Classics Literature Horror

Welcome to Babylon, a typical sleepy Alabama small town, where years earlier the Larkin family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now they are about to endure another: 14-year-old Margaret Larkin will be robbed of her innocence and her life by a killer who is beyond the reach of the law. But something strange is happening in Babylon: traffic lights flash an eerie blue, a ghostly hand slithers from the drain of a kitchen sink, graves erupt from the local cemetery in an implacable march of terror.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious young scientist, is consumed by a fanatic desire to create a living being. He fashions an eight-foot-tall creature and succeeds in animating him, but, horrified by his visage, perceives his creation to be a monster and frightens him away. The monster, wandering in search of human companionship, is spurned and repulsed by all he approaches and learns to hate and to kill.

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic Tales blends the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; Lois the Witch, a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors.

Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer, the terrifying creatures who live in the depths of the sea: safety for their merchant ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have suffered as a result. When Mirin's grandfather dies, her grandmother puts in train a plan to restore their glory - but at the price of Mirin's freedom.

Robinson Crusoe is one of the most enduring adventures of the past four centuries and one of the most well-known works in the English language. Or is it? Recently discovered amidst the papers of the 20th-century writer and historian H. P. Lovecraft is what claims to be the true story of Robinson Crusoe. Taken from the castaway's own journals and memoirs, and fact-checked by Lovecraft himself, it is free from many of Defoe's edits and alterations. From Lovecraft's work a much smoother, simpler tale emerges - but also a far more disturbing one.

Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne est un roman fantastique de Mary Shelley. Il relate la création par un jeune savant suisse, Victor Frankenstein, d'un être vivant assemblé avec des parties de chairs mortes. Horrifié par l'aspect hideux de l'être auquel il a donné la vie, Frankenstein abandonne son "monstre". Mais ce dernier, doué d'intelligence, se venge par la suite d'avoir été rejeté par son créateur et persécuté par la société.

In Ghost of a Smile, the Ghost Finders answer a desperate call for help from one of the world’s biggest drug companies. A team of police enforcement agents has already disappeared, and the Ghost Finders have no idea how to proceed. But they’d better figure something out fast, because time is running out—and failure means an entire building full of innocent victims will cease to exist.

This Lovecraft classic is a must-have for every fan of classic terror. When a geologist leads an expedition to the Antarctic plateau, his aim is to find rock and plant specimens from deep within the continent. The barren landscape offers no evidence of any life form - until they stumble upon the ruins of a lost civilization. Strange fossils of creatures unknown to man lead the team deeper, where they find carved stones dating back millions of years. But it is their discovery of the terrifying city of the Old Ones that leads them to an encounter with an untold menace.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1870) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an early science fiction novel. The setting is a strange subterranean world inhabited by beautiful entities that resemble the angels described in scripture. The advanced beings known as Vril-ya live underground - using the mysterious "Vril" as an energy source - but intend to reclaim the surface of the earth as their own. The narrator ends up deep inside the Earth via a natural chasm in a mine shaft.

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline. Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got. They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted. They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic.

"The Crystal Cup" reveals the struggle a young artist faces when he is taken from his family and forced to work for the king. He is promised freedom in return for his hard work making a perfect crystal vase. But the story takes a tragic twist when he dies immediately following his completion of the vase. The king jeopardizes his reign after displaying the artist's remains alongside the vase during a feast at the castle.

First published in an 1839 edition of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the story of the declining physical and psychological health of the residents of the House of Usher - and the way in which the house itself reflects that. Gothic in theme and style, the story is an exemplar of Poe's philosophy of composition, which dictates that literary works should be short and methodological and have a unity of effect wherein all the elements of the story are related and relevant.

The Phantom of the Opera is Gaston Leroux's exquisite blend of Gothic horror and tragic romance that formed the basis for a world-renowned stage musical. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Mireille Ribiere and an introduction by Jann Matlock.

This volume features William F Harvey's original undead hand story "The Beast with Five Fingers" that sparked many movies including Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead". Poe's classic "The Tell Tale Heart" is joined by Lovecraft's creepy tale of alienation "The Outsider", and a chilling Dickens ghost story "The Signalman".

A Penguin Classic. First published in 1938, this volume of stories collected with the encouragement of his longtime editor Pascal Covici serves as a wonderful introduction to the work of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world, these stories reflect Steinbeck’s characteristic interests: The tensions between town and country, laborers and owners, past and present.

Summer 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster - another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Morley's sequel to Parnassus on Wheels, his second love letter to the bookselling trade, The Haunted Bookshop, finds Mifflin and McGill now married and ensconced in Brooklyn. When Aubrey Gilbert, a young advertising man, visits the shop, he falls for Mifflin’s assistant, Titania. But something is amiss. The ghosts of literature aren’t the only mysterious visitors in Mifflin’s bookshop, where books disappear and reappear, but Mifflin is too distracted to notice. Gilbert takes Titania's safety into his own hands. Her life—and the Mifflins’—may depend on it.

Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery. In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar Asmundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker's world-famous 1897 novel Dracula. Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, 'Powers of Darkness'), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker's preface to the book.

Heathcliff, an orphan boy, and Catherine are raised together at Wuthering Heights. Despite the difference in their social position, they eventually fall in love. Though she loves Heathcliff, Catherine chooses to marry Edgar Linton, a wealthy neighbour. Bitter over her rejection, Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights. Years later, he returns and marries Edgar's sister for her money. Catherine dies after giving birth to a daughter. Devastated by Catherine's death, Heathcliff is determined to enact his revenge on Edgar and the next generation.