Classic Literature Dark

Even though he’s one of the Heartland Security Agency’s Peacemaker agents, a man sworn to help protect and preserve the morality of the United States, Neal can’t give up his habit of patronizing prostitutes. When one of them steals the prototype of a top secret device, however, he has no choice but to come clean in order to rally fellow agents for a recovery mission. His situation goes from bad to worse when he is tricked into a plot to take down one of the Agency’s most powerful secret allies.

Antigo is the last of his family line in a town that has long forgotten ancient pledges and rites which bind the mythic and monstrous Skekstatsiis within the forest. Tradition maintains Antigo must become a man by the end of harvest or those eldritch fetters will shatter. Unceremoniously passed over again by all suitors, Antigo finds the corpse of a friend. Convinced of the Skekstatsiis's return, the elders write it off as fairytale and delusion, or worse: a plot by the Trade League to disrupt the harvest!

Alice has had a lousy life since she left Wonderland. All grown up and trapped in an unhappy marriage, she longs to escape. But when she finally manages to leap through the mirror, she gets one twisted shock after another. Whatever happened to the crazy, charming Wonderland of her youth? This time, the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, Mock Turtle, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee are out for blood. Something has warped the magical mystery realm, sending Alice reeling from one close shave to the next.

Keawe es un hawaiano que decide conocer otras tierras y se embarca en un buque que se dirige a San Francisco, donde descubre una casa preciosa, cuyo dueño parece triste y solo. Keawe se pregunta cómo el dueño de una casa tan hermosa puede ser tan infeliz. Tras enseñarle su mansión, el anciano le muestra una botella de vidrio blanco en cuyo interior se pueden ver los colores cambiantes del arco iris, además de un diablillo.

This gripping tale takes place in the late 19th century and follows the protagonist, Mr. Hapley, a famous entomologist who becomes embroiled in an ongoing feud with Professor Pawkins a rival in his field. Hapley has a devasting retort to Professor Pawkins's most recent attack on him, but before he can deliver the ruinous blow, Pawkins dies leaving Haply ready for battle with no opponent. The physical Pawkins may be gone, but a mysterious moth that no one but Hapley can see or feel the presence of appears.

Written in 1905, this is Vernon Lee’s final genuinely weird tale, and it tells the 18th-century legend of Sister Benvenuta, a nun who wrote letters to a model of infant Christ. Whilst unexpectedly funny in places, this short story has dark undertones.

When a broken effigy of Christ washes up on a beach in Flanders, it is displayed in the local church. Strange miracles start drawing people to the town to worship, but then these unexplainable events start to turn sinister.

As a private investigator specializing in paranormal problems, London Eyer thought she could handle working for the Sidhe. They couldn’t be any worse than vampires or werewolves or wizards, could they? Oh, how wrong she was. One 'Touch' of Sidhe magic and she was cursed. Her only chance to survive is to serve the creep that cursed her against the vicious Changelings out for his blood.

Imagine your life as a vampire. How would you survive? What would you eat? How could you handle yourself around other humans who have beating hearts? How would you face the one you really love? Would you tell them that you are a vampire? Would you change them? Or would you lead them on with a web of lies?

Marked for sacrifice by her own father, a young woman flees to the hills, knowing her father may appear with his stone blade at any time to claim her - while the unburied dead of her people also hunt her in the low ravines. Guided by the memory of how her mother stood bravely against the dead, Jepthah's daughter begins her long flight in the dark.

El escritor Robert Blake (supuestamente Robert Bloch), se obsesiona con un chapitel de una iglesia maldita que ve desde su estudio. La gran iglesia fue escenario de ritos malévolos durante muchos años atrás. Ahora abandonada y medio en ruinas, es temida por la gente del pueblo. Atraido por el misterio de dicha iglesia, Robert Blake entra en ella y sube a la torre del chapitel. Lo que encontrará allí aclarará los temores de los vecinos y encontrara su propia muerte.

An unassuming woman wanders around the landscape of hell accompanied by a dammed priest and a '60s styles teenage demon activist. The trio is sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by a god-like being with dysfunctional split personalities. All You Can Eat contains the following episodes:

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been ranked with Jerome K Jerome, and W.W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H.G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.

"A Dark Brown Dog" is an unexpected Stephen Crane jewel. Crane is best known for three short stories, "The Open Boat", thought by many to be the best short story ever written; "The Blue Hotel"; and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky". "A Dark Brown Dog" is the first cousin of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in being set in the rough, tough world of the New York Bowery of the late 19th century.

A young boy finds a homeless dog desperate for love and brings him into his home. What is frightening about Crane's take on this typical relationship, a boy and his dog, are the parallels between the young boy's treatment of the dog and his abusive, alcoholic father's treatment of those around him.

Edgar Poe est le maître incontesté du fantastique et une figure majeure du romantisme américain. Le fameux "Système du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume" prouve aussi qu'il ne s'interdit pas l'humour noir ! En voyage dans le sud de la France, le narrateur se retrouve amené à visiter une bien étrange clinique psychiatrique, la maison de santé du docteur Maillard. On l'y entretient d'une toute nouvelle méthode mise au point pour traiter la folie, bien meilleure que la "douceur" préconisée dans les autres établissements.

The Stars Spawn Horror. A gate to eternity, a bridge to death, a guardian under an abhorrent duty. A perpetual loser discovers a dark dimensional gateway on a lonely stretch of Florida highway - and discovers that sometimes, ends must justify means. Serve or die.

"The Outsider" is one of Lovecraft's earliest and creepiest stories. A man exists alone in a mysterious dark castle, with no memory of how or why he is there. One day he decides to climb the highest tower in the hope of seeing the sky...and in doing so briefly learns the terrible, ghastly, unbearable truth....

Aus der Tiefe des Pazifischen Ozeans ertönt infernalisches Gebrüll, das alles Menschliche verhöhnt. Die Welt, wie wir sie kennen, ist dem Untergang geweiht, denn Seine Zeit ist gekommen! Die Geschichte nimmt uns mit in die Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs. Ein Matrose landet auf einem deutschen Kriegsschiff in Gefangenschaft. Es gelingt ihm, bei Nacht und Nebel mit einem Beiboot zu entkommen, ungewiss, ob Rettung wartet. Nach vielen Tagen auf offener See taucht unerwartet ein geheimnisvolles Eiland aus dem Meer auf und bringt eine schreckliche Wahrheit an die Oberfläche.

This is an unabridged audio recording of M R James' excellent ghost story "After Dark in the Playing Fields". Read by David Collings, this is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.