The Haunting Season: The instant Sunday Times bestseller and the perfect companion for winter nights

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The Winter Spirits' is a hauntingly enchanting anthology that resurrects the age-old tradition of Christmas ghost stories, breathing fresh life into it for a modern audience. Featuring a dozen original stories by acclaimed authors in the realm of historical and gothic fiction, this compilation takes readers on a spooky journey through chilling narratives centred around the festive season. While the inherent challenge of maintaining consistency across a collection of this magnitude results in varying levels of success, this volume largely manages to pull it off with its tales of eerie intrigue. A creepy story about a man who rents a large old house. A chess set inside seems to move by itself, and he feels like there is something or someone watching him. Loved this one! Wasn’t sure about the main character to begin with but she found her strength. Lucinda and her son Stanley move into the old Thwaite house, fleeing her abusive husband.

the nature of anthologies is such that no matter how many times i read the driest, dullest, wettest prose imaginable, i keep pushing through, putting clown makeup on my face as i say ‘well, maybe the next one will be good.’ and like. the next one was never good. some general observations before i get into specific comments: It continues the tradition of telling haunted tales at Christmas, which has flourished across the centuries. Each story in ‘Winter Spirits’ is centred around Christmas or Advent. Il finale non è così prevedibile come sembra e questo racconto fa un buon uso dell’elemento sovrannaturale. Davvero ottimo, per quanto pesante.Very nice. Probably not on the same level as her novels but I really enjoyed it. It made totally sense, which is not usual for me talking about short stories. So this is a very good point. And the setting was wonderful The final two stories —“Confinement” by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and “Monster” by Elizabeth Macneal —may be the strongest, but ultimately what proves better than the rest is a matter of personal taste. Hargrave’s story is seemingly built upon familiar ground, featuring the horror-filled experiences of a new mother, but the author travels to some novel places when considering the fate of its central character, Catherine Elizabeth Mary Blake. The first-person narrative, delivered to the readers as a testimony, is a study in what happens when a woman is believed by others to be mad and how confinement, of many different types, can forever impact a mother and her child. A story-ending author’s note places the tale in further perspective and context. This was bad. I mean really bad. It is definitely my least favorite story in the collection. I had a feeling that Victor was being punished for something but I couldn't figure out what for? I thought they would reveal Mabel to be a selkie but was never done. Also, if anyone needed to be punished, it was Mabel. That end was so disappointing. The inclusion of Kidd in this anthology was what attracted me to it, and it stands head and shoulders above the rest so far. Set in Victorian times in Ireland it is the story of a photographer requisitioned to capture the image of the corpse of a beautiful young woman, and he falls in love.

But we soon find that the chair has a mind of its own, but just what is its purpose? What happened to Old Chillingham and Victor’s younger brother? How trustworthy is Victor really? A gripping short story with a satisfyingly scary end. Wow! this story set up the atmosphere nicely. I was apprehensive the entire time and it gave me chills. That end was so good, creepy but good. This was definitely my top favorite story. From a bustling Covent Garden Christmas market to the frosty moors of Yorkshire, from a country estate with a dreadful secret, to a London mansion where a beautiful girl lies frozen in death, these are stories to make your hair stand on end, send shivers down your spine and to serve as your indispensable companion to the long nights of winter. Catherine is pregnant and she lives at the Blake Manor with her husband and Mr and Mrs Noakes who look after the Manor and the garden. On a walk to the Church around the Christmas period, she finds out about the white witch who killed children. After Catherine gives birth, she is confined to the carmine room for nine days as is the tradition. In her confinement, she finds out that the white witch is after her new born daughter and Catherine would do anything to protect her daughter. The tale of Krampus is nothing but folklore, but after regaling her charges with the story, perhaps the mythical creature is more real than they realise.Now eight bestselling, award-winning authors - master storytellers of the sinister and the macabre - bring this time-honoured tradition to vivid life in a spellbinding collection of new and original haunted tales. Mi relato favorito ha sido el segundo, "El inquilino de la casa Thwaite". Me ha gustado mucho el mensaje que deja y cómo consigue meterte tanto en la historia. It's Christmas time so this time around it is especially difficult for Mori since he is a clairvoyant and he longs to go somewhere quiet. So, Thaniel, Mori, and Six decide to take a trip to a town a few hours away from London where it is perfectly quiet for Mori. Thaniel does not like the town or its people who stare at Mori unflinchingly and hum at the same time. The longer they stay there, the more Thaniel hates the town. Would they be able to get away from whatever lurks there? Two of my favourite authors have stories in this book (Laura Purcell and Kiran Millwood-Hargrave), but the rest each has at least one book sitting on my TBR shelf right now. Getting the opportunity to sample the writing of Bridget Collins, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Andrew Michael Hurley, Jess Kidd, Elizabeth Macneal, and Natasha Pulley was an absolute treat. El inquilino de la casa Thwaite de Imogen Hermes Gowar. Lucinda y su pequeño hijo Stanley, huyen de un esposo maltratador para refugiarse en la casa Thwaite, allí comienza a escuchar pasos y luego objetos caerse, para descubrir que se trata de fantasmas que intentan comunicarse con ella. Estuvo interesante y causa cierta tensión. 4/5

Sunday Times bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street | Laura Purcell Award-winning author of The Silent Companions The Hanging of the Greens by Andrew Michael Hurley Hurley does write this genre well, and his books have always had my full attention, but as to the chilling quality of them, I am not so sure. He does like to include religion, which few of his contemporaries do. So, interesting, but nothing special. 3/5 The Master of the House by Stuart Turton: I've only read one of Stuart's books - The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - and so I didn't have a thorough understanding of his writing style, but that was enough to tell me has a great grasp of the complex and the mystery. While it does have an element of horror about it, I found this one to be enormously moving and caused a tear or two whilst reading it, which I wasn't expecting at all. After leaving her husband, Lucinda along with her young son, Stanley seeks aid from her father but her father is no different from Lucinda's husband and he thinks that women should be with their husbands, no matter how they are being treated. Lucinda ends up in an old house in the countryside only to find out that the previous inhabitant of the house, Emily Thwaite's situation is quite similar to Lucinda's.Jenkin by Catriona Ward: Catriona Ward is the Queen of uncomfortable psychological thrilling horrors and so I had high expectations for her story and she didn't disappoint. It's so fabulously weird and quirky but hits all the right notes. In ‘Confinement’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, a new mother becomes convinced a witch is trying to steal her baby. While it has its striking moments, this is the third story of just eight in the book that a) is set in the Victorian era in Britain, b) is about an upper-class woman with staff, and c) involves her being somehow confined after an incident that restricts her options for freedom. There’s no editor credited for this book and I can’t help thinking it might have turned out better if the authors had been steered in slightly different directions from one another. thwaite’s tenant – this was the first point at which i was like, oh, wow, there has been no thought on the part of these authors going into the material they’re working with (Victorian Woman Disease like completely sincerely) or the discursive terrain that their setting envelops. boring attempt at so-called ‘feminism’ (isn’t it so hard to be a bourgeois victorian woman?) and a gross, thoughtless deployment of sex work. really set the tone for the rest of the anthology so maybe i’ll redact my comment about this selection having no structure to it whatsoever. also just poorly executed, as ever. L’idea di base era funzionale e interessante, ma man mano che procedevo con la lettura ero perlopiù annoiata dall’ossessione del protagonista verso Lily. La governante però… lei sì che era un personaggio di tutto rispetto. Curiously, none of the stories takes place in the present-day world as we know it (I mean, with the Internet and cell phones and all that). I wonder why - I don't think there are fewer ghosts now.