This is another bust for my Gothic square read. I just ended up DNFing it at 22 percent. I really didn't want to torture myself with continuing to read this.

The introduction was really long and I skipped over it. These were the stories that I finished and read.

"Disappearances" (3 stars)-It starts off listing random disappearances of men in the area. And I thought there would be a big pay off in the end. Instead it just came to an abrupt end.

"The Old Nurse's Story (4 stars)-I thought it was interesting reading about how an old woman did what she could at a younger age to keep her young charge safe from phantoms that haunted the grounds. The backstory to these phantoms was interesting and I still wonder though at the new lord of the house who didn't seem put out by the hauntings.

"The Poor Clare" (1 star)- I did not understand this one at all. I finally just gave up after re-reading it through twice.

I tried to start the next story and found myself yawning and decided to just stop reading. I am annoyed I paid $9.99 for this kindle version since this is rife with typos all over that have "ibid = page XX" and whatever page number was in there. The book also had footnotes all through it, and when you would click on one it did not take you back to where you left off in the book. Every single time I hit the back arrow I would get kicked out of the book. So my frustration with the typos, the footnotes littered on every sentence just made me finally decide to throw in the white towel of surrender. ( )

Virtue won't save you
handsome men can't be trusted
they shoot dogs for fun. ( )

The Old Nurse's Story, about a beautiful ghost child intent on luring a warm-blooded child into the freezing nights on the moors; The Squire's Story, about a gentleman with a nebulous past who moves into a grand house and marries a local belle only to reveal a sordid secret; The Poor Clare about an old woman who casts a spell which results in a lovely young woman being followed by her evil and seductive double; Lois the Witch, a terrifying and heartbreaking reprise of the Salem witch trials... out of nine stories in all, seven of them held me captive in this collection, which is quite an excellent average in any short story collection.

I've read some of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels and been highly impressed with her social commentary and vivid portrayals of class conflicts, but here we see an altogether different side of Gaskell's writing, which is the one she felt more free to show with an assumed name, under the cover of anonymity. No longer constricted by propriety, she was able to show a world operating beneath that thin veneer that Victorian morals dictated and through the looking glass: curses which held their sway over many generations, women with witchy powers, or who were assumed to be witches because of their barely hidden sexuality, men who wreaked true evil and cruelty and death by overreaching their powers in a paternalistic society, and yet, also and always, a woman's love and nurturing as her strongest defence against many of those evils. Two sides then to Elizabeth Gaskell. Two sides very much worth discovering. I predict there will be more E.G. in my reading future, and that I will return to some of my favourites in this story collection too. ( )

Una extraordinaria escritora cuyas descripciones te hacen sentir cada momento de la historia y percibir cada detalle en el ambiente. ( )

These are quite different from modern horror tales. Some have supernatural elements such as curses, ghosts and doppelgangers. Others are more an exploration of the twisted side of human nature-- a son gone bad, the twisted frenzy of the Salem witch trials.

I found them enjoyable--they won't keep you up at night, but will give you a bit to ponder. ( )