Ghosts of Christmas Past: A chilling collection of modern and classic Christmas ghost stories - Softcover

A present contains a monstrous secret. An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party. A shadow slips across the floor by firelight. A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams. Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

Jenn Ashworth was born in 1982 in Preston. She studied English at Cambridge and since then has gained an MA from Manchester University, trained as a librarian and run a prison library in Lancashire. She now lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster. Her first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, was published in 2009 and won a Betty Trask Award. In 2011 her second, Cold Light, was published by Sceptre and she was chosen by BBC's The Culture Show as one of the twelve Best New British Novelists. In 2013 her third novel, The Friday Gospels, was published to resounding critical acclaim. She lives in Lancaster with her husband, son and daughter. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972) was a British writer, described by Lord David Cecil as 'One of the most distinguished of modern novelists; and one of the most original'. His best-known work is The Go-Between, which was made into a 1970 film. Other works include The Betrayal, The Brickfield, The Boat, My Fellow Devils, A Perfect Woman and Eustace and Hilda, for which he was awarded the 1947 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He was awarded the CBE in 1956.