About this book:
The eight weird tales in this volume are drawn from the literature of a hundred years. Edward Bulwer Lytton's The Haunted and the Haunters represents an author who in the nineteenth century was both a "best-seller" and a distinguished statesman. Guy de Maupassant's horrific story The Horla indicates the onset of the madness that led to his early death. Then comes The Coffin-maker, a grimly humorous tale by Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia's greatest literary figures, who was the great-grandson of a negro ennobled by Peter the Great. Tom Hood, author of the impressive story The Shadow of a Shade, was best known as a humorist and caricaturist in the 1860's; he was the son of Thomas Hood the poet. Robert Louis Stevenson's macabre Markheim dates from the same year as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Three stories by modern masters are included: The Haunted Dolls' House (written for the library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House), by M.R.James, who in the opinion of many experts was one of the two best ghost-story writers ever produced in England; Seaton's Aunt, a remarkable story by Walter de la Mare; and the tale of a child, Hugh Walpole's The Little Ghost, which ends the book on a note of quiet sentiment.

Published 1947 by Pan Books Ltd.

THE LADY VANISHES was originally entitled The Wheel Spins but was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock (starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave) under the present title, which is used for this PAN edition by courtesy of the Rank Organisation. The adventure that befalls Iris Carr on her eerie journey in a Continental express is breath-taking in its power of suspense. In the railway-carriage she meets a pleasant, garrulous little English governess, Miss Froy. Iris drops off to sleep; when she wakes, Miss Froy has disappeared - and her very existence is denied by the other travellers. Iris is gradually driven to admit that Miss Froy is nothing but a delusion due to a touch of sunstroke. And yet - and yet! A couple of tiny clues support her insistence that Miss Froy is a reality and that some sinister fate has befallen her.
This gripping and ingenious story is utterly convincing. It describes an experience that might happen to anybody on a train. What would you do in similar circumstances?

Ethel Lina White was born in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, and when a child contributed little essays and poems to children's papers. Later she began to write short stories, but it was some years before she wrote books. Her first two were 'straight' novels; then she tried a thriller and found her métier. Her novels have a strong element of fear in them and she achieves her effects largely by suggestion. In her ability to create an atmosphere charged with tense drama she resembles Edgar Allen Poe. She died in 1944 after a short illness.

First published 1936 by Wm. Collins, Sons and Co. Ltd. under the title "The Wheel Spins." This edition published 1952 by Pan Books Ltd., 8 Headfort Place, London, SW1