6 h 45 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 6 h 45 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A house feels wrong, a rumour takes hold, and the quiet begins to frighten you.
A Stable for Nightmares gathers eleven tales of ghosts, murder and the supernatural, including a story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. These short stories belong to the Victorian ghost-story tradition, where a single evening gives dread time to settle and an ordinary place can turn strange.
Le Fanu’s kind of fear grows through suggestion rather than gore: a sound at night, a figure at the edge of a room, a feeling of being watched. Murder and ghosts share this collection’s ground, while guilt, betrayal and hidden wrongs give the supernatural a troubling human shadow.
What you’ll discover
- Dread that takes root Feel how a mood or rumour can unsettle you before anything openly threatens.
- The uncanny close by Explore the fear that gathers around familiar houses, country roads and quiet towns.
- Ghosts and hidden wrongs Discover how crimes and secrets can give supernatural fear its human weight.
- A quieter kind of horror Find unease in suggestion, where a half-seen figure leaves room for your imagination.
- An introduction to Le Fanu Meet his short fiction through a tale in the Victorian ghost-story tradition.
Who will love it
Readers who love ghost stories told by the fire, haunted houses, wronged spirits and strange dreams, in tales that can be enjoyed one at a time.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A business errand leads to Barwyke Hall
- A dead man's debt stirs two houses
- A dream of murder comes true
- A midnight cry and a chest in the laundry
- A haunted tavern room and a hidden jewel casket
- Two haunted voices in London and Paris
- Casts, clairvoyance and an invisible thing
- What the stories are really about
- How the tales are told
Who’s who
- Tom WyndsourThe red-nosed bailiff of Barwyke Hall who knows the house's dark history and would rather let sleeping dogs lie.
- Reginald WestcarA young Oxford graduate who inherits The Shallows, falls in love with Agnes Maryon and is told by a ghost to claim The Mere.
- Paul DevereuxA scarred adventurer who dreams of a murder on a night train and swears to hunt the man he saw.
- Catherine l'EstrangeA merry young guest at Craymoor Grange who begs her hosts to open the floor of the old laundry.
- Colonel DemarionA South Carolina statesman and soldier who boldly takes the haunted room at a storm-bound tavern.
- Berthe AlixA devout, clear-headed lawyer's daughter in revolutionary Lyons who loves a disguised young aristocrat and waits for his return.
- Doctor FevershamA skeptical old physician who tells of a young patient whose trances showed her things she could not know.
- Dr. HammondA doctor and opium-smoking friend in New York who tries to explain an invisible creature with the science of glass and air.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 6 h 45 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 6 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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A Stable for Nightmares
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; Charles Young
Eleven tales explore uncanny encounters in a haunted inn, a night train and a New York boardinghouse.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Some books frighten you most by the fire, with the wind rising outside. A Stable for Nightmares gathers eleven ghost stories and tales of the uncanny, credited to J. Sheridan Le Fanu and Sir Charles Young.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A business errand leads to Barwyke Hall
Dickon the Devil begins as a plain business trip. At the Three Nuns inn, the friendly host claims to have forgotten every story about Barwyke Hall.
The hall is a steep-roofed Elizabethan house with barred shutters, a courtyard of nettles and a cold black lake. The narrator feels a warning of danger the moment he sees the water. The bailiff, Tom Wyndsour, shows him to a paneled room with a four-poster bed.
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What is A Stable for Nightmares about?
It is a collection of eleven Victorian ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. They include haunted houses, murder dreams, phantom drinking companions, clairvoyant trances and an invisible creature, told by travellers, a doctor and a housewife.
Who wrote A Stable for Nightmares?
The collection is credited to J. Sheridan Le Fanu and Sir Charles Young. Le Fanu, who died in 1873, is the Dublin author of Uncle Silas and Carmilla, and his name is placed first on the book.
Are the stories in this book connected?
No, each tale stands on its own with different settings, from Lancashire and Cumberland to Paris, Lyons, South Carolina and New York. They are linked by ghosts, uncanny dreams and the question of whether such things can be explained.
The author
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
1814–1873 · Irish Gothic novelist
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer born in Dublin in 1814. He lived in Ireland and died in Dublin in 1873. He wrote Gothic tales, mystery novels, and ghost stories. His novels include Uncle Silas, published in 1864, and The Wyvern Mystery, published in 1869.
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