pixie-led | Chris Elphick

Garden Plant of the Moment

It is now that time of the year for our garden magnolia to shine 😎

Working through it

Having to take a few days off work with a downturn in my health, I spent the day playing Lego and witing an introduction for one of my favourite books...

1978. The year I started Comprehensive school. The school handed out regular book catalogues selling books at a discount to encourage reading. And that is where I first came into contact with Armada Ghost Books.

To say I loved this book would be an understatement, and I also like the idea that the school was sanctioning the reading of ghost stories. :)

Peter Archer is again credited as the book's artist, and he has certainly upped his game with the interior story illustrations:

With a fantastic book cover and scary interior illustrations, the set list of supernatural stories really rounds off what I still consider the best in the Armada Ghost Book series.

Two stories, in particular, stand out amongst the selection. The first is The Sinister Schoolmaster by Rosemary Timperley. Who could resist reading this tale after seeing the genuinely scary cover art illustrating it? The thought of encountering a ghostly mystery whilst on the way to school was appealing beyond words to me as a child!

The other tale that stuck with me was Mousey by John Halking. Now, I had a pet mouse myself at the time of reading this story, and as soon as I realised this tale was about a boy who took his mouse out and about with him, I cringed. My only hope was that I was reading a children's book, so hopefully, the mouse would make it to the end alive. But Armada was canny with their athologies and often slotted in darker themes in with with their more lightweight offerings!

9th Armada Ghost Book

Continuing my collection of Armada Ghost Books from the 1970s and early 1980s, it time to show off the 9th book in the supernatural series:

Peter Archer takes the helm as the book's illustrator, but the the inside drawing detail non-scary scenes from the ghost stories, which is disappointing.

The cover art for the book, on the other hand, is up there with the finest in the series and the book shifted enough copies to keep the series going for another x6 anthologies!