S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated. He now has just 12 volumes in which the table of contents still need to be identified, for his forthcoming Horror Fiction Index. This book will give the TOCs for all known single-author weird / macabre / horror story collections. In fact he may only need 11 more. Since I had already emailed him the TOCs, back in August, for…
PHILIPPA PEARCE. At the River-Gates and Other Stories of the Supernatural. London: Puffin, 1996.
After some research I found it to be a child-sized “60 pence” (about $1) pocket-money ‘taster’ paperback, from the children’s division of Penguin. There were many sold in this format here in the UK in the late 1990s, being the publisher’s experiment in the popularisation of reading. Only 54 pages in paperback with pulpy paper. It had three stories which were taken from the larger collection The Shadow-Cage and Other Supernatural Tales. The title and back-cover blurb as seen on eBay, combined, enabled my identification of the three stories inside.
PHILIPPA PEARCE. At the River-Gates: And Other Supernatural Stories. London: Puffin, 1996.
1. “At the River-Gates”.
2. “The Shadow Cage”.
3. “Her Father’s Attic”.
I’ve re-sent the information to S.T. Presumably it got lost in the shuffle of an August break.