Vintage books Anil's Ghost Ондатже Майкл

Do you believe in ghosts? • Ghosts, spirits, spectres or spooks, we have always felt the presence of someone - or something - hovering in the darkest corners of our imaginations • The great writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Rudyard Kipling, also produced some of the most influential ghost stories ever written, defining the genre for generations of writers to follow • Gathered in this thrilling collection are some of the most iconic Victorian ghost stories, from Charles Dickens's 'The Signalman' to M.R. James's 'A Warning to the Curious', alongside more unexpected contributions from masters of the form such as J.S. Le Fanu and H.G. Wells • You may think you don't believe in ghosts, but these stories will haunt you nonetheless

Returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman - incontinent and impotent - comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Walking the streets he quickly makes several connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. In a rash moment, he offers to swap homes with a young couple. And from the moment he meets them, Zuckerman wants to exchange his solitude for the erotic allure of the young woman Jamie, who draws him back to all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, and the play of heart and body • Suddenly involved, as he never wanted or intended to be involved again, with love, mourning, desire and animosity, Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities

When talented young writer Nathan Zuckerman makes his pilgrimage to sit at the feet of his hero, the reclusive master of American Literature, E. I. Lonoff, he soon finds himself enmeshed in the great Jewish writer's domestic life, with all its complexity, artifice and drive for artistic truth • As Nathan sits in breathlessly awkward conversation with his idol, a glimpse of a dark-haired beauty through a closing doorway leaves him reeling. He soon learns that the entrancing vision is Amy Bellette, but her position in the Lonoff household - student? mistress? - remains tantalisingly unclear. Over a disturbed and confusing dinner, Nathan gleans snippets of Amy’s haunting Jewish background, and begins to draw his own fantastical conclusions…

‘People will die,’ says the panic-stricken woman outside police headquarters • She refuses to speak to anyone besides Commissaire Adamsberg. Her daughter has seen a vision: ghostly horsemen who target the most nefarious characters in Normandy. Since the middle ages there have been stories of murderers, rapists, those with serious crimes on their conscience, meeting a grisly end following a visitation by the riders • Soon after the young woman’s vision a notoriously vicious and cruel man disappears. Although the case is far outside his jurisdiction, Adamsberg agrees to investigate the strange happenings in a village terrorised by wild rumours and ancient feuds

Майкл Бут жил среди скандинавов более десяти лет, и был озадачен многими странными парадоксами и чертами характера, и в равной степени ошеломлен безоговорочным энтузиазмом ко всему скандинавскому • Он покидает свой дом в Дании и отправляется в путешествие по всем пяти северным странам, чтобы узнать, кто такие эти любопытные племена, секреты их успеха и, что самое интригующее, что они думают друг о друге. Результатом этого путешествия стала книга "Почти идеальные люди. Миф о скандинавской утопии" • Книга на английском языке • The Danes are the happiest people in the world, and pay the highest taxes • 'Neutral' Sweden is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world • Finns have the largest per capita gun ownership after the US and Yemen • 54 per cent of Icelanders believe in elves

Sherlock star Mark Gatiss selects and introduces chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story - E.F. Benson • There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy Tube platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden, inexplicable chill. There's no need for a ticking clock, a limping footstep, or a knock at the door to start you trembling. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all

Malignant forces and supernatural visitors haunt this selection of superbly spooky tales selected and introduced by Ruth Rendell • M. R. James wrote his ghost stories to entertain friends on Christmas Eve, and they went on to both transform and modernise a genre. James harnesses the power of suggestion to move from a recognisable world to one that is indefinably strange, and then unforgettably terrifying. Sheets, pictures, carvings, a dolls house, a lonely beach, a branch tapping on a window - ordinary things take on more than a tinge of dread in the hands of the original master of suspense

A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A bed that hasn’t been slept in is crumpled and distressed come the morning. A skeletal figure creeps closer and closer to the house where an unsuspecting family lie sleeping. In these chilling tales of the supernatural, M. R. James proves he truly is the master of the ghost story • Selected from the book Ghost Stories by M.R. James

M.R. James wrote his ghost stories to entertain friends on Christmas Eve, and they went on to both transform and modernise a genre. James harnesses the power of suggestion to move from a recognisable world to one that is indefinably strange, and then unforgettably terrifying. Sheets, pictures, carvings, a dolls house, a lonely beach, a branch tapping on a window - ordinary things take on more than a tinge of dread in the hands of the original master of suspense

A terrifying ghost story, by the author of the The Woman in Black • A terrifying ghost story by the bestselling author of The Woman in Black • One dark and rainy night, Sir James Monmouth returns to London after years spent travelling alone • Intent on uncovering the secrets of his childhood hero, the mysterious Conrad Vane, he begins to investigate Vane's life, but he finds himself warned off at every turn • Before long he realises he is being followed too. A pale, thin boy is haunting his every step but every time he tries to confront the boy he disappears. And what of the chilling scream and desperate sobbing only he can hear? • His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined

In the Florida Everglades, gator-park Swamplandia! is in trouble. Its star performer, the great beauty and champion alligator-wrestler Hilola Bigtree, has succumbed to cancer, and Ava, her resourceful but terrified 13-year-old daughter, is left in charge with her two siblings. But Ava's sister has embarked on a romantic relationship with a ghost, her brother has defected to a rival theme park, and her father is AWOL. And then a mysterious figure called Bird Man guides Ava into a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, promising he can save both her sister and the park • Swamplandia! was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Anton Vowl is missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any hint as to his location and, insidiously, a ghost, from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow. This virtuoso story, chock-full of plots and subplots, shows the skill of both author and translator who impart all the action without a crucial grammatical prop: the letter 'e'