Read the Supernatural Small Print Quiz

Answer: A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" follows Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser whose outlook changes after a series of supernatural visits. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come confront him with memories, other people's lives and the consequences of his behaviour.

Their lessons encourage him to become more generous while he still has the chance. Dickens calls the story's five sections "staves" (also the name for the sets of lines on which musical notes are written), continuing the musical idea in the title.

Answer: The Ghost Bride

In Yangsze Choo's "The Ghost Bride", Li Lan receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy Lim family: they want her to marry their son, who has recently died. Her family's financial troubles make the offer tempting, but the dead would-be groom brings dangers that money cannot solve.

The story draws Li Lan into a spirit world shaped by traditional Chinese stories, where she must uncover the Lim family's secrets. Set in British-ruled Malaya (in what is now Malaysia), the novel combines a supernatural mystery with romance and family secrets.

Answer: The Nose

In Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose", Major Kovalyov wakes to discover that his nose has disappeared. He later encounters it dressed as a senior government official with a higher rank than his own. Kovalyov is so concerned with rank that he struggles to challenge his own missing nose.

The nose eventually returns to his face, but the story never provides a tidy explanation for its independent career. Gogol uses an impossible event to make the everyday obsession with status look absurd.

Answer: Monkey King

"Monkey King" is the title of Julia Lovell's shortened English translation of the Chinese classic "Journey to the West", usually credited to Wu Cheng'en. Its troublesome hero, Sun Wukong, seeks immortality and causes trouble in Heaven, including raiding its peaches.

His rebellion ends with the Buddha pinning him beneath a mountain for five hundred years. Once freed, he becomes a protector of the monk Tripitaka on a journey to India for Buddhist religious writings. The troublemaker becomes a powerful companion on a religious journey.

Answer: Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo's "Pedro Páramo" begins with Juan Preciado travelling to Comala to seek the father his mother has told him about. The apparently deserted Mexican town is full of voices, memories and the stories of the dead. As Juan discovers, speaking to someone does not necessarily mean that person is alive. First published in 1955, the novel moves between different speakers and periods in the town's history.

Its short scenes gradually reveal how the lives of the people of Comala are connected.

Answer: Dracula

Bram Stoker's "Dracula" features a vampire count from Transylvania, a region of present-day Romania. Professor Van Helsing explains that the vampire cannot enter a place for the first time unless someone who lives there invites him. Once invited, he can return without another invitation.

This matters when Renfield allows the Count into Dr Seward's hospital. The warning concerns a rule stated in Stoker's novel; vampires in other stories may follow different rules.

Answer: The Famished Road

In Ben Okri's "The Famished Road", Azaro is an abiku (a spirit-child), a figure from the traditions of the Yoruba people of West Africa. His spirit companions want him to return to their world, but his attachment to his parents helps him choose the difficult life of the living.

The story moves between everyday family struggles and encounters with spirits in an unnamed West African setting. That movement makes the supernatural part of Azaro's daily experience, rather than a single isolated haunting.

The novel won the Booker Prize in 1991.

Answer: Yuki-Onna

The warning points to "Yuki-Onna", one of the Japanese tales in Lafcadio Hearn's collection "Kwaidan". A snow woman spares the young woodcutter Minokichi on condition that he never tells anyone about their encounter. Years later, he tells his wife, O-Yuki, and she reveals that she is the woman from that winter night.

She leaves him, but spares his life because of their children. The broken promise costs him his wife, rather than bringing the immediate death he was originally threatened with.

Answer: The Alchemist

Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" follows Santiago, a shepherd from southern Spain drawn towards Egypt by a dream of treasure. When he and his guide are held by desert tribesmen, the guide promises that Santiago can transform himself into the wind.

The boy must communicate with the desert, the wind and the sun as he tries to fulfil that astonishing promise. This episode makes his relationship with the natural world a matter of survival. Coelho's story treats the search for treasure as a journey of discovery about both the world and oneself.

Answer: The Whale Rider

Witi Ihimaera's "The Whale Rider" centres on Kahu, a Māori girl in the New Zealand community of Whangara. Koro Apirana, the chief and her great-grandfather, initially refuses to recognise her potential as a leader because she is a girl. Kahu has inherited an extraordinary ability to communicate with whales, connecting her with the community's legendary ancestor.

When whales become stranded, the gift that others have overlooked becomes crucial. The novel connects a story about the community's ancestors with a modern family's struggle over leadership and belonging.