Amusement Only

by Richard Marsh

This book contains a variety of short stories from different genres including mystery, romance and the supernatural. The common thread between them is, as the title indicates, amusement. Some stories are comedic and others simply have an ironic twist. (Goodreads)

Genres: Classics, Ebooks

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 14, 2010

About the author

Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the English author born Richard Bernard Heldmann. A best-selling and prolific author of the late 19th century and the Edwardian period, Marsh is best known now for his supernatural thriller novel The Beetle, which was published the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and was initially even more popular, outselling Dracula six times over. The Beetle remained in print until 1960. Marsh produced nearly 80 volumes of fiction and numerous short stories, in genres including horror, crime, romance and humour. Many of these have been republished recently, beginning with The Beetle in 2004. Marsh's grandson Robert Aickman was a notable writer of short "strange stories".

Reviews

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contained a variety of short stories from different genres including mystery, romance and the supernatural. The common thread between them though was, as the title indicates, amusement. Some stories were comedic and others simply had an ironic twist. A few of the stories were duds and only worth two stars. Others were an easy four stars, hence my overall three star rating. I'm looking forward to reading more by this author. He has a very readable style, and a knack for looking at life from a variety of perspectives. Plus a good eye for the ridiculous. Librivox has published an audiobook edition of this book, and I listened to some of the stories there, but I also read from the Gutenberg version.