A Haunting Beauty

Literature & Fiction

Birkin, Charles

Genre Fiction

Midnight House

"Never fails to shock and surprise you . . . brimming with unexpected twists." - Sunday Express "[N]ot for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone. He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture." - Hugh Lamb "[M]ore than a definite touch of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe." - Dennis Wheatley "Horror and fantasy stories . . . engagingly told." - Publishers Weekly "Few writers of horror today approach the standards of Birkin." - Ulster Star A sinister baron and his wife inflict unimaginable tortures on their young niece to compel her to sign over her fortune. - In the aftermath of World War II, a German woman's garden is lush and beautiful, for an appalling reason. - Missionaries in Africa get a gruesome surprise when their converts take a biblical text too literally. - A child's fantasy becomes a deadly game with a macabre ending for his adult playmate. The thirteen stories in The Smell of Evil (1965) reveal Sir Charles Birkin (1907-1985) at his diabolical best. Largely eschewing ghost stories and tales of the supernatural, Birkin pioneered a different type of modern horror fiction, describing in exquisitely polished prose the sufferings of ordinary, decent people who encounter inexplicable cruelty and evil in their everyday lives. An important and neglected figure in 20th century British horror fiction, Birkin returns to shock a new generation of readers in this edition, the first in more than 30 years, which features a new introduction by John Llewellyn Probert.

The Smell of Evil

Valancourt Books

Devils' Spawn

An important, though neglected, figure in twentieth-century British horror fiction, Sir Charles Birkin (1907-1985) began his literary career as editor of the popular - and now highly collectible - Creeps series of horror anthologies in the 1930s, which featured tales by well-known writers such as H.R. Wakefield, Lord Dunsany and Russell Thorndike, as well as contributions by Birkin himself. A master of the conte cruel, often with a Grand Guignol finish, Birkin found true horror not in ghosts or the supernatural but in man's inhumanity to man. Never before reprinted and extremely scarce, Devils' Spawn (1936) collects sixteen of Birkin's stories, many of them first published in the Creeps volumes, including the horror gems "The Terror on Tobit" and "The Harlem Horror". Birkin's collection The Smell of Evil (1965) is also available from Valancourt Books. "Not for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone." - Hugh Lamb "More than a definite touch of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe." - Dennis Wheatley "Few writers of horror today approach the standards of Birkin." - Ulster Star

An important, though neglected, figure in twentieth-century British horror fiction, Sir Charles Birkin (1907-1985) began his literary career as editor of the popular - and now highly collectible - Creeps series of horror anthologies in the 1930s, which featured tales by well-known writers such as H.R. Wakefield, Lord Dunsany and Russell Thorndike, as well as contributions by Birkin himself.  A master of the conte cruel, often with a Grand Guignol finish, Birkin found true horror not in ghosts or the supernatural but in man's inhumanity to man. Never before reprinted and extremely scarce, Devils' Spawn (1936) collects sixteen of Birkin's stories, many of them first published in the Creeps volumes, including the horror gems "The Terror on Tobit" and "The Harlem Horror". Birkin's collection The Smell of Evil (1965) is also available from Valancourt Books.  "Not for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone." - Hugh Lamb  "More than a definite touch of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe." - Dennis Wheatley  "Few writers of horror today approach the standards of Birkin." - Ulster Star

Birkin, Charles Lloyd

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Birkin, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Birkin, Charles

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Birkin, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Haunting Beauty

The Smell of Evil

Devils' Spawn

Devils' Spawn