Horror Fairy Tales

There’s a new vampire in town. His name is Valentine Maxwell. Goth-girl Raven knows this latest intruder can only mean trouble—he’s the younger sibling of two vampires she fought to drive out of Dullsville. But when her brother, Billy, befriends this dangerous tween night prowler, the stakes are suddenly higher. Though torn by the excitement of every teen girl’s fantasy—attending the prom with her boyfriend—Raven must do everything she can to protect Billy.

It's 1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who took that fateful trip and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.

In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley - the two great poets of their age - and a lovely 17-year-old named Mary Shelley were partying and reading ghost stories on the shores of Lake Geneva. They dared each other to come up with the scariest story. Young Mary was the only one to rise to the challenge, and she gave birth to the entire horror and science fiction genres by crafting a brilliant and chilling account of what it means to be human, what responsibilities we have to each other, and how far we can go in tampering with nature.

1647: A small group of Parliamentarian soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern England. Their only hope for survival is to flee into the nearby Moresby Wood...unwise though that may seem. For Moresby Wood is known to be an unnatural place, the realm of witchcraft and shadows, where the devil is said to go walking by moonlight. Seventeen men enter the wood. Only two are ever seen again, and the stories they tell of what happened make no sense. Stories of shifting landscapes, of trees that appear and disappear at will...and of something else.

Adelaide Brindamour is dreading the thought of a husband. That he'll neither understand nor appreciate her ability to communicate with ghosts goes without saying. When a mysterious, blue-bearded gentleman appears at Madame Gossard's summer house party, however, the thought of matrimony becomes a bit more tempting. But when a whirlwind love affair turns into a daring elopement, Adelaide may find herself in for a bit more mystery—and murder—than she was prepared for.

It feels like a fairy tale when Alberta ”Bert” Monte receives a letter addressed to “Countess Alberta Montebianco” at her Hudson Valley, New York, home that claims she’s inherited a noble title, money, and a castle in Italy. While Bert is more than a little skeptical, the mystery of her aristocratic family’s past, and the chance to escape her stressful life for a luxury holiday in Italy, is too good to pass up.

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.

From Daniel Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from his beloved Children's Stories Made Horrific series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to listeners of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

It’s December in a small seaside town, and Ruby Harper spends her nights looking into her neighbor's apartment. Unable to sleep due to insomnia and the heartache of a family she has run away from, she fantasizes that the mystery man could be the answer to her loneliness. But one night Ruby sees something unexpected: The man is not alone; a woman and a child are sharing the apartment - and they never go outside. Why are they kept hidden? Then the man is found half-drowned in the bathtub, a pile of women’s clothes is left on the beach, and a little girl is discovered, abandoned.

Winifred Rudge, a bemused writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home.

In this original collection from Skyboat Media and Blackstone Publishing, Elizabeth Gaskell showcases the height of gothic fiction's ability to delight in the otherworldly and to dig deep into what truly haunts us. Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, "Lois the Witch" reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America.

People think being haunted is a bad thing. That’s because they’ve never visited The Curiosity Curio. The spirits who linger in my store dance the jitterbug, look after the plants, and gossip about long-dead relatives. Even though no one believes me about my mediumistic gifts, it’s my job to aid these lost souls. I can help them, even if I gave up hoping to find someone who understood me long ago.

A decade after Nocturnes first terrified and delighted listeners, John Connolly, best-selling author of 13 acclaimed thrillers featuring private investigator Charlie Parker, gives us a second volume of tales of the supernatural.

There is another world than our own - one no closer than a kiss and one no further than our nightmares - where all the stuff of which dreams are made is real and magic is just a step away. But once you see that world, you will never be the same. Dreams and Shadows takes us beyond this veil. Once bold explorers and youthful denizens of this magical realm, Ewan is now an Austin musician who just met his dream girl, and Colby, meanwhile, cannot escape the consequences of an innocent wish.

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night. 

My life is a giant crap pile with a cherry thrown on top. I'm an immortal woman cursed to kill people with just a glance. And now I've been kidnapped by three mouthwateringly sexy gargoyles, who I'm pretty sure want me dead. But it gets better...While I'm trying to make the best of being a prisoner, guarded by yummy eye-candy, I'm also being dragged on a dangerous mission...I think I'm not just risking my life this time, I'm risking my heart. And that's one thing that even monsters fear.

In November 2014 Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and sister to death with a hammer. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation. King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself as he questions whether Arla's responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out.

Jada L. Roberts' Bigfoot Stories are collections of stories from eyewitnesses that had their own encounters with the unknown creature lurking in the woods that is called Bigfoot. These eyewitness have contacted the author and wanted to share their story. These reports are from ordinary men and women who have seen Bigfoot in the flesh and have told that their lives have been changed forever. After hearing these stories, you may want to think twice before going out in the woods!

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is Mary Shelley's passionate and Gothic tale of terror, in which a man's desire to know the unknowable sweeps him into a living nightmare. Victor Frankenstein's experiments with life itself give birth to an extraordinary force with the potential for either good or evil.

Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena. After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known.