Showing results for "Peter James" in Short Stories

Combining stories from ebook story collections Short Shockers One and Short Shockers Two, and with never-before-seen new material, this is a story collection you won't forget. From a woman intent on revenge, to a restaurant critic with a fear of the number thirteen, and from a story of ghostly terror to the first ever case of his best-loved Detective, Roy Grace, James exposes the Achilles heels of each of his characters, and makes us question how well we can trust ourselves, and each other.

Set deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, the chilling cautionary tale 'The Man Would Be King' tells the story of two conmen with an insane and dangerous plan to conquer a remote region of Afghanistan. Adapted from Kipling's debut novel, The Light That Failed revolves around war illustrator Dick Heldar, his struggles to become a successful artist and his unrequited love for his childhood sweetheart, Maisie.

This gripping novel is not only one of the best books written about Vietnam; it is also one of the most powerful anti-war novels in American literature. Walter James has no face. Braiden Chaney has no arms or legs. They lost them 22 years ago, in Vietnam. Now, in the course of one long night in a V.A. hospital, these two soldiers, one black, the other white, reveal how they came to be where they are and what they can only hope to become.

A child's memory, a shadowed path, a glimpse of something that should not be. In A Vignette, M. R. James offers a final brushstroke of quiet terror—intimate, elusive, and disquietingly real. This short, unsettling piece lingers like a half-remembered dream, evoking the moment when the everyday slips into the uncanny. With masterful restraint and emotional undercurrent, James reminds us that the most chilling hauntings are those born in the mind—and never truly forgotten.

On a winter's night, as the old year slips silently into the new, shadows stir in forgotten corners, and the past refuses to rest. In The Experiment, M. R. James once again proves himself a master of quiet horror—where the chill creeps not from the cold, but from something far older, and far less forgiving. Subtle, strange, and unsettling, this is a tale that whispers its secrets, if you dare to listen. Perfect for a solitary listen by candlelight, just as midnight strikes.

A new Latin master. A strange sentence. A figure at the window. When boys at a quiet English school begin seeing things that shouldn't be there—and writing things they don't understand—a mystery begins to unfold, darker than any textbook could explain. In A School Story, M. R. James blends scholarly detail with creeping dread to deliver a haunting tale of the past refusing to stay buried. Quiet horror with a bite.

A mournful cry, a well that echoes the past, and an invitation to remember the forgotten. In Wailing Well , M. R. James crafts a haunting tale of mystery and spectral terror, where the quiet of a rural landscape is disturbed by a cry from the past—an eerie wail that resonates through time. As James unearths the secrets buried in the forgotten well, he masterfully builds a sense of creeping dread and inevitable doom, reminding us that some things—once heard—can never be forgotten.