All the Fear of the Fair

Step right up to see the enchanted Ferris wheel whose magical gifts are to die for! Marvel at the man-eating menagerie and dreadful secrets of ‘Satan’s Circus’! Behold the nightmare waxworks of Mrs. Groby’s Chamber of Horrors! Carnivals and sideshows are settings closely entwined with the history of horror cinema, but in the realms of literature, there is a strain of uncanny fairground fiction with even deeper roots. Home to a sinister troupe of conjurers, puppeteers, beast tamers and crowds baying for blood beneath the Big Top, the performance spaces of these classic weird tales are borderlands where the unearthly meets the darker cravings of the human heart. Presenting sixteen sensational short stories, hailing from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1840s through to Robert Aickman’s 1960s, Edward Parnell invites you to enjoy a cavalcade of uneasy thrills courtesy of Gerald Kersh, Ray Bradbury, Margery Lawrence and many more.