The Haunted Library

A popular anthology published in 2016 before the launch of the British Library Tales of the Weird rejoins the series with new material included. Featuring stone-cold classics from M. R. James and Margaret Irwin alongside rare items from the labyrinthine basements of the British Library collections. As he turned over its stiff and yellow pages, he noticed with pleasure the smell of corruption that had first repelled him in these decaying volumes, a smell, he now thought, of ancient and secret knowledge... Researchers prying into an obscure manuscript come face to face with its ghoulish guardian. A bookseller digging through an attic disturbs something far more dangerous than dust. An uncanny tome tempts its reader onto a path of untold evil. Welcome to The Haunted Library, a collection of fourteen tales steeped in the dark psychic traces found in the stacks and shelves of libraries, bookshops, and other troves of hidden knowledge. Including stories from rare pulp magazines, classics from the minds of M. R. James, L. P. Hartley and Margaret Irwin, and modern chillers from Penelope Lively and C. J. Faraday, this volume invites you into a hushed realm of cursed authors, ghostly bibliophiles, and readers haunted by the weird powers of the written word.