Other books that might interest you

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  The Gardener

  E.F. Benson

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  Hugh and Margaret Grainger have rented a lovely old house near an excellent golf course. At the bottom of the garden is a strange, well-kept, but untenented thatched cottage.A visitor to the Graingers has a strange and overwhelming presentiment on passing the cottage that the house is actually not empty. Indeed, on several occasions he seems to see a light in the cottage. And one evening he thinks he sees a figure entering the house. But every attempt to investigate confirms that the cottage is abandoned.Margaret Grainer is an enthusiast for communicating with the spirit world via the planchette. When she starts receiving peculiar messages from someone calling himself the gardener everyone is intrigued but sceptical. But then the gardener announces his wish to enter the house... and catapults the inhabitants of the house into a strange and terrifying spiral of events.

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  The Bookworm

  Lavanya R.N.

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  "Sesha is a silent boy who reads all the time... and he has a little brown book that no one
  has ever seen the inside of. One day, Sesha speaks, and no one understands why he
  speaks differently. But when they see his brown book and the magic he can create,
  Sesha becomes a whole new person!"

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  The Wedding Knell - A Victorian...

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  In The Wedding Knell, Mrs Dabney (a woman who married and was widowed twice) is going to be marrying Mr. Ellenwood, a 65 year old who had been attracted to Dabney in the past. When Mrs. Dabney enters the church for the wedding, the bell let out a deep knell, usually reserved for funerals. The bell continued to ring until the groom arrived. The groom arrived with a funeral precession, and claimed that Mrs. Dabney's youth was given to other husbands, and he was forced to live an unhappy life because he couldn't have her. Now that he was finally asked to marry her, there was nothing left for him but old age and death, so he stated "Let us be married; and then to our coffins!". Though shocked, she continued with the marriage, and they would let their love last for eternity.

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  Female Short Story The - A...

  Louisa May Alcott, Mary...

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  A wise man once said ‘The safest place for a child is in the arms of his mother’s voice’.  This is a perfect place to start our anthology of female short stories. 
   
  Some of our earliest memories are of our mothers telling us bedtime stories. This is not to demote the value of fathers but more to promote the often-overshadowed talents of the gentler sex. 
   
  Perhaps ‘gentler’ is a word that we should re-evaluate. In the course of literary history it is men who dominated by opportunity and with their stranglehold on the resources, both financial and technological, who brought their words to a wider audience.  Men often placed women on a pedestal from where their talented words would not threaten their own.   
   
  In these stories we begin with the original disrupter and renegade author Aphra Behn.  A peek at her c.v. shows an astounding capacity and leaves us wondering at just how she did all that. 
   
  In those less modern days to be a woman, even ennobled, was to be seen as second class.  You literally were chattel and had almost no rights in marriage.  As Charlotte Smith famously said your role as wife was little more than ‘legal prostitute’.  From such a despicable place these authors have used their talents and ideas and helped redress that situation.   
   
  Slowly at first.  Privately printed, often anonymously or under the cloak of a male pseudonym their words spread.  Their stories admired and, usually, their role still obscured from rightful acknowledgement. 
   
  Aided by more advanced technology, the 1700’s began to see a steady stream of female writers until by the 1900’s mass market publishing saw short stories by female authors from all the strata of society being avidly read by everyone.  Their names are a rollcall of talent and ‘can do’ spirit and society is richer for their works.   
   
  In literature at least women are now acknowledged as equals, true behind the scenes little has changed but if (and to mis-quote Jane Austen) there is one universal truth, it is that ideas change society.  These women’s most certainly did and will continue to do so as they easily write across genres, from horror and ghost stories to tender tales of love and making your way in society’s often grueling rut.  They will not be silenced, their ideas and passion move emotions, thoughts and perhaps more importantly our ingrained view of what every individual human being is capable of.    
   
  It is because of their desire to speak out, their desire to add their talents to the bias around them that we perhaps live in more enlightened, almost equal, times.   
   
  Within these stories you will also find very occasional examples of historical prejudice.  A few words here and there which in today’s world some may find inappropriate or even offensive.  It is not our intention to make anyone uncomfortable but to show that the world in order to change must reconcile itself to the actual truth rather than put it out of sight.  Context is everything, both to understand and to illuminate the path forward.  The author’s words are set, our reaction to them encourages our change. 
   
  01 - The Female Short Story. A Chronological History - An Introduction - Volume 3 
  02 - A Witch's Den by Helena Blavatsky 
  15 - The Ghost in the Clock Room by Hesba Stretton 
  04 - The Last of Squire Ennismore by Charlotte Riddell 
  05 - The Brothers by Louisa May Alcott 
  06 - Carnivorine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper 
  04 - The Face in the Glass by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 
  08 - The Moonstone Mass by Harriet Prescott Spofford 
  09 - The General's Will by Vera Jelihovsky 
  10 - The Story of the RipplingTrain by Mary Louisa Molesworth 
  11 - The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth by Rhoda Broughton 
  12 - A Twin Identity by Edith Stewart Drewery&

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  Old Hampshire Vignettes

  Mary Elizabeth Hawker

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  Lanoe Falconer is the pseudonym of the English writer, Marie Elizabeth Hawker (1848 - 1908). Her works, though few, were well received. She lived most of her life in the Hampshire Valley, the source of these verbal sketches. Never married, her health was precarious, preventing her from writing more, though she wished to. She died of tuberculosis, as did her brother. (Summary by David Wales)

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  Thunderstruck - & Other Stories

  Elizabeth McCracken

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  From the author of the beloved novel The Giant's House comes a beautiful new story collection. In 'Property,' a young scholar, grieving the sudden death of his wife, decides to refurbish a rental house by removing his landlord's possessions. In 'Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey,' the household of a successful filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject, whose trust he betrayed. In 'The Lost & Found Department of Greater Boston,' the manager of a grocery store becomes fixated on the famous case of a missing local woman. And in 'Thunderstruck,' a family makes a quixotic decision to flee to Paris for a summer, only to find their lives altered in an unimaginable way by their teenage daughter's risky behavior.

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