{"product_id":"american-midnight-isbn-9781782275954","title":"American Midnight","description":"\u003cb\u003eA chilling collection of classic weird and supernatural tales from the dark heart of American literature\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA masquerade ball cut short by a mysterious plague; a strange nocturnal ritual in the woods; a black bobcat howling in the night: these ten tales are some of the most strange and unsettling in all of American literature, filled with unforgettable imagery and simmering with tension. From Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Zora Neale Hurston, the authors of these classics of supernatural suspense have inspired generations of writers to explore the dark heart of the land of the free.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe stories in this collection have been selected and introduced by Laird Hunt, an author of seven acclaimed novels which explore the shadowy corners of American history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContains:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The Masque of the Red Death', Edgar Allan Poe\u003cbr\u003e'Young Goodman Brown', Nathaniel Hawthorne\u003cbr\u003e'The Eyes', Edith Wharton\u003cbr\u003e'The Mask', Robert Chambers\u003cbr\u003e'Home', Shirley Jackson\u003cbr\u003e'A Ghost Story', Mark Twain\u003cbr\u003e'Spunk', Zora Neale Hurston\u003cbr\u003e'The Yellow Wallpaper', Charlotte Perkins Gilman\u003cbr\u003e'An Itinerant House', Emma Frances Dawson\"Fireside stories where guilt, distress and unforeseen illness strike a deliciously gothic note.\" -- \u003ci\u003eSunday Express Magazine\u003c\/i\u003eLaird Hunt is an American writer and translator. He has written seven novels, including \u003ci\u003eNeverhome,\u003c\/i\u003e which was a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e Editor's Choice selection, an IndieNext selection, winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine and The Bridge prize, and a finalist for the Prix Femina Étranger. A resident of Providence, Rhode Island, he teaches at Brown University.Introduction\u003cbr\u003e “Shiver by shiver, we gain insight.”\u003cbr\u003e Guillermo del Toro, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories of Ray Russell\u003cbr\u003e Somewhere around midnight, when I was 7 or 8 and staying with my family on my grandmother’s\u003cbr\u003e Indiana farm, as I lay in a creaky bed in a small bedroom at the back of the old house, I saw the\u003cbr\u003e ghost of a baby floating above me. The baby was life-sized and dressed in a stiff white gown. It was\u003cbr\u003e glowing. And weeping. They were not tears of joy. I couldn’t move. The wailing grew louder,\u003cbr\u003e almost siren-like, and this eventually released me. I sprang out of bed, threw off my covers. Howls\u003cbr\u003e were coming from the room down the hall where my younger cousin was staying. By and by, I\u003cbr\u003e could hear her parents telling her she’d had a nightmare and should go back to sleep. I went back\u003cbr\u003e to sleep too.\u003cbr\u003e In the morning when I told my parents about the ghost, they said that clearly I’d heard my cousin,\u003cbr\u003e who was not much more than a baby herself, and so had dreamed up this visitor. I did not believe\u003cbr\u003e them. I said that the sad little ghost had been summoned by my cousin’s crying, that it had slipped\u003cbr\u003e in under the cover of her tears. In an investigative spirit, I asked my grandmother if any babies had\u003cbr\u003e ever died on the farm. My grandmother, never one for soft-balling sharp truths, said that in fact she\u003cbr\u003e herself had been in that inconvenient condition on the farm when she was first born, and that if a\u003cbr\u003e doctor’s assistant hadn’t pumped icy water on her at the kitchen sink while the attending doctor\u003cbr\u003e took care of her mother, she would be in that inconvenient condition still. My parents—ever eager\u003cbr\u003e to rationalize and no doubt not yet far into their first cups of coffee—then said that probably I had\u003cbr\u003e already heard this story about my grandmother’s still birth and revival without realizing it, and that\u003cbr\u003e my cousin’s crying had helped craft the submerged memory into a nightmare.\u003cbr\u003e “But I was awake the whole time! It was Grandma’s ghost! She sounded angry!” I said.\u003cbr\u003e “Grandma is right here,” they said.\u003cbr\u003e “But she died, she said so!” I said.\u003cbr\u003e “Go out and play,” they said.\u003cbr\u003e And that is what I did.","brand":"Pushkin Collection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302848057573,"sku":"NP9781782275954","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782275954.jpg?v=1767721427","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/american-midnight-isbn-9781782275954","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}