When Gerda Charles says she is the cousin of Robert Dudley, the lover of Queen Elizabeth I, she isn’t joking. She’s also deadly serious when she says that she’s been trying to die for the past 500 years. Now, thanks to the help of a beautiful girl called Lalla and the hapless man who narrates this cruel, gleeful story, it looks like she may have found a way…

Praise for A.L. Barker

‘I am a fanatical admirer or A.L. Barker. If you cannot read her it is your fault’ -- Rebecca West

GALLEY BEGGAR POCKET SHORTS is a new range celebrating the best in classic short fiction. Our first quartet will both chill and warm you with a selection of ghost stories from four of the English language’s finest writers: Robert Louis Stevenson, Edith Wharton, A.L. Barker and P.G. Wodehouse.