Known to those who grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s for his unsettling children’s novels such as The Scarecrows, The Creature in the Dark and The Machine Gunners (which was adapted for a BBC series in 1983), Robert Westall looms large over many a British childhood. But he was just as proficient and prolific when it came to short fiction for both young readers and adults – and sometimes a lot more terrifying.

The new collection brings together several of his most chilling stories from long-forgotten collections such as The Haunting of Chas McGill, Ghosts and Journeys, and Demons and Shadows, ready to induce nightmares in a whole new generation of readers.