Books published by publisher Aegypan

This collection of short and chilling ghost stories was originally published in 1913 and is loosely organized into four categories: The Ways of Ghosts, including "An Arrest," in which a murderer is escorted back to jail by the prison guard he murdered to escape; Soldier Folk including "A Man with Two Lives," in which a man dead and buried returns to claim his belongings, Some Haunted Houses, including "The Other Lodgers," in which a man checks into what he believes is a hotel only to discover it is an abandoned hospital, and Mysterious Disappearances, including "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field," in which a man disappears in full view of witnesses while crossing a field.

"I wud hae ye promise to merry me, Kirsty, come the time," says the young Francie Gordon to Kirsty; "and that ye ken as well as I du mysel!"Kirsty of Corbyknowe leads a simple life among the hills of Scotland, raised by a farming family and blessed with the patient wisdom of the country folk. Frank Gordon is of higher blood, his father having risen to military distinction -- as his widowed mother reminds him, keeping him from his lower-born childhood friend. Yet Frank knows his father would have approved: for Kirsty's father was his own father's best friend.

THOSE BUMPTIOUS BASTABLES!"Oswald is a delightful narrator and the stories he tells are among Nesbit's best." -- Gore VidalAs if the remarkable collections of children's adventures The Story of the Treasure Seekers and The Wouldbegoods weren't enough! E. Nesbit's third book of this series finishes the delightful trilogy by this famous fantasy author.Who needs fantasy, though, when you have these wonderful tales of the Bastable children, narrated by Oswald Bastable in his best superior third person fashion. Here again is Oswald's troublesome little brother H.O. and Dicky and Dora and Alice and Noël, to say nothing of the Bastable uncles, father and mother. The story is told from a child's point of view. The narrator is Oswald, but on the first page he announces: "It is one of us that tells this story – but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't." However, his occasional lapse into first person and the undue praise he likes to heap on himself, makes his identity obvious to the attentive reader long before he reveals it himself.

Trot is the young daughter of a California schooner captain. She is accompanied by Captain Bill -- an old sailor with a wooden leg who was her father's captain. Trot meets Button-Bright, a boy using a magic umbrella to travel from his home in Philadelphia. Trot, Button, and Captain Bill decide to travel with the umbrella, which takes them to a literal island in the sky. Sky Island is divided in half, one side pink, and the other blue, and the blues and pinks are at war. Trot, Button, and Captain Bill are imprisoned, and must somehow escape and end the conflict so they can return home.

James Blish noted that Morris's style was a successful recapturing of the style of Sir Thomas Malory, "all the way down to the marginal glosses and the nonstop compound sentences hitched together with scores of semicolons. He also recaptured much of the poetry; and if the reader will make the small effort necessary to accommodate himself to the rhythm of the style, he will find both it and the story rewarding."The Wood Beyond the World was first published in 1894 and its author, William Morris is often considered one of the authors who aided in the growth of fantasy, utopian literature and science fiction. C.S. Lewis cites William Morris as one of his favorite authors and J.R.R. Tolkein admits to being influenced greatly by Morris' fantasies.

"If you please, Mistah Buzzard, you can tell me if there is anybody way down South where you come from who can make his voice sound just like the voices of other people. Is there?" Bobby was using his very politest manner. "Cert'nly! Cert'nly!" chuckled Ol' Mistah Buzzard. "It's Mistah Mockah the Mocking-bird. Why, that bird just likes to go around making trouble; he just naturally likes to." "He is right here in the Green Forest now," replied Bobby Coon. "What's that yo' am a-saying, Brer Coon? What's that?" cried Ol' Mistah Buzzard, growing very excited.

Instead of flying straight to that old nest, he first flew over the tree so that he could look down into it. Right away he saw something that made him gasp and blink his eyes. It was quite large and white, and it looked -- it looked very much indeed like an egg! Do you wonder that Blacky gasped and blinked? You know Blacky has a weakness for eggs. The more he thought about it, the hungrier he grew. . . !

Try as they might, the Daemons of the Caves could not tempt old Santa Claus in any way. Quite the contrary, his cheery laughter disconcerted the evil ones and showed to them the folly of their undertaking. It's well known that no harm can come to Santa Claus while he is in the Laughing Valley, for the fairies, and ryls, and knooks all protect him. But on Christmas Eve he drives his reindeer out into the big world, carrying a sleighload of toys and pretty gifts to the children. Christmas Eve is the one time when his enemies have a chance to injure him. So the Daemons made their plans and awaited the arrival of Christmas Eve. Santa bridled his reindeer to the sleigh, and took to the air -- when suddenly a strange thing happened: a rope shot through the moonlight and a big noose that was in the end of it settled over the arms and body of Santa Claus and drew tight. Before he could resist or even cry out he was jerked from the seat of the sleigh and tumbled head foremost into a snowbank, while the reindeer rushed onward with the load of toys and carried it quickly out of sight and sound. Such a surprising experience confused old Santa for a moment, and when he had collected his senses he found that the wicked Daemons had pulled him from the snowdrift and bound him tightly with many coils of the stout rope. And then they carried the kidnapped Santa Claus away to their mountain, where they thrust the prisoner into a secret cave and chained him to the rocky wall so that he could not escape.

George Macdonald, the author of Phantastes and Lilith, provides a somewhat different tale, here, with the story of Hector Macintosh, a young Scotsman, son of a banker, and a poet consumed by the ideal. But his verse is strictly private: "His mind would dwell much upon love and friendship in the imaginary abstract, but of neither had he had the smallest immediate experience." That is, until he meets Annie Melville, who takes service as a parlor maid in his household to help support herself and her mother. Annie is beneath his station -- but Hector is oblivious to such concerns. Under Annie's influence, he blossoms as a writer. But will he blossom into a man with the courage to let her know his feelings for her? And what might occur if he does?

This novel of Mark Twain's -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- gives us an odd view of the American literary genius: it shows is bent twoward science fictional. Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself and severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor.A Yankee engineer from Connecticut is accidentally transported back in time to the court of King Arthur, where he fools the inhabitants of that time into thinking he is a magician—and soon uses his knowledge of modern technology to become a "magician" in earnest, stunning the English of the Early Middle Ages with such feats as demolitions, fireworks and the shoring up of a holy well. Twain's fascination appears in his time traveler (from contemporary America, yet!), using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. As with all works of a master like Twain, we highly recommend this novel -- but just between us, this book is a lot of fun, too. Go ahead, read it now.

These they would bring to their queen, or with them richly adorn themselves. Thus the Mermaid Queen and her maidens made a court of beauty -- famed wherever mermaids and merrymen lived. And they often talked of human maids."How funny it must be to wear clothes!" said one."Well, I should like to be a real woman for a while, just to try it, and see how it feels to walk on legs," said another, rather demurely -- as if afraid the other mermaids might not like her remark.Out rang a lusty chorus, "No! No! Horrible! What an idea! Who wouldn't be a mermaid?"

Nobody really wrote most of the stories. People told them in all parts of the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented. They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over. The grannies told them to the grandchildren, and when the grandchildren became grannies they repeated the same old tales to the new generation. Homer knew the stories and made up the 'Odyssey' out of half a dozen of them. All the history of Greece till about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fées, a collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them into 'King Lear' and other plays; he could not have made them up himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are mistaken: the thing is impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy tale; you can only mix up and dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters into new dresses, as Miss Thackeray did so well in 'Five Old Friends.' If any big girl of fourteen reads this preface, let her insist on being presented with "Five Old Friends."