Classics Literature Horror

This collection of classic horror stories is sure to give you goose bumps, raise the hair on the back of your neck, and put some fright in your night. Includes Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Bloch, Coin of the Realm by Charles L. Grant, Something Had to be Done by David Drake, The Graveyard Rats by Henry Kuttner, The Small Assassin by Ray Bradbury, Calling Card by Ramsey Campbell, The Words of Guru by C.M. Kornbluth, and Passengers by Robert Silverberg.

When Gabriel Utterson takes charge of the will of his good friend Dr Jekyll, in which the doctor leaves everything to the mysterious Mr Hyde, he's alarmed at what appears to be a recipe for murder. Over the following months, he investigates Mr Hyde until he uncovers a horrific murder. What's the relationship between his friend and the murderer, and can Utterson save the doctor?

One morning, traveling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes from an anxious dream to discover that he has inexplicably changed into a monstrous insect. Nonetheless, life goes on, and poor Gregor is left to deal not only with the existential questions of who or what he now is but also with more mundane concerns: his job (which he fears he’ll lose), his loved ones (whom he fears he disgusts), and the daily indignities of everyday life (which continue apace). Soon, even those who sympathize with his bizarre predicament begin to lose their patience....

Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters - a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo Del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs.

The creatures of classic horror are coming together this Halloween, lurking through the pages of this exciting new guide! Enjoy learning fun facts about their history, superstitious folk lore, literary appearances and film adaptations. Just when you thought you knew all there was to learn about monsters!

The story of the Egyptian priest Sosra who was condemned to live for 3,500 years before he got the chance to join his fiancee, Atma, in the afterlife. A student of Egyptology who had fallen asleep in the Louvre Museum, is a witness to Sosra’s discovery of the elixir that would reunite him with Atma.

"The Cask of Amontillado" is Edgar Allan Poe's short but enigmatic masterpiece. Set in an unnamed Italian city, we hear the story of how Montresor lures Fortunato through the catacombs into the Montresor family vault and there chains him up and bricks him in for eternity. Why he does it we will never know, but he does so with a casual savagery that is truly chilling.

"Relativement à la très-étrange et pourtant très-familière histoire que je vais coucher par écrit, je n'attends ni ne sollicite la créance. Vraiment, je serais fou de m'y attendre dans un cas où mes sens eux-mêmes rejettent leur propre témoignage. Cependant, je ne suis pas fou, - et très certainement je ne rêve pas. Mais demain je meurs, et aujourd'hui je voudrais décharger mon âme."

A brilliant short story demonstrating how a truly balanced set of dilemmas can allow a reader to conclude two different endings. In this case a young man is faced with two doors. One holds a door with a ferocious tiger. The other? A beautiful lady whom he would immediately marry. The struggle comes not so much in defining a choice, but the reasons that brought the young man to the choice, and who helps him make the choice.

In best-selling author Katie MacAlister’s Love in the Time of Dragons, suburban mom Tully Sullivan wakes up in a far-off place surrounded by strangers—many of them muscular, sexy ones—claiming to be dragons. They insist Tully is a dragon, too, and that she’s committed crimes deserving of death. Now Tully must disprove the allegations before time runs out.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialized in The Strand magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England’s West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. Holmes and Watson investigate the case. This was the first story that seemingly endeavored into the world of the supernatural, challenging Holmes’s idea of rational existence.

Orphans Clara and Jacob Marley live by their wits, scavenging for scraps in the poorest alleyways of London, in the shadow of the workhouse. Every night, Jake promises his little sister ‘tomorrow will be better’, and when the chance to escape poverty comes their way, he seizes it despite the terrible price. And so Jacob Marley is set on a path that leads to his infamous partnership with Ebenezer Scrooge. As Jacob builds a fortress of wealth to keep the world out, only Clara can warn him of the hideous fate that awaits him if he refuses to let love and kindness into his heart....

The author once worked as a dairy farmer in Canada, but returned to his home in Kent, near London, and became a broadcaster, journalist, novelist, and short story writer. He specialized in tales of the supernatural and was described as “Unquestioned master of weird atmosphere,” as he told of incredible adventures. He often used first person narrations, as you will hear … and, very likely feel an abnormal phantom presence. Come along … If you dare!

The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly. In October 1898, it was collected in The Two Magics, published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London.

William Wymark Jacobs (1863 - 1943) was an English short-story writer. "The Monkey's Paw" is a classic horror story whose title refers to a shrunken monkey’s paw that is said to have the power to grant its possessor three wishes.

In the frozen wastes north of Russia, a lone seaward vessel seeks the elusive Northwest Passage. Suddenly they sight a dog sled with a gargantuan figure in the shape of a man, driving the dogs northward to sure oblivion. The following day, they find another sled. This sled is filled with a European near death, and when asked what he is chasing, he simply replies, "to seek one who fled from me."

After the frightful events of last autumn, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton has settled into her role as a maid at Coldthistle House, but she has not settled into what that means for her humanity. As Louisa struggles to figure out whether she is worthy of redemption, the devilish Mr. Morningside plans a fete - one that will bring new guests to Coldthistle House. From wicked humans to Upworlders, angelic beings who look down on Mr. Morningside’s monstrous staff, all are armed with their own brand of self-righteous justice.

Escaping the guillotine, Victor Frankenstein is now posing as Doctor Stein, altruistic patron of the hospital for the poor. But in a secret basement laboratory he is harvesting body parts from his helpless patients, using them in his twisted experiments in a bid to create the perfect man. And this time he has help from a would-be pupil. His pupil seeks knowledge, but Frankenstein desires vengeance against all those who have tried to stop his terrifying work. The first time he tried, it ended in bloody mayhem, but now he is determined that nothing will go wrong.

Mina Louvet is a fighter, a human with a powerful will to survive in a world dominated by warlocks, soul-eaters, and shifters. Identified by the king's witch as one of the rare, invaluable females in Dragons Realm who can give birth to a dragon's son, she was stolen from her parents as a child and taken to the Keep to be reared in the ways of the Ahavi. As one of the few, the elect - the Sklavos Ahavi - Mina is expected to feed her master's fire, reanimate his blood, and above all else, give him strong dragon offspring: children who will one day rise to power.

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.