Christmas, with its long dark nights and wintry forest walks teases at the imagination, brought together here a companion volume to the Christmas Gothic collection. The time of cheer and goodwill to all… Or is it? For many, Christmas falls in the bleak midwinter, in the long dark hours where cold icy fingers ever encroach upon the fire valiantly struggling in the hearth. Time-honoured literary tradition leaves us with bountiful stories of gothic chills and festive fear, tales of the dark, moody, ghastly and ghostly. The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure. Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes is Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University. His publications include the monographs Contemporary Body Horror (CUP, 2024), Gothic Cinema (Routledge, 2020), Horror Film and Affect (Routledge, 2016) and Body Gothic (UWP, 2014) and the edited collections Graveyard Gothic (MUP, 2024), Twenty-First-Century Gothic (EUP, 2019) and Horror: A Literary History (British Library, 2016). Xavier is co-president of the International Gothic Association and a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies.