Mystical Stories. Stolen Hearts

This anthology of works by British, North American, and Australian writers of the 19th-20th centuries includes novellas and short stories about dark supernatural forces that invisibly inhabit the surrounding world, and the dangerous contacts with them that ordinary mortals make. Adventurous black magicians, eager to acquire forbidden knowledge, power, and wealth while entering into a pact with the devil, ancient treasures stubbornly guarding their secrecy, and equally ancient exotic cults promising misfortune to their newly initiated disciples, gray witches murmuring ominous spells on gloomy nights in secluded places, and cunning fairies setting treacherous and sometimes deadly traps for people—these are the plots offered for the reader's attention in this volume. Among the authors of the book are world-renowned writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, Herbert Wells), recognized masters of gothic novellists (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Montague Rhodes James, William Fryer Harvey, Algernon Blackwood, Edward Frederick Benson) and undeservedly forgotten prose writers such as Germaine Templeton Cavanaugh, Cleveland Langston Moffett, Christopher Blair, and Roger Pater. Some stories are presented in new translations or are translated into Russian for the first time.