Uncanny Tales

Mrs. Molesworth charmed generations of children with her nursery tales, but here she casts off the nursery and steps into shadow. These uncanny tales venture into ghost stories, supernatural occurrences, and the unsettling spaces between the rational and the inexplicable. Written for readers who have outgrown picture books but haven't yet reached for Victorian gothic, these stories occupy a deliciously ambiguous territory. A spectral child appears at a window. A familiar room reveals something wrong. A gift carries an unwanted legacy. Molesworth brings her gift for domestic observation to sinister ends - the horror is always rooted in the familiar made strange. The stories work not through gore or spectacle, but through that particular childhood terror of knowing something is wrong with the world when everyone else insists everything is fine. For readers who loved the chills of The Turn of the Screw but want something more restrained, these tales tap into something equally disturbing but gentler in delivery.