Victorian Horror

Maisie Thomas spends every summer at Grange House, a hotel on the coast of Maine ruled by the elegant Miss Grange. In 1896, when Maisie turns 17, her visit marks a turning point. On the morning after her arrival, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery: drowned lovers, found clasped in each other's arms. It's only the first in a series of events that casts a shadow over Maisie's summer. As she considers the attentions of two very different young men, Maisie also falls under the gaze of Miss Grange, who begins to tell her disturbing stories of her past.

Sixteen modern fiction superstars shine a startling light on the romance and pain of the infamous literary pair Heathcliff and Cathy. Short stories to stir the heart and awaken vital conversation about love.

A pair of sisters travel to Waddonscombe in Cornwall where they enjoy their hosts’ ghost stories around the manor house fire. A cliché, perhaps? Yet events may not play out entirely as expected.

Clayton Barbour, the narrator, is a protected bourgeois son just weak enough to allow himself to be overwhelmed by a sly, dissembling force of evil, just strong enough to be constantly tormented by his weakness. Invited to a séance by a casual acquaintance, Moore, who sees in him a psychic force, he becomes the inadvertent victim of Moore's wife's contact with a channeled malignant force.

Victorian England, 1891. The escape of reading had saved the pathetic life of the orphaned Naomi Gladwyn. However, when she learns of books that are responsible for taking lives, everything she knows changes. Approaching her 18th birthday with only the grim prospect of living out her days in a workhouse, Naomi makes the boldest decision of her life and runs away. With only the whisper of a plan, she soon finds herself swept up into the dark world of The Book Reapers - a secret society that knows there is more to some books than meets the eye.

In the year 1843, embittered Afghan War veteran John Sparrowhawk is released from the debtors’ prison by the beautiful and enigmatic Miss Evangeline. Penniless and alone in the world, he takes employment with his mysterious benefactor, agreeing to stand guard over a house in Bloomsbury for the duration of that December. The task sounds simple, but in fact is anything but.

In Victorian London, a select group of writers, led by Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, and Henry James, held an informal dining club, the price of entry to which was the telling of a story by each invited guest. These are their stories, containing tales of revenant loved ones, lost cities, weird science, spectral appearances, and mysteries in the fog of the old city, all told by some of the foremost writers of the day. In here you'll find Verne and Wells, Tolstoy and Checkov, Stevenson and Oliphant, Kipling, Twain, Haggard, and Blavatsky alongside their hosts.

Welcome to the Gothic London of the 1800s. These saucy tales quicken the pulse, thrill the mind, and excite parts of the body that other, lesser books fail to reach. Short stories featured in this sweet confection of blood, sex, and Gothic melodrama include "Holmes of the Baskervilles", "Miss Katie Bell - Victorian Vampire", "Joan Dark Is Lost", and "The Vampire Alice Through the Looking Glass". Here, vampires walk the streets and your favorite characters from Victorian literature are twisted until they snap.

Celia Renton, a poor relation, is summoned to Sorrowmoor, a gloomy estate owned by her cousin, Connall Rothwell. But all is not well at the house. A mysterious death of the master's brother, a master with demons, and a deadly enemy await Celia. Even as her heart is torn with mistrust of the master of the house, danger lurks behind handmade dolls and treacherous smiles. Will Celia live to learn the secrets of Sorrowmoor?

An old man lives in a Victorian house alone. Or so he thinks. When he visits his basement, he is literally haunted by his past.

"For the love of God, cut off my head." The last request in Uncle Silas's will shocks everyone speechless, everyone except his favorite niece, Anna. More than death itself, the claustrophobic Silas fears a premature burial. Will her elders carry out his request? Anna is certain they will not. It's up to her to do the right thing, even if it is a bit grisly. Armed with butcher knife and candle, Anna heads for the crypt underneath the church in the dead of night. All does not go according to Anna's careful planning.

A Polish historian visiting Italy falls in love with a 16th-century femme fatale, who murdered a series of enthralled husbands and lovers. When he experiences visions of the beautiful Medea Da Carpi, it slowly turns his scholarly fascination into a fatal obsession.

Keen to improve his prospects, a man impersonates a fellow traveller who had changed his mind about an engagement to a wealthy young woman. But he begins to regret his decision when he learns every suitor must face an unknown horror that the family has harboured for generations.

The American Otis family moves into the old English country house Canterville Chase. They are warned that the house is haunted before they move in but are unconcerned at first. They soon accept that the ghost is real but are not frightened by it. The ghost, who had been frightening all those who stayed at Canterville Chase for 300 years, takes the Americans' unwillingness to be scared by him as a great insult. He grows to despise them all, except for the teenage daughter, Virginia, who he feels is different from the rest of her family.

How do you know if you’ve seen a ghost? Maybe you’ll never know. But an American couple seeking an idyllic retirement in and English country house do find out...eventually. Afterward is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known. With music by Benedict Edwards.

Twenty-year-old Anne Cumberfield is the new bride of Lord Wolfstone - Ignatius Wright, by his given name. As she learns more about the history of Wolfstone Manor and her mysterious husband, will she survive the challenge of being wife to him and of the perils of her isolated home on the moors? Is the beast in her bed worse than the threats that lurk on the moors?

A no-nonsense governess returns to the family home at Christmas to celebrate the season and an upcoming wedding but learns of a curse affecting the men of the family. 'At Chrighton Abbey' is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known.

The charming but nonetheless creepy tale of Nina, a little girl’s doll, who repays the kindness shown her after she is damaged in a fall. The Doll’s Ghost is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known.

A young man’s inheritance includes more than a house when an ebony-framed painting of a beautiful woman starts to exert a strange hold over its new owner. Could this lead to his tragic demise?

In this work of sensual erotica that defies description, Isabel is set to be wed. She goes for a walk with her friend, confessing about her hesitance to take the step, when she is suddenly lifted into the air and kidnapped by an old, giant tree - the mother tree. The mother tree begins to swallow her, but soon finds that stimulating this girl sexually will bring way more nutrition to her roots and the earth. What follows is a dubcon submission fantasy in which Isabel's deepest fantasy comes true: that of being a submissive to a dominant force.