"Our best loved friends may not even be human but animals of the moggy and mutt variety. Many of us wax lyrical about our friends in the animal world no matter the distractions available in the real and rather more demanding world of partners, children, parents and friends. So often then that when the media brings news of appalling tragedies across the globe the distress of cruelty to animals seems to gather more immediate attention. In this volume our literary wordsmiths turn their attention to tales that make our hearts wince and our emotions bleed. 1 - Stories About Cruelty to Animals - An Introduction2 - The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe3 - The Squaw by Bram Stoker4 - The Cats of Ulthar by H P Lovecraft5 - The Ankardyne Pew by W F Harvey6 - A Dark Brown Dog by Stephen Crane7 - Strychnine for Village Dogs by Arthur Gask"
"Arthur Cecil Gask was born on 10th July 1869 in Marylebone, London. He began his career as an author late in life. It was only in 1920 when he and his second wife and family emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia to set up a dental practice that writing took its hold. Gask paid for the publication of his first work, ‘The Secret of the Sandhills’, which was an immediate success, both commercially and critically. Over the next 3 decades Gask wrote over thirty books, usually featuring his detective invention Gilbert Larose, as well as short stories. Many of his works were translated, serialised and even broadcast on the radio. HG Wells and Bertrand Russell were avid fans. In the last years of his life he was still writing, usually two novels a year. Arthur Gask died on 25th June 1951, in Adelaide, Australia. He was 81 In this story we meet his most popular character, Detective Gilbert Larose, who, whilst on holiday, is drawn into a case of dogs being poisoned. But why would anyone do that?"
