'They'

'Of a sudden I realized that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear.' Rudyard Kipling is best known for his novels and poetry, but his short stories reveal a far more sinister and macabre side to his imagination. In these three chilling and psychologically penetrating tales, Kipling portrays hauntings, loss, madness, terrible secrets and the darkness that lies within the human heart. This book includes "They", "Mary Postgate", and "The Gardener".

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. In 1871 he was brought home from India and spent five unhappy years with a foster family in Southsea, an experience he later drew on in The Light That Failed (1890). In 1882 Kipling started work as a journalist in India, and while there produced a body of work, stories, sketches and poems - notably Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) - which made him an instant literary celebrity when he returned to England in 1889. His most famous works include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) and the Just So Stories (1902). Kipling refused to accept the role of Poet Laureate and other civil honours, but he was the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, in 1907. He died in 1936.