Hello –

It’s been great to meet so many of you at my book events over the past few weeks, and thanks to everyone who came. Thanks also to those of you who’ve said such nice things about Rainforest and my ghost story in The Witching Hour.

Hallowe’en may be over, but I’m still deeply immersed in ghost stories. I don’t know about you, but I always get the urge to read them in the autumn; I think it has something to do with the clocks going back. Over the years I’ve amassed quite a big collection of rather battered volumes, which I’ve mostly happened across in secondhand bookshops, and also online. I love re-reading the best stories - although I do mark the real duds in the contents pages, to avoid wasting my time! Every year, too, I like to delve a little deeper, by ordering collections of now obscure writers, whose stories I’ve particularly enjoyed.

Anyway, here are some of my favourite writers, along with examples of their best stories. If you’re an enthusiast, many of these authors will be familiar to you; but maybe you’ll find a few which aren’t.

M.R. James (of course) – Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad – Lost Hearts

Algernon Blackwood – The Empty House – The Haunted Island – The Kit-Bag

E. Nesbit – Man-size in Marble

Rudyard Kipling – At the End of the Passage

M.E. Braddon – At Chrighton Abbey

E. F. Benson – The House with the Brick-Kiln

F. M. Mayor – Miss de Mannering of Asham

Charles Dickens – The Signalman

F. Marion Crawford – The Upper Berth

Henry James – The Jolly Corner

B.M. Croker – To Let

R. H. Malden – Stivinghoe Bank

Margaret Oliphant – The Open Door

Edith Wharton – All Souls’

J. S. LeFanu – An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street

Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road

William Trevor – The Only Story

Jane Gardam – The Meeting House

Rosemary Timperley – Christmas Meeting

A.S. Byatt – The July Ghost

Hugh Walpole – The Little Ghost

These are the writers I tend to return to with real pleasure every year; but of course it’s an entirely personal collection, and you’ll doubtless have favourites of your own. Those in my list are all short stories, and most of them are frightening; but I’ve also included a few more benign ghost stories, which still really work (and in my opinion there aren’t many of those). As for where you can find them, they often appear in ghost story anthologies; or you could find collections of an individual writer’s work through good bookshops, or online.

Whether you’re already something of an expert, or are relatively new to ghost stories, I hope I’ve given you something to get your teeth into.

On which note, I’ll say goodbye until the next time. Stay steady - and happy reading!

Best wishes.....

Michelle