Condition: Acceptable. Please see the images for more details
Jacket illustration by Paul Jennis/
Blurb: “50 GREAT TALES OF TERROR - EDITED BY JOHN CANNING
Stories of terrifying events have fascinated men from time immemorial; and in our own day they are as compelling in their attraction as ever.
An explosive force in the heart of man, terror has dynamited him from the cave into the civilization of the twentieth century.
Gathered together in this book are some of the aspects the face of terror has assumed through the centuries.
Here is Genghis Khan whimsically amused as six men are boiled alive for his entertainment; the Sawney Beane family living in incest and by cannibalism; the infamous treachery and massacre of Glencoe.
Here, too, is the ritual murder of Thuggee, and the terrible practice of Suttee.
Krakatoa erupts with the force of a hundred hydrogen bombs; the San Andreas fault "creeps" to cause the San Francisco earthquake; coffins rain like bombs on Valparaiso.
And as we approach the present we find a broadcast by Orson Welles causing mass hysteria; an English officer surviving death by hanging during the Second World War; the immolation of Hiroshima.
A test-parachutist and a naval pilot find a heroic answer to fear; but the unbelievable moors murders present a darker side of terror.
As the reader looks upon the face of ter-ror, so does he become aware that its most numerous features are provided by the cruelty and wickedness of man himself.
It is as though he were looking at his own ugly and distorted reflection.
And this no doubt is why these tales of terror are so completely absorbIng.