The Twelve Frights of Christmas
A collection of thirteen Yuletide horror tales features the work of such masters as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Bloch, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ramsey Campbell

Contains:
The chimney / Ramsey Campbell
Markheim / Robert Louis Stevenson
The night before Christmas / Robert Bloch
The festival / H.P. Lovecraft
The old nurse's story / Mrs. Gaskell
Glámr / S. Baring-Gould
Pollock and the porroh man / H.G. Wells
The weird woman / Anonymous
The hellhound project / Ron Goulart
Wolverden tower / Grant Allen
Planet of fakers / J.T. McIntosh
Life sentence / James McConnell
The star / Arthur C. Clarke
Short stories, Fiction, science fiction, general
Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Sabine Baring-Gould, H. G. Wells, Ron Goulart, Grant Allen, J. T. McIntosh, James McConnell, Arthur C. Clarke
Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia), the son of a Jewish family of millers.  Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Asimov himself celebrated it on January 2.  His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York and opened a candy store when he was three years old.  He taught himself to read at the age of five. He began reading the science fiction pulp magazines that his family's store carried. Around the age of eleven, he began to write his own stories, and by age nineteen, he was selling them to the science fiction magazines. He graduated from Columbia University in 1939. He married Gertrude Blugerman in 1942.  During World War II he worked as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station.  After the war, he returned to Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948.  He then joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine until 1958, when he became a full-time writer. His first novel, [Pebble in the Sky](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL46402W), was published in 1950. He and his wife divorced in 1973, and he married Janet O. Jeppson the same year. He was a highly prolific writer, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 9,000 letters and postcards. || Martin Harry Greenberg (March 1, 1941 – June 25, 2011) was an American academic and anthologist in many genres, including mysteries and horror, but especially in speculative fiction. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. He was also a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel. Greenberg was also an expert in terrorism and the Middle East. He was a longtime friend, colleague and business partner of Isaac Asimov. || Ramsey Campbell (born in Liverpool) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. Two of his novels have been filmed, both for non-English-speaking markets. - Wikipedia || Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses. || Robert Albert Bloch was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of German-Jewish Americans.  During the 1930s, he was an avid reader of Weird Tales magazine and H. P. Lovecraft in particular.  He wrote to Lovecraft, who responded with advice on writing, and Bloch sold his first published short story, "The Feast in the Abbey" to Weird Tales when he was just seventeen.  He continued to write for Weird Tales and went on to become one of its most popular authors, while also contributing to other magazines.  In 1946, his first published novel, The Scarf, was released.  He received the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1959 for “That Hell-Bound Train” (1958).  Also in 1959, he published one of his best-known novels, Psycho, which was adapted for the screen in 1960 by Joseph Stefano, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  He wrote the screenplay for the movie The Night Walker (1964), and he also wrote three scripts for the television show Star Trek.  Over the course of his career, he wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, mostly in the crime fiction, science fiction and, horror fiction genres. || Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. 
After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. He then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association, and in 1913 wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York City, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including *The Call of Cthulhu*, *At the Mountains of Madness*, *The Shadow over Innsmouth* and *The Shadow Out of Time*. 
He would remain active as a writer for 11 more years until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46. 

From Wikipedia. || A British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. ([Source][1])


  [1]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Elizabeth_Gaskell || An Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar (<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Baring-Gould>Wikipedia</a>). || Herbert George Wells was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary. || Ron Goulart (Ronald Joseph Goulart) is an American popular culture historian and mystery, fantasy and science fiction author.

Goulart was prolific, publishing novelizations and other work under various pseudonyms: Kenneth Robeson, Con Steffanson, Chad Calhoun, R.T. Edwards, Ian R. Jamieson, Josephine Kains, Jillian Kearny, Howard Lee, Zeke Masters, Frank S. Shawn, and Joseph Silva.

**Source**: [Ron Goulart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Goulart) on Wikipedia || Grant Allen is a pen-name of Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen, a Canadian science writer and novelist, and a proponent of the theory of evolution. - Wikipedia || James Murdoch MacGregor was a Scottish journalist and author best known for writing science fiction under the pen name J.T. McIntosh. || Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.

He is famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, which appeared in various popular magazines. In 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularising science. These along with his science fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age". His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership made him one of the towering figures of science fiction. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.

Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system using geostationary orbits. He was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–1947 and again in 1951–1953.

Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of several television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death.

Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989 "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka". He was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.

---From Wikipedia