Books by Robert Aickman

"e;Cold Hand in Mine"e; was first published in the UK in 1975 and in the US in 1977. The story "e;Pages from a Young Girl's Journal"e; won the Aickman World Fantasy Award in 1975. It was originally published in "e;The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction"e; in 1973 before appearing in this collection. "e;Cold Hand in Mine"e; stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full, being more ambiguous than standard ghost stories. Throughout the stories the reader is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("e;Pages from a Young Girl's Journal"e;) but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing. "e;Of all the authors of uncanny tales, Aickman is the best ever...His tales literally haunt me; his plots and his turns of phrase run through my head at the most unlikely moments"e;. (Russell Kirk).

Robert Aickman (1914-1981) was the grandson of Richard Marsh, a leading Victorian novelist of the occult. Though his chief occupation in life was first as a conservationist of England's canals he eventually turned his talents to writing what he called 'strange stories.' Dark Entries (1964) was his first full collection, the debut in a body of work that would inspire Peter Straub to hail Aickman as 'this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories.'

A gloriously eccentric fantasy by the "most profound writer of what we call horror stories." -Peter Straub

After Robert Aickman's death in 1981 the manuscript of The Model, a wintry rococo fable set in Czarist Russia, was located among his papers. Aickman had told a friend he considered this novella to be 'one of the best things I have ever written, if not the very best.' It was duly published for the first time in 1987.The Model tells of Elena, a grave girl inclined to losing herself in dreams of becoming a student ballerina orcoryphee. Her dolour darkens further when she learns she is to be sold into marital slavery by her father so as to settle the family's debts. Refusing an unendurable future she sets out to the city of Smorevsk to pursue her dream. First, however, she must traverse a landscape crowded by highly curious characters and creatures.'A must for Aickman fans... A model of eloquent elegant enchantment.' Robert Bloch (Psycho)

Robert Aickman, the supreme master of the supernatural, brings together eight stories where strange things happen that the reader is unable to predict. His characters are often lonely and middle-aged but all have the same thing in common - they are all brought to the brink of an abyss that shows how terrifyingly fragile our piece of mind actually is. "e;The Next Glade"e;, "e;Bind Your Hair"e; and "e;The Stains"e; appeared together in "e;The Wine-Dark Sea"e; in 1988 while "e;The Unsettled Dust"e;, "e;The House of the Russians"e;, "e;No Stronger Than a Flower"e;, "e;The Cicerones"e; and "e;Ravissante"e; first appeared in "e;Sub Rosa"e; in 1968. The stories were published together as "e;The Unsettled Dust"e; in 1990. Aickman received the British Fantasy Award in 1981 for "e;The Stains"e;, which had first appeared in the anthology "e;New Terrors"e; (1980), before appearing in the last original posthumous collection of Aickman's short stories, "e;Night Voices"e; (1985). "e;We are all potential victims of the powers Aickman so skilfully conjures and commands."e; (Robert Bloch).

'Griselda de Reptonville did not know what love was until she joined one of Mrs. Hatch's famous house parties at Beams, and there met Leander...'The Late Breakfasters (1964) was the sole novel Robert Aickman published in his lifetime. Its heroine Griselda is invited to a grand country house where a political gathering is to be addressed by the Prime Minister, followed by an All Party Dance. Expecting little, Griselda instead meets the love of her life. But their fledgling closeness is cruelly curtailed, and for Griselda life then becomes a quest to recapture the wholeness and happiness she felt all too briefly.'Those, if any, who wish to know more about me' - Aickman wrote in 1965 - 'should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters.' Opening as a comedy of manners, its playful seriousness slowly fades into an elegiac variation on the great Greek myth of thwarted love.