A genteel country house, a moonlit lawn, and the slow, dreadful approach of something scratching at the window—Croglin Grange is less ghost story than early vampire myth, told with the precise domestic detail that makes its horror feel uncannily plausible. Hare’s anecdote lingers not for its gore, but for its composure: evil enters quietly, and returns again.

A northern baron attempts to rewrite destiny through deceit and violence, only to be thwarted by fate’s strange fidelity in The Fish and the Ring, a fairy tale that blends prophecy, attempted infanticide, and miraculous recognition with a tone both unsentimental and satisfying. Jacobs renders the inevitability of justice with folkloric clarity, where even the sea seems to conspire against hubris.

Part epic, part morality play, this swashbuckling fantasia traces the career of England’s patron saint as he slays dragons, resists seduction, escapes betrayal, and liberates kingdoms with a mix of courtly virtue and supernatural endurance. What emerges is a kaleidoscope of Christian imperial fantasy, where valor is never without spectacle, and virtue is repaid in thrones.