A wonderful collection ofstories to chill the bones. Make sure the windows are shut and settle down with a mug of hot chocolate.

Sometimes the classic stories are the best with M R James short stories about ghosts every story has a chill inside wet in this collection in one book

Mr James ghost stories are as creepy as ever no blood or gore just good old fashioned wonderfully frightening ghost stories

The end of British Summer Time is the perfect time to pick up this chilling collection, sure to unnerve even the most sceptical and rational reader on those dark winter nights. The strength of James’s narratives is their subtlety, attention to detail and use of the psychological to induce a sense of unease in the reader. Many share a common theme: an academic drawn to a church, mausoleum or similar. Indeed like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses many of James’s protagonists seem to succumb when: ‘the cold smell of sacred stone called him’. James adroitly depicts the simultaneously comforting and unnerving side of religious buildings in: ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ and ‘The Uncommon Prayer-Book’. Both brilliantly depict the changing atmosphere as day turns to night. Personal picks of the collection were: ‘The Mezzotint’ which is suggestive of the work of Philip K Dick. ‘Number 13’ is a classic missing room story which to the modern reader has a strangely quantum feel. ‘Casting the Runes’ is typically James, a psychological thriller based on curses which chills without resort to gratuitous visceral detail.