inexperienced Ghost', and many more short fiction masterpieces.

The Elephant Man is Treves' own firsthand account of how he met and befriended Joseph Merrick (whom he mistakenly calls John Merrick), a young man with very severe physical deformities, who was being exhibited as a sideshow freak, as half man, half elephant. Treves initially invited Merrick to his rooms in the London Hospital so as to examine him, and to ensure Merrick's admittance he gave him his card.

First written in 1902, this is one of Edith Nesbit's best loved children's stories. It all begins when a group of five children – Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb - move from London to the countryside of Kent. While playing in a gravel pit, they discover a rather grumpy, ugly and occasionally malevolent sand-fairy known as the Psammead who is compelled to grant one wish of theirs per day. The effects of each wish last until sundown. All the wishes granted to the children go hilariously wrong.

Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American author who was best known for his macabre horror stories and weird tales. This collection brings together a highly representative selection of his creepy stories, written very much after the Lovecraftian style. 'Rattle of Bones', 'Sea Curse', 'Pigeons from Hell', 'In the Forest of Villefore', 'The Dream Snake', 'The Fearsome Touch of Death', 'The Right Hand of Doom' and 'The Thing on the Roof'.

Elizabeth, a young wife and mother, waits for her husband Walter to come home from the coal mine. She attributes his lateness to him having gone drinking. As time goes on, she goes to look for him and alerts his colleagues. It transpires he has been killed in a pit accident. Elizabeth's mother-in-law helps her to wash the corpse after it is brought home from the mine. The reactions of the two women are in stark contrast - and the experience of laying out the body shows Elizabeth how she and her husband never really knew one another in life.

A unique collection of eyewitness accounts from some of the greatest diarists and journal writers of the last two centuries.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, best known for his spine-tingling and beautifully written ghost stories. The Room in the Tower is the most famous of these. It describes a horrific recurrent dream of nameless dread, occurring over a period of 15 years, in which the dreamer arrives at a peculiar house inhabited by a sinister silent family, where he takes tea on the lawn and is then shown to the room in the tower where something dreadful, malicious, and evil lurks...

Edith Nesbit is best known as the author of children's classics, such as The Railway Children. She was also a renowned author of ghost stories and othertales of terror, the macabre and the supernatural. In this collection of spine-chilling narratives, Nesbit presents us with a truly masterful set of tales of love which reaches out beyond the grave, ghosts, eerie incarnations, evil deeds and uncanny happenings. Perfect bedtime listening.... if you dare!

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist, famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day. 'The Little Ghost' tells the eerie story of a man who is grieving deeply following the unexpected death of a close friend, who goes to stay at an old house which has recently been rented by a family with a large number of very boisterous children.