6 h 59 minAudiobook18 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 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 like 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 a single 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
- Legends of ships that will not sink
- 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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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 6 h 59 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 18 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Racconti del mistero
A railway guard swears he saw no passenger, yet Langford holds a cigar case that proves otherwise.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Boston doctor is haunted at Christmas
The first tale opens on Beacon Hill in Boston, where the writer pokes gentle fun at the rich, respectable houses and at Bowdoin Street, which lost its older name. On a bitter Christmas Eve, a pale figure with long white hair waits outside the door of Dr. Charles Renton. It shudders in the wind and watches the street as if it expects someone. When the doctor strides home, the figure rushes to greet him, but he walks straight past with a frown. All he hears is a faint voice calling his name.
Inside, the ghost follows him into the library, where he sits in a foul mood. His daughter Netty, whose full name is Nathalie, bounds in wearing silk and perfume, ready for a party with her mother. A few smiles and some teasing talk melt his sulk, and he hands her fifty dollars for her Christmas gifts. Then he lists the troubles of his day. He has lost patients to a woman doctor, burned his fingers on railway stock, and learned that a man was stabbed in the oyster room of a house he owns.
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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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