Spook Stories - Ultimate Collection gathers twenty-five of E. F. Benson's supernatural, mystery, ghost, and haunting tales into a panorama of Edwardian unease. These stories move from drawing rooms and country houses to ancient sites and uncanny landscapes, where rational modern lives are breached by revenants, occult forces, and malignant memories. Benson's prose is elegant, exact, and deceptively urbane, combining the psychological restraint associated with M. R. James with a sharper taste for sensation, morbidity, and social irony. Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940), a prolific English novelist and short-story writer, was born into an intellectually distinguished family: his father became Archbishop of Canterbury, and his brothers were also notable writers. Best known today for the comic Mapp and Lucia novels, Benson also possessed a lifelong fascination with fear, repression, and the fragility of civilized surfaces. His travels, classical interests, and immersion in upper-middle-class society gave his ghost fiction its distinctive mixture of erudition, menace, and polished observation. This collection is highly recommended for readers who value classic supernatural fiction that is both atmospheric and literarily accomplished. Benson's tales offer not merely shocks, but studies in dread, perception, and moral vulnerability, making the volume essential for admirers of Gothic tradition and early twentieth-century weird fiction. This enriched edition has been carefully crafted to add value to your reading experience. - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era-social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand-picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
"Sister Madonna proves you can make records, and break them all over again, at any age. Her spirit is without limits."
—Dara Torres, Olympic gold medalist and author of
Age Is Just a Number
Autorentext
SISTER MADONNA BUDER, also known as "the Iron Nun," "the Flying Nun," and "the Mother Superior of Triathlon," is a Roman Catholic nun. She began running in 1978 at age 48. As of 2009, has completed 38 marathons and 325 triathlons. An inspiration to athletes and non-athletes, the religious and the secular, she has appeared in such publications as Runner’s World, U.S. News & World Report, Sports Illustrated, AARP Bulletin, USA Today, the Seattle Times, the Denver Post, Competitor Magazine, Triathlete Magazine, Ironman Magazine, More Magazine, and numerous others She lives in Washington Sate.
KARIN EVANS has been a writer and editor at many major national publications, including Newsweek, Outside, and Health. Her writing has also appeared in such places as More Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Her book, The Lost Daughters of China (Tarcher, Penguin/Putnam, 2000) was a national bestseller. With Amy Tan, she co-authored the text for Mei-Mei: Portraits from a Chinese Orphanage (Photographs by Richard Bowen, Chronicle Books, 2005).
Klappentext
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Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and one-upmanship in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric, oblique, and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories.
Table of contents:
Spook Stories:
Reconciliation
The Face
Spinach
Bagnell Terrace
A Tale of an Empty House
Naboth's Vineyard
Expiation
Home Sweet Home
"And no Birds Sings"
The Corner House
Corstophine
The Temple
More Spook Stories:
The Step
The Bed by the Window
James Lamp
The Dance
The Hanging of Alfred Wadham
Pirates
The Wishing-Well
The Bath-Chair
Monkeys
Christopher Comes Back
The Sanctuary
Thursday Evenings
The Psychical Mallards
Zusammenfassung
SISTER MADONNA BUDER is 80 years old, has run more than 340 triathlons, and doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. In The Grace to Race, she shares the no-nonsense spirit and deep faith that inspired her extraordinary journey from a prominent St. Louis family to a Catholic Convent and finally to championship finish lines all over the world.
As a beautiful young woman, she became an elegant equestrian and accomplished amateur actress. But as she describes in this intimate memoir, she had a secret plan as early as 14: she wanted to devote her life to God. After being courted by the most eligible bachelors in her hometown, she chose a different path and became a Sister of the Good Shepherd.
She lived a mostly cloistered life as a Nun until her late forties, when a Priest suggested she take a run on the beach. She dug up a pair of shorts in a pile of donated clothes, found a pair of second-hand tennis shoes, and had a second epiphany. This time, she discovered the spiritual joy of pushing her body to the limit and of seeing God’s natural world in all its splendor.
More than thirty years later, she is known as the Iron Nun for all the triathlons she has won. Just five years ago, the age 75–79 category was created for her at the Hawaiian Ironman in Kona, where she completed a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a full 26.2-mile marathon in record time. Now she has set her sights on a new goal: inaugurating another new Ironman age group, 80–84, in…