Richard Marsh

Pyhä kuoriainen on yliluonnollinen kauhutarina, jossa muinaisen Egyptin henkiolennot riehuvat 1800-luvun lopun Lontoossa. Richard Marshin kirjoittama alkuteos ilmestyi ensimmäisen kerran samana vuonna kuin Dracula ja oli aikanaan suositumpi kuin Bram Stokerin vampyyritarina. Ihmisuhrit, hypnoottinen kostaja ja pahan papittaren seksiorjaksi päätynyt englantilainen parlamentaarikko - kaikilla on oma roolinsa Marshin romaanissa. Kun muotoaan muuttava kuoriainen ja kemiallisia aseita kehittävä keksijä ottavat mittaa toisistaan, on tieteen ja taikauskon konflikti valmis.

'No room - Full up ' He banged the door in my face. That was the final blow. To have tramped about all day looking for work; to have begged even for a job which would give me money enough to buy a little food; and to have tramped and to have begged in vain, - that was bad. But, sick at heart, depressed in mind and in body, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, to have been compelled to pocket any little pride I might have left, and solicit, as the penniless, homeless tramp which indeed I was, a night's lodging in the casual ward, - and to solicit it in vain - that was worse. Much worse. About as bad as bad could be. I stared, stupidly, at the door which had just been banged in my face. I could scarcely believe that the thing was possible. I had hardly expected to figure as a tramp; but, supposing it conceivable that I could become a tramp, that I should be refused admission to that abode of all ignominy, the tramp's ward, was to have attained a depth of misery of which never even in nightmares I had dreamed. As I stood wondering what I should do, a man slouched towards me out of the shadow of the wall. 'Won't 'e let yer in' 'He says it's full.'

Two hopeful, hapless romantics get drunk, get it on, and then get the hell away from each other. In her eyes, he’s a mistake. A mistake who keeps turning up at parties. In his eyes, she’s perfect. He’s short-sighted. This achingly funny, romantic catastrophe fuses poetry and prose to ask if a one-night stand last a lifetime. A very human tale of good intentions and bad timing. Winner of 2012 Fringe First (for innovation and outstanding new writing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), Dirty Great Love Story is a tale of the chance of love in a one-night stand. This second edition was published to coincide with the 2017 revival of the play and contains some changes to the original script.

'The Beetle' tells the story of a fantastical creature, "born of neither god nor man," with supernatural and hypnotic powers, who stalks British politician Paul Lessingham through fin de siecle London in search of vengeance for the defilement of a sacred tomb in Egypt. Marsh's novel is of a piece with other sensational turn-of-the-century fictions such as Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used in many late nineteenth-century novels (those of Wilkie Collins and Stoker, for example) to create suspense. Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldmann

An ancient Egyptian fantastical creature with supernatural and hypnotic powers known as 'The Beetle' has arrived in London to seeks revenge on British Parliament Member Paul Lessingham for the defilement of a tomb in Egypt. When this strange creature, "born neither of God nor man", organizes the disappearance of Lessingham's fianc e Marjorie, solving the mystery of the Beetle becomes a question of life or death...

"... She possibly supposes that she's done rather a smart thing in getting away, as she thinks, scot-free. But has she? She's covered herself, in consequence, with more than a suspicion of murder. They're reasoning this way. They say that it was she who used that champagne bottle to so much purpose; and that was why she hid, like a coward, behind the curtains, when the waiter came into the room; and why she stayed hidden; and when the coast, as she thought, was clear, dropped, at the peril of her life, from the window. And because they're accounting, in that way, for her singular behaviour, all Newcaster is hot-foot after her; and, so I'm told, they're having placards printed, describing her, and offering a reward for her apprehension." He knocked the ashes out of his pipe with his boot; blew down the stem to make sure that it was clear; then went on. "There's one item I may add to make the tale complete. They've not only her description, they've her name..."