On these sheets you will read bits of 7 stories. Each is from a different genre; the seven genres are:

• horror
• crime
• fairy tale
• romance
• real life
• science fiction
• ghosts

An Analysis of Genre Stories booklet has been provided for you to identify the main genre of each story. See if you can also find evidence of any other genres in the stories.

The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove flared in a draught, and the fire's flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and, with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time.

'One of these days I'm going to take time off,' Spence Olham said at first-meal. He looked around at his wife.

'I think I've earned a rest. Ten years is a long time.'

'And the Project?'

'The war will be won without me. This ball of clay of ours isn't really in much danger.' Olham sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. 'Tile news machines alter dispatches to make it appear the Outspacers are right on top of us. You know what I'd like to do on my vacation? I'd like to take a camping trip in those mountains outside of town, where we went that time. Remember? I got poison oak and you almost stepped on a gopher snake.'

'Sutton Wood ?' Mary began to clear away the food dishes. 'The Wood was burned a few weeks ago. I thought you knew. Some kind of a flash fire.'

Olham sagged, 'Didn't they even try to find the cause ?' His lips twisted. 'No-one cares any more. All they can think of is the war.' He clamped his jaws together, the whole picture coming tip in his mind, the Outspacers, the war, the needleships.

'How call we think about anything else?'

Olham nodded. She was right, of course. The dark little ships out of Alpha Centauri had bypassed the Earth cruisers easily, leaving them like helpless turtles. It had been one-way fights, all the way back to Terra.

All the way, until the protec-bubble was demonstrated at Westinghouse Labs. Thrown around the major Earth cities and finally the planet itself, the bubble was the first real defence, the first legitimate answer to the Outspacers - as the news machines labelled them.

I knew it was a heart attack right away, Lorraine almost passed out, but I knew enough to call the police. They got there about ten minutes later with an ambulance from St Ambrose Hospital, and we almost didn't have enough time to get the skates off.

Two attendants came in with an old lady doctor, and we told them how he had been shovelling snow and had been out all day, and they just whisked him away on a stretcher like an old sack of potatoes. He was breathing just fine. Maybe a little fast, but it certainly didn't look like he was going to die or anything like that.

'Who are you?' this one snotty cop asked.

'His children,' I said, and I thought Lorraine was going to collapse with fear. We both knew what her mother would do if she found out.

I answered all the questions he asked, and when I didn't know the answers, I made them up.

'Your father's age?'

'Fifty-eight,' I said.

'Wife?'

'Deceased.'

'Place of birth?'

'Sorrento.'

'You two kids don't look Italian.'

'Our mother was Yugoslavian.'

I mean those particular cops were so dumb it was pathetic. I felt like I was talking to two grown-up Dennises who had arrested mental growth. It was a big deal. over nothing.

They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immovable from surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party, and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least of perfect civility.

She had instinctively turned away; but, stopping on his approach, received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be overcome.

The weeks passed, and the Sultan saw that Mizilca could ride and fight and shoot with bow and arrows as well as any of his knights. Yet still, whenever he looked at her, he suspected that she was no man. At last he went to a wise-woman and asked how he could discover whether Mizilca was a youth or a maiden. The wise-woman advised him to have merchants come to the palace while Mizilca was out hunting, and place on one side of the great hall rich cloths and embroideries of silk and velvet, and on the other side all kinds of swords and daggers. "If the knight is a maiden," said the wise-woman, "she will be drawn to the cloths, and pay no heed to the weapons."

And so it was done. But when Mizilca came into the hall and saw the goods laid out, she suspected that the Sultan was testing her. She ignored the silks and velvets and went straight to the weapons, feeling the edges of the blades and making passes with the swords in the air as if fighting.

Time went on, and though Mizilca continued to excel at all knightly pursuits, the Sultan was still not satisfied that she was a man. He went again to the wise-woman, and she advised him to have his cook prepare kasha for dinner, and mix a spoonful of pearls into Mizilca's portion. "If the knight is a maiden," said she, "she will pick out the pearls and save them."

And so it was done. But again Mizilca was too clever for the Sultan. She took the pearls out of the kasha and cast them under the table as if they had been pebbles.

The corpse without hands lay in the bottom of a small sailing dinghy drifting just within sight of the Suffolk coast. It was the body of a middle-aged man, a dapper little cadaver, its shroud a dark pin-striped suit which fitted the narrow body as elegantly in death as it had in life. The hand-made shoes still gleamed except for some scuffing of the toe caps, the silk tie was knotted under the prominent Adam's apple. He had dressed with careful orthodoxy for the town, this hapless voyager; not for this lonely sea; nor for this death.

It was early afternoon in mid-October and the glazed eyes were turned upwards to a sky of surprising blue across which the light south-west wind was dragging a few torn rags of cloud. The wooden shell, without mast or rowlocks, bounced gently on the surge of the North Sea so that the head shifted and rolled as if in restless sleep. It had been an unremarkable face even in life and death had given it nothing but a pitiful vacuity. The fair hair grew sparsely from a high bumpy forehead, the nose was so narrow that the white ridge of bone looked as if it were about to pierce the flesh; the mouth, small and thin-lipped, had dropped open to reveal two prominent front teeth which gave the whole face the supercilious look of a dead hare.

The legs, still clamped in rigor, were wedged one each side of the centre-board case and the forearms had been placed resting on the thwart. Both hands had been taken off at the wrists. There had been little bleeding. On each forearm a trickle of blood had spun a black web between the stiff fair hairs and the thwart was stained as if it had been used as a chopping block. But that was all; the rest of the body and the boards of the dinghy were free of blood.

Meanwhile Miss Dolly had returned from the kitchen, carrying a little bird which was pecking and clawing at the net in which it had been caught and shrilling incessantly - it was a little bullfinch. "You're a very beautiful little bird," Miss Dolly whispered, "with lovely soft pink feathers and pretty grey wings. But you're a very naughty little bird too, tanto cattivo. You came and took the fruit from us which we'd kept for our darling Gabriele." She began feverishly to pull the rose breast feathers from the bird, which piped more loudly and squirmed. Soon little trickles of red blood ran down among the feathers. "Scarlet and pink a very daring combination," Miss Dolly cried. Johnnie watched from his chair, his heart beating fast. Suddenly Miss Marian stepped forward and holding the bird's head she thrust a pin into its eyes. "We don't like spies round here looking at what we are doing," she said in her flat, gruff voice. "When we find them we teach them a lesson so that they don't spy on us again." Then she took out a little pocket knife and cut into the bird's breast; its wings were beating more feebly now and its claws only moved spasmodically, whilst its chirping was very faint. Little yellow and white strings of entrails began to peep out from where she had cut. "Oh!" cried Miss Dolly, "I like the lovely colours, I don't like these worms." But Johnnie could bear it no longer; white and shaking he jumped from his chair and seizing the bird he threw it on the floor and then he stamped on it violently until it was nothing but a sodden crimson mass. "Oh, Gabriele, what have vou done? You've spoilt all the soft, pretty colours. Why, it's nothing now, it just looks like a lump of raspberry jam. Why have you done it, Gabriele?" cried Miss Dolly. But little Johnnie gave no answer, he had run from the room.

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