The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) (71 page)

Sarah Pinborough
is a horror, thriller and YA author who has had more than ten novels published. Her next release,
The Chosen Seed
(Gollancz, January 2012), is the last of The Dog-Faced Gods trilogy, which has now been optioned for a television series. Her third urban fantasy YA novel,
The London Stone
(Gollancz, June 2012), will be published under the name Sarah Silverwood and is the last of The Nowhere Chronicles. After this come
Mayhem
and
Murder
from Jo Fletcher Books at Quercus. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and she has a horror film,
Cracked
, currently in development. She has recently branched out into television writing and is currently writing for
New Tricks
on the BBC. Sarah was the 2009 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, and has three times been shortlisted for Best Novel. She has also been shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. Her novella
The Language of Dying
(PS Publishing) was shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award and won the 2010 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

Kelley Armstrong
is the
New York Times
-bestselling author of the Women of the Otherworld paranormal suspense series and Darkest Powers YA urban fantasy trilogy. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle and hopes never to return.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon
(1835–1915) was the author of more than eighty novels. Today she is chiefly remembered for the furore which her best-selling potboiler
Lady Audley’s Secret
(1862) engendered, but M. E. Braddon (eventually Mrs Maxwell) wrote novels and plays; contributed essays, short stories, and poems to such high-circulation periodicals as
Punch
and
The World
; and edited the two literary magazines most closely associated with the Sensation Novel,
Temple Bar
and
Belgravia
. In the 1860s, the decade that was the high-water mark of Sensation, M. E. Braddon wrote at least twenty novels, sometimes at the rate of three per year, while bearing six children of her own and raising them together with six step-children.

Caitlín R. Kiernan
is the author of several novels, including
Daughter of Hounds, The Red Tree
, and
The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
. She is a prolific short-fiction author – to date, over 200 short stories, novellas, and vignettes – most of which have been collected in
Tales of Pain and Wonder
;
From Weird and Distant Shores
;
To Charles Fort, With Love
;
Alabaster
;
A is for Alien
; and
The Ammonite Violin & Others. Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan
, Vol. 1, was released by Subterranean Press in October 2011, and her next collection,
Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart
, will be released (also by Subterranean) in 2012. Kiernan is a four-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award, an honoree for the James Tiptree Jr Award, and has twice been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. Born in Ireland, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Mary Elinor Wilkins-Freeman
(1852–1930) was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, the daughter of strict orthodox Congregationalists. She began writing stories and verse for children as a teenager, and her work quickly saw print. She wrote more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories,
A Humble Romance and Other Stories
(1887) and
A New England Nun and Other Stories
(1891). In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Sarah Langan
is the author of the novels
The Keeper
,
The Missing
, and
Audrey’s Door
. She is currently finishing her fourth book,
Empty Houses
. Her work has garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, an ALA Award, a
New York Times Book Review
editor’s pick, a
PublishersWeekly
favourite book of the year selection, and been optioned by The Weinstein Company for film. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and rabbit.

Elizabeth Massie
is a Bram Stoker Award- and Scribe Award-winning author of horror novels, short horror fiction, media tie-ins, mainstream fiction, historical novels, poetry, and non-fiction. Most recent works include
Homegrown
(a mainstream novel from Crossroad Press),
Playback: Light and Shadow
(an e-novella from Random House, prequel to the 2012 horror film
Playback
), and
Sundown
(a collection of horror shorts from Necon E-Books.) Massie lives in the Shenandoah Valley with illustrator Cortney Skinner. She is the founder of Hand to Hand Vision and Circle of Caring on Facebook. She likes snow and hates cheese.

Alex Bell
was born in 1986 in Hampshire. Her contemporary supernatural mysteries are published by Gollancz, and her YA comic fantasies are published by Headline. She has travelled widely, is a ferociously strict vegetarian and generally prefers cats to people.

Alison Littlewood
lives in West Yorkshire, England, where she hoards books, dreams and writes fiction – mainly in the dark fantasy and horror genres. Alison has contributed to
Black Static
,
Dark Horizons
,
Not One of Us
and the charity anthology
Never Again
. Her debut novel,
A Cold Season
, will be out early in 2012 from Jo Fletcher Books at Quercus. Visit her at
www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk
.

Nina Allan
’s stories have appeared regularly in the magazines
Black Static
and
Interzone
, and have featured in the anthologies
Catastrophia
,
House of Fear
,
Best Horror of the Year #2
and
Year’s Best SF #28
. A first collection of her short fiction,
A Thread of Truth
, was published by Eibonvale Press in 2007, followed by the story cycle
The Silver Wind
in 2011. Twice shortlisted for the BFS and BSFA Award, Nina’s next book,
Stardust
, will be available from PS Publishing in autumn 2012. An exile from London, she lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex.

