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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What makes an ordinary place feel dangerous—the threat you see, or the one still hidden?
Tales of Terror by Dick Donovan brings together short stories of fear and suspense. Crime, danger and the unexplained shape their world. These tales belong to the popular fiction of the late Victorian age, when readers turn to brief stories for a strong encounter with fear.
Donovan is the pen name of British writer Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock. Here, the short tale leaves little room for background: timing matters, and what stays hidden helps build suspense. The appeal lies in watching fear take shape, then pausing before you step into the next story.
What you’ll discover
- Fear close to home Discover the unsettling appeal of terror rooted in the familiar world of ordinary life.
- The power of withholding Feel how a short story builds suspense through timing and what it keeps back.
- A Victorian taste for danger Enter the world of popular fiction shaped by crime, fear and the unexplained.
- One strong effect Give each tale its own space, with a pause to let its fear linger.
- The name behind the tales Meet Dick Donovan, the pen name that first belongs to a fictional detective.
Who will love it
If you love ghost stories told by sworn witnesses, haunted rooms, curses that keep their word, and tales set at sea, in India and in the Black Forest, here is a whole evening of shivers.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A friend falls under another will
- Ghosts turn doubters into listeners
- Ships leave trust without protection
- Haunted rooms preserve their warnings
- Complacency leaves danger unanswered
- Belief gives a curse its strength
- Guilt can take a ghostly shape
- Fear works through the mind
- Calm testimony makes dread convincing
Who’s who
- Dr Peter HaslarA sensible physician who tries to rescue his friend Jack Redcar from a woman of strange power and finds himself in danger too.
- AnnetteA harsh-faced woman with oily eyes and a silvery voice who draws men into her service and leaves ruin behind her.
- Dr John Patmore LindsayA proud skeptic who finds that a ruined mill and a glowing figure will not let him rest.
- Lily HetheringtonKnown as Red Lily, she loves Dick Fenton and has promised to marry him on Christmas Day, while an officer's gaze troubles her.
- Alfred CornellA strict and daring second officer whose dark eyes hold others still and who swears he will have Lily for his wife.
- George WilloughbyA young artillery officer who guards the great Delhi magazine and vows it will never fall to rebels.
- Ruth TudorA proud, clever Welsh village beauty who is told she is doomed to become a murderess.
- Captain Jubal TredegarA sea captain of Cornwall who plays cribbage, weeps over a photograph, and says that a dead man hunts him.
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Tales of Terror in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Tales of Terror
by Dick Donovan
A skeptical doctor rides past a ruined mill and sees a corpse glowing in the road, and his horse sees it too.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
Learn a language with medium classicsSpanishFrenchGermanItalianJapanesePortugueseEnglishHow we measure levels
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In short
Would you believe a ghost if it led you, step by step, toward a secret? A doctor comes home to find his best friend hollowed out by a woman with oily eyes.
Tales of Terror at a glance
- Reading time
- About 7 h 30 min5 h 55 min fast, 8 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 106,800 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A friend's ruin begins on a staircase
Dr Peter Haslar writes as an old man to correct the newspaper versions of a case he calls ghastly. In 1857 he is best man for his friend Jack Redcar, an engineer, who marries the lovely Maude Tremlett. Then Haslar sails for America and stays two years.
He returns to find a note from Maude begging him to come at once. She is aged and haunted, and she says Jack has been taken from her by a woman called Annette. At Wiesbaden she met this woman on a hotel staircase, saw a hard face and eyes that gleamed like oil, and shuddered. The woman appeared again in London, where Maude's baby sickened after she held him. From then on Annette ruled the house, and gentle Jack struck his wife.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 8 h 40 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Donovan, Dick. Tales of Terror. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror.
Donovan, D. (2026). Tales of terror. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror
Donovan, Dick. Tales of Terror. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror.
@book{donovan2026tales,
author = {Donovan, Dick},
title = {Tales of Terror},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror}
}
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What is Tales of Terror by Dick Donovan about?
It is a collection of fifteen supernatural and horror stories, including The Woman with the Oily Eyes, The Corpse Light, Red Lily, With Fire and Death and The Doomed Man. Most are told by narrators who begin as skeptics.
Who was Dick Donovan?
Dick Donovan was the pen name of Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock, an English writer who died in 1934. He wrote detective stories and many tales of mystery and the supernatural for magazine readers.
Are the stories in Tales of Terror true?
They are fiction, though many narrators swear they are true and some tales draw on folk legends, such as vampire belief in the Pyrenees or the German dance of the dead. Several are framed as signed testimony.
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