"Number Ninety" & Other Ghost Stories

Introduction by Richard Dalby
Cover image by Alan Corbett

"Did you never have a dream that haunted you, and terrified you, and made you ill at ease?" — "Mrs. Ponsonby’s Dream"

The bestselling Irish author B. M. Croker enjoyed a highly successful literary career from 1880 until her death forty years later. Her novels were witty and fast moving, set mostly in India and her native Ireland. Titles such as Proper Pride (1882) and Diana Barrington(1888) found popularity for their mix of romantic drama and Anglo-Indian military life. And, like many late-Victorian authors, Croker also wrote ghost stories for magazines and Christmas annuals. From the colonial nightmares such as “The Dak Bungalow at Dakor” and “The North Verandah” to the more familiar streets of haunted London in “Number Ninety”, this collection showcases fifteen of B. M. Croker’s most effective supernatural tales.

Contents

• "Introduction" by Richard Dalby
• "Number Ninety"
• "The Former Passengers"
• "If You See Her Face"
• "The Khitmatgar"
• "Her Last Wishes"
• "The Dak Bungalow at Dakor"
• "To Let"
• "The North Verandah"
• "The First Comer"
• "Trooper Thompson’s Information"
• "Who Knew the Truth?"
• "La Carcassone"
• "Mrs. Ponsonby’s Dream"
• "The Door Ajar"
• "Mrs. Croker"
• "Hindi and Urdu Glossary"
• "Acknowledgements"

B. M. Croker was born in Co. Roscommon in 1849. She married John Stokes Croker, an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, in 1870, and accompanied him to India, there commencing a long literary career. Authoring some fifty-two books, her novel The Road to Mandalay was filmed in 1926. Mrs. Croker died at a nursing home in London, after a short and sudden illness, on 20 October 1920.

Limited hardcover