The Wine Dark Sea

By: Robert Aickman

Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith

First published in the US in 1988 and in the UK in 1990, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight unsettling stories that explore protagonists' fears and desires, at once illogical and terrifying, and culminate in a disturbing and enigmatic ending. Aickman's 'strange stories' (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia; his characters ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds. For fans of the horror genre, Robert Aickman is a must read.

The Wine-Dark Sea

The Trains

Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen

Growing Boys

The Fetch

The Inner Room

Never Visit Venice

Into the Wood

Robert Fordyce Aickman was born in 1914 in London. In 1951, he published his first ghost stories in a volume called We Are the Dark, written in conjunction with Elizabeth Jane Howard, then went on to publish eleven further volumes of horror stories, two fantasy novels and two volumes of autobiography. Dubbed ‘the supreme master of the supernatural’, he won a World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award for his short fiction, and also edited the first eight volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories. Aside from his writing, Aickman was passionate about preserving British canals and founded the Inland Waterways Association in 1946. He died in February 1981.

Reece Shearsmith is a talented actor and writer. He is most famous for co-writing and starring in the award-winning The League of Gentlemen, along with Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson. In 2009, Shearsmith and Pemberton won Best New Comedy at the 2009 British Comedy Awards for Psychoville.

Reece Shearsmith has just finished filming Ben Wheatley’s horror A Field in England, out in July 2013.

©1988 Robert Aickman (P)2013 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

"I think that Aickman is one of those authors that you respond to on a very primal level. Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I'm not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully. Yes, the key vanished, but I don't know if he was holding a key in the hand to begin with. I find myself admiring everything he does from an auctorial standpoint. And I love it as a reader. He will bring on atmosphere. He will construct these perfect, dark, doomed little stories, what he called 'strange stories'" (Neil Gaiman)

"We are all potential victims of the powers Aickman so skilfully conjures and commands" (Robert Bloch)

"This century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories" (Peter Straub)

"Superb tales of suspenseful unease...a contemporary master of the genre" (Publishers Weekly)

"Of all the authors of uncanny tales, Aickman is the best ever… His tales literally haunt me; his plots and his turns of phrase run through my head at the most unlikely moments" (Russell Kirk)

"Superb tales of suspenseful unease.... A contemporary master of the genre." ( Publishers Weekly)

"This century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories." (Peter Straub)

Just okay

Just okay. Not memorable. Good performance. Each story had potential, but never quite delivered.

Not for me

I listened to it about five times and still do not know what it was about . The. Only thing I can remember is there were two had big boys that were twins and the mother couldn't control them . The narrator read way too fast . I am still so confused by this book