6 h 59 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 6 h 59 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A haunted room, a strange warning, a quiet moment when the familiar no longer feels safe.
Stories of Mystery gathers eight tales of ghosts, suspense and the unexplained, selected by Rossiter Johnson. Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Amelia B. Edwards and Catherine Crowe are among the writers here. Each brings a different way of stirring fear, letting puzzling events disturb a world that first seems ordinary.
The collection brings together voices from Britain and America, including William D. O’Connor, Allan Cunningham, Robert T. S. Lowell and Francis O’Connor. Haunted rooms, omens and strange warnings invite you to question what seems possible. The pace is unhurried: scenes take shape, unease gathers, and reason does not always offer a comfortable answer.
What you’ll discover
- Eight distinct voices Discover how different nineteenth-century storytellers shape dread, each within a single short tale.
- The familiar turns strange Enter everyday settings where a puzzling event unsettles the comfort of ordinary life.
- Warnings without easy answers Meet ghosts and omens that leave room for doubt about what reason can explain.
- Suspense that takes time Let carefully set scenes and gathering unease draw you into the mysteries.
- Questions beneath the chills Explore the fears surrounding death, guilt, fate and the limits of human knowledge.
Who will love it
Readers who love ghost stories told by firelight, railway mysteries, sea legends and haunted consciences, and who enjoy meeting Dickens, Hawthorne and lesser known storytellers side by side in one volume.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Boston doctor is haunted at Christmas
- A passenger nobody else saw
- A warning at the mouth of the tunnel
- Tales of haunted ships and midnight knocking
- Alone on the seal ice
- A jewel, a whistle and a princess
- A lawyer sees a face he cannot bear
- A scientist and the mark on his wife's cheek
- Guilt, doubt and the voices of the tellers
Who’s who
- Dr. Charles RentonA wealthy, stern Boston physician who clings to his rule of every man for himself, until a letter from a dead friend unsettles him.
- Netty RentonThe doctor's warm, teasing daughter, who pleads for the poor tenant and quietly plans a kindness of her own.
- William LangfordA junior partner returning from Russia, who speaks with a railway director on the train and then cannot find anyone who saw him.
- John DwerrihouseA pale, talkative lawyer and railway director, said to have vanished with seventy-five thousand pounds of the company's money.
- The signalmanA careful, educated man at a lonely railway post, tormented by a warning figure he cannot understand.
- Skipper Benjie WesthamA kind Newfoundland fisherman who tells of the one voyage to the seal ice, when he was left alone on a floe.
- Antoine de ChaulieuAn ambitious young advocate who wins a great case and then cannot escape the face of the man he condemned.
- AylmerA brilliant scientist who loves his wife yet cannot bear the small crimson mark on her cheek and sets out to remove it.
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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Récits mystérieux
A railway guard swears he saw no passenger, yet Langford holds a cigar case that proves otherwise.
Medium level5–10 hours to readfrançais
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In short
Stories of Mystery gathers ghosts, strange coincidence and unexplained fate, chosen by the American editor Rossiter Johnson. Dickens, Hawthorne, Amelia B.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Boston doctor is haunted at Christmas
On a bitter Christmas Eve in Boston, a pale figure with long white hair waits outside the door of Dr. Charles Renton. He strides past it with a frown. All he hears is a faint voice calling his name.
Inside, his daughter Netty gently tells him that rent from a liquor seller has blood on it. She pleads for a poor woman upstairs who cannot pay. Then she gives him a yellowed letter from George Feval, his dearest boyhood friend, who died of cold and hunger. It begs him to be true and tender to mankind.
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What is Stories of Mystery about?
It is a collection of eight nineteenth century tales of ghosts, suspense and the unexplained, set in places such as Boston, a railway cutting, the Solway coast, the Newfoundland ice and a scientist's laboratory.
Who wrote the stories in Stories of Mystery?
Rossiter Johnson edited the volume. The tales are by several writers, including Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Amelia B. Edwards and Allan Cunningham, along with other authors of the period.
What is The Signal-Man about?
Dickens tells of a traveler who meets a signalman at a gloomy railway cutting. The man is haunted by a figure near a red light that seems to warn of disasters before they happen.
The author
William D. O'Connor, Amelia B. Edwards, Charles Dickens, Allan Cunningham, Robert T. S. Lowell, Francis O'Connor, Catherine Crowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne
1832–1889 · American writer
William Douglas O’Connor (1832–1889) was an American writer. He was born in Boston and died in Washington, D.C. He wrote the novel Harrington (1860) and the pamphlet The Good Gray Poet (1866), about Walt Whitman. He also wrote short stories and worked for the United States Lighthouse Board.
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