Tales and Stories

Behind every ordinary life, something is waiting in the shadows.

Mary Shelley’s Tales and Stories gathers a series of narratives that extend beyond the Gothic into subtle explorations of memory, loss, and moral uncertainty. Within these varied tales, the extraordinary often arises from the ordinary, and the boundaries between the visible and the hidden remain delicately uncertain.

Across settings that range from the familiar to the remote, Shelley introduces characters shaped by longing, regret, and the quiet persistence of past experience. Some confront the lingering presence of grief, others the consequences of choice or the burden of knowledge, yet all move within worlds where emotional truth carries greater weight than outward action. The supernatural, when it appears, is rendered less as spectacle than as an extension of inner disturbance, lending each story a tone of restrained unease.

From the haunting “The Mortal Immortal” and “The Transformation” to the psychological depth of “The Dream” and “The Evil Eye,” Shelley moves far beyond the Gothic excesses of her famous Frankenstein. These are stories about the weight of the past, the fragility of identity, and the strange persistence of love beyond death. Shelley writes with a restraint and precision that anticipate the modern short story, favoring implication over declaration, atmosphere over melodrama.

This is Shelley at her most subtle and varied: a collection that showcases her range as a writer of psychological realism, social satire, historical romance, and supernatural horror. Tales and Stories reveals a writer far more versatile than the myth of the one-book wonder allows.

• A collection of Mary Shelley’s shorter fiction, spanning her entire career from the 1820s to the 1840s

• Includes acknowledged masterworks such as “The Mortal Immortal,” “The Dream,” and “The Transformation”

• Essential reading for anyone who admires Frankenstein and wants to discover the full range of Shelley’s literary imagination

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears, or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the most powerful ghosts are the ones that live inside the mind.

About the Author

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London, she was the daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1816, she married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Frankenstein was conceived during the famous “year without a summer” at Lord Byron’s villa in Switzerland, when she was just eighteen years old. Beyond Frankenstein, Shelley wrote five other novels, numerous short stories, travel narratives, and biographies, including The Last Man (1826), an early work of post-apocalyptic fiction. After her husband’s death in 1822, she devoted herself to promoting his poetry and raising their son. She died in London in 1851. For much of the twentieth century, she was remembered almost exclusively for Frankenstein, but recent scholarship has restored the full range of her literary achievements. Tales and Stories showcases her versatility as a writer of psychological depth and formal innovation.