Book Review Sept / Oct

Wordsworth Classics

The Lost World & Other Stories

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

978-1-85326-245-6

£2.99

The five stories in this collection are:

1) The Lost World

2) The Poison Belt

3) The Land of Mist

4) The Disintegration Machine

5) When the World Screamed

Professor G.E. Challenger is Doyle’s second famous character/world creation past the Holmes and Watson world and “The Lost World” is the most famous of these stories having been adapted several times to tv and film.

The writing style is less forgiving to time then the Holmes stories, but The Lost World is good read provided you keep in mind the period it was written in.

I found Land of Mist quite tedious, as it seemed to struggle with being a story about investigating various supernatural / mystic events and a working paper fighting with itself as to whether the writer believed or not in the phenomena.

It was after this I took a reading break before finishing the last two shorter stories in the collection. By these the wind had expired from Professor G.E. Challenger’s sails and was much less the blustering and foreboding character he started out as being.

Wordsworth Editions

Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural

Children of the Night Classic Vampire Stories

David Stuart Davies     

978-1-84022-546-4   

£2.99

A collection of short vampire stories, or extracts from longer works. Some are more entertaining than others.

The Vampyre a Tale

Varney the Vampyre

The Curse of the Vourdalak

Carmilla

Dracula and the Three Brides

For the Blood is the Life

Good Lady Ducayne

An Episode of Cathedral History

The Horla

Bewitched

The Welcome Visitor

For more details on these books visit http://wordsworth-editions.com