{"product_id":"2940046376678","title":"Crafts and Assaults: Two Uncanny Tales for the Season","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt’s ‘the time of year when the English-speaking peoples, not without an assist from their Celtic connexions, tend invariably towards the haunted and the grotesque in their tales and anecdotes’; and rather than allow that season to pass without something to offer our readers from the very beginning of it, Mr Pyle and Mr Wemyss made a wager on the Saturday before All Hallows’ Eve: a story apiece, as ‘unco’ uncanny’ as they felt they wished to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe novelist, West Country essayist, and historian GMW Wemyss returns us to the dark, deep woods of Wiltshire at night, older than Stonehenge, where dark deeds are afoot – until interrupted by the well-loved ensemble cast of his Village Tales series, led as ever by the indomitable (and exasperating) duke of Taunton and the Muscular Christianity of the Rector, Fr Noel Paddick. (Apparently, a case of possession can, actually, be stopped by a brilliant throw in to the wicket. Sometimes....)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd Markham Shaw Pyle, the historian and critic, then takes us out ‘West of One-Hundredth’, to the Big Empty of rural Texas, where anything might happen: and does happen, posing a problem of law and ethics, and the howling question, ‘When does the beast crowd out the man?’\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the Eve of All Hallows to Christmas of the Dickensian ghost stories, this is the season of the uncanny and the strange; and this volume is as near to a gift as the authors can contrive, in hopes that their loyal readers ‘may be, for a moment, if no more, diverted and amused with what is, after all, the merest trifle … as they await more substantial fare, quite soon’.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bapton Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47108506190064,"sku":"2940046376678","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940046376678_p0.jpg?v=1763690914","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940046376678","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}