
ON A DARK CHRISTMAS NIGHT – 25 Holiday Spook Classics & Murder Mysteries
Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories, Holiday Murders, and Fireside MysteriesBy Robert Louis Stevenson, O. Henry, Wilkie Collins, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, G.K. Chesterton, M.R. James, Catherine Crowe, William Douglas O'Connor, Charles Dickens, John Kendrick Bangs, Louisa M. Alcott, Emmuska Orczy, Grant Allen, Leonard KipLength40h 43m
About this audiobook
ON A DARK CHRISTMAS NIGHT gathers twenty-five holiday tales in which festivity becomes an aperture to the uncanny, the criminal, and the psychologically obscure. Moving among Gothic apparitions, sensation fiction, detective puzzles, comic macabre, moral parable, and supernatural antiquarianism, the volume situates Christmas not merely as a season of comfort but as a stage for concealed guilt and spectral return. Haunted houses, ominous visitors, inexplicable events, and murder investigations give the collection a rich tonal range, while its yuletide settings sharpen the tension between domestic warmth and encroaching darkness. Its contributors represent a remarkable cross-section of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and American popular literature. Authors associated with the Gothic revival, Victorian sensation, the emergence of detective fiction, Christmas publishing, and the short-story tradition bring distinct national and stylistic inflections to shared concerns with secrecy, justice, memory, and the afterlife. The coexistence of celebrated novelists, influential genre innovators, and witty fabulists reveals how supernatural and mystery narratives developed through overlapping literary cultures rather than isolated traditions. This anthology is especially rewarding for readers seeking a learned yet pleasurable survey of holiday dark fiction. It offers an unusual opportunity to compare changing conceptions of fear, crime, and seasonal ritual within one carefully framed volume. Students of Victorian literature and genre history, as well as lovers of classic mysteries and ghost stories, will find in these varied works both entertainment and a lively dialogue about what haunts the Christmas imagination.
Audiobook details
GenreHorror, Mystery and Thriller
Length40 hrs 43 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 4, 2016
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1KNOCK! KNOCK! WHO'S THERE? – 5 Detective Hamilton Cleek Riddles in One Premium Edition (Annotated)
2The Christmas Banquet (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
3What the Shepherd Saw: A Tale of Four Moonlight Nights (Thomas Hardy)
4First Night
5Second Night
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6Third Night
7Fourth Night
8The Wolves of Cernogratz (Saki)
9Markheim (Robert Louis Stevenson)
10A Chaparral Christmas Gift (O. Henry)
11The Flying Stars (G.K. Chesterton)
12The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance (M.R. James)
13Letter I
14Letter II
15Letter III
16Letter IV
17Ghosts and Family Legends (Catherine Crowe)
18Preface
191. Round the Fire
20First Evening
21Second Evening
22Third Evening
23Fourth Evening
24Fifth Evening
25Sixth Evening
26Seventh Evening
27Eighth Evening
28Appendix
292. Legends of the Earthbound
30The Italian's Story
31The Dutch Officer's Story
32The Old French Gentleman's Story
33The Swiss Lady's Story
34The Sheep-Farmer's Story
35My Friend's Story
36The Ghost: A Christmas Story (William Douglas O’Connor)
37Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions (Charles Dickens)
38Chapter I. To Be Taken Immediately
39Chapter II. Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time
40Chapter III. To Be Taken at the Dinner-Table
41Chapter IV. Not to Be Taken for Granted
42Chapter V. To Be Taken in Water
43Chapter VI. To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt
44Chapter VII. To Be Taken and Tried
45Chapter VIII. To Be Taken for Life
46The Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
47Stave I. Marley's Ghost
48Stave II. The First of the Three Spirits
49Stave III. The Second of the Three Spirits
50Stave IV. The Last of the Spirits