Lisa Tuttle
made her first professional sale forty years ago with the short story “Stranger in the House” – now the title story in
Stranger in the House
, Vol. 1 of her collected supernatural fiction, published by Ash-Tree Press. Perhaps best known for her short fiction, which includes the International Horror Guild Award-winning tale “Closet Dreams”, she is also the author of several novels, including
The Pillow Friend
,
The Mysteries
and
The Silver Bough
, as well as books for children and non-fiction works. Although born and raised in America, she has been a British resident for the past three decades, and currently lives with her family in Scotland.

Nancy Holder
is a multiple award-winning,
New York Times
bestselling author (the Wicked Series.) Her two new YA dark fantasy series are Crusade and Wolf Springs Chronicles.
Crusade: Vanquished
and
Wolf Springs Chronicles: Hot Blooded
are on the shelves now. She has won four Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association, as well as a Scribe Award for Best Novel (
Saving Grace: Tough Love)
. Nancy has sold over eighty novels and a hundred short stories, many of them based on such shows as
Highlander
,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
,
Angel
, and others. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, two Corgis, and three cats. You can visit Nancy online at
www.nancyholder.com

Yvonne Navarro
lives in southern Arizona, where by day she works on historic Fort Huachuca. She is the author of twenty-two published novels and well over a hundred short stories, and has written about everything from vampires to psychologically disturbed husbands to the end of the world. Her work has won the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award plus a number of other writing awards. Visit her at
www.yvonnenavarro.com
and look her up on Facebook, to keep up with interludes in a crazy life that includes a military spouse, three Great Danes, a people-loving parakeet named BirdZilla, painting, and lots of white zinfandel and ice cream.

Mary Cholmondeley
(1859–1925) was the eldest daughter and third child of a family of eight, and from an early age made up stories to tell to her brothers and sisters for their entertainment. She began to write seriously in her late teens and her first novel was
Her Evil Genius
, followed by
The Danvers Jewels
in 1886. In 1899 Mary’s best-known novel
Red Pottage
was published and caused something of a sensation at the time because of its pointed satire. In addition to novels, Mary wrote essays, articles and short stories.

Marion Arnott
is a teacher working in Scotland and a writer when she can be. Her work has appeared in
Peninsular Magazine
,
QWF
,
West Coast
,
Northwords
,
Books Ireland
,
Hidden Corners
,
Chapman Magazine
,
Scottish Child
,
Solander
,
Crimewave 4& 6, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2002
,
Best British Mysteries
,
The Alsiso Project
,
Elastic Press Book of Numbers
,
Nova Scotia
,
New Scottish Speculative Fiction
,
Elastic Press Book of Extended Play
,
Hayakawa Mystery Magazine
(Japan),
Roadworks
magazine,
Midnight Street
and
Scottish Momentist Fiction 2006
, and her collection,
Sleepwalkers
(Elastic Press, 2003). She won the Philip Good Memorial Prize for Fiction (QWF), CWA Short Dagger, and has been shortlisted for the same award twice more. She was also nominated for the British Fantasy Society’s Best Short Story Award.

Lilith Saintcrow
is the author of several urban fantasy and (as Lili St Crow) YA series. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her children and several other strays.

Award-winning author
Nancy Kilpatrick
has published eighteen novels, two hundred short stories, one non-fiction book, and has edited a number of anthologies including
Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead
(2010) and
Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead
(2011). Upcoming books include a graphic novel,
Nancy Kilpatrick’s Vampyre Theater
(Brainstorm Comics); as editor, the anthology
Danse Macabre: Close Encounters With the Reaper
; and a new collection of her short fiction and novellas
Vampyric Variations
(both from Edge SF&F Publishing). Check her website for details (
www.nancykilpatrick.com
) and she invites you to join her on Facebook.

Muriel Gray
is a writer and broadcaster. From an early career as an illustrator, then exhibition designer in Scotland’s National Museum of Antiquities, she carved out a career in the media as a well-known television and radio presenter before forming her own production company, which became the biggest independent in Scotland. Her passion for horror and fantasy is lifelong, and in addition to publishing several non-fiction books, her three novels,
The Trickster
,
Furnace
, and
The Ancient
, are all supernatural thrillers. Stephen King described the latter as “scary and unputdownable”. She has written many short stories for anthologies and comics, and is currently finishing a script for a horror film, beginning production in 2012, entitled
Behind You
. She lives in Scotland with her family.

Cynthia Asquith
(1887–1960) is best known as an early anthologist of supernatural tales, persuading many of her literary friends to contribute stories to her books. She was also a writer of ghost stories. The daughter of the 11th Earl of Wemyss, and daughter-in-law of British prime minister Herbert Asquith, she worked for many years as secretary to J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, who left his literary estate (except for Peter Pan) to her upon his death.

Amelia B. Edwards
(1831–1892) was a journalist, novelist, and noted Egyptologist in her time. She was also an active supporter of the Suffrage movement. The daughter of an army officer turned banker and an Irish mother, Amelia was home schooled for most of her childhood. Her first published work, the poem “The Knights of Old”, was written when she was just seven. A friend of Charles Dickens, many of her short stories were published in his magazines, notably the Christmas annuals. Among her many novels were
The Ladder of Life
,
Half a Million of Money
, and
Lord Breckenburg
.