Thomas Burke's 'The Hands of Mr. Ottermole' is widely regarded as one of the best detective stories of the thirties. First published in 1931, Burke's tale was later adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Many of the well known western and detective short stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This book presents an exploration of how Golden Age detective fiction encounters educational ideas, particularly those forged by the transformative educational policymaking of the interwar period. Charting the educational policy and provision of the era, and referring to works by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edmund Crispin and others, this book explores the educational capacity and agency of literary detectives, the learning spaces of the genre and the kinds of knowledge that are made available to inquirers both inside and outside the text. It is argued that the genre explores a range of contemporaneous propositions on the balance between academic curriculum and practicum, length of school life and the value of lifelong learning. This book’s closing chapter considers the continuing pedagogic value for contemporary classrooms of engaging with the genre as a rich discursive and imaginative space for exploring educational ideas. Framing Golden Age detective fiction as a genre profoundly concerned with learning, this book will be highly relevant reading for academics, postgraduate students and scholars involved in the fields of English language arts, twentieth-century literature and the theories of learning more broadly. Those interested in detective fiction and interdisciplinary literary studies will also find the volume of interest.

This early work by William Wymark Jacobs was originally published in 1902 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Jacobs worked as a clerk in the civil service before turning to writing in his late twenties, publishing his first short story in 1895. Most of Jacobs' work appeared before the onset of World War I, and although the majority of his output was humorous in tone, he is best-remembered now for his macabre tales, particularly those contained in his 1902 collection The Lady of the Barge, such as 'The Monkey's Paw' and 'The Toll House'.

A handbook of horror cinema

It's a quiet night at The Hangman's Tavern just outside Cedar Hill, Ohio -- that is until a disheveled stranger shows up and begins to tell the patrons a story, one that begins: "His full name was Ronald James Williamson, and he killed his first child when he was still a child himself ..." The stranger's tale includes a little girl named Sarah Thompson, her mother Lucy, and how a tragedy would, in a way, bring all three of them together and result in the birth of a creature of myth, a Golem of vengeance, called Mr. Hands. Here for the first time is the author's preferred text of the third novel in the Cedar Hill Series, including new and expanded scenes. Also included is Braunbeck's International Horror Guild Award-winning novella, Kiss of the Mudman.