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The New Annotated Dracula
by Bram Stoker
A lavishly illustrated tribute to Bram Stoker's classic shares additional insights into the historical plausibility of vampire lore, in an edition that surveys more than two centuries of popular culture and myth while providing a detailed examination of the book's original typescript and different ending.
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Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus : Or, the Modern Prometheus
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.
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Weird women : Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers, 1852-1923
by Leslie S. Klinger
"While the nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley may be hailed as the first modern writer of horror, the success of her immortal Frankenstein undoubtedly inspired dozens of female authors who wrote their own evocative, chilling tales. Weird Women, edited by award-winning anthologists Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger, collects some of the finest tales of terror by authors as legendary as Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Charlotte Gilman-Perkins, alongside works of writers who were the bestsellersand critical favorites of their time--Marie Corelli, Ellen Glasgow, Charlotte Riddell--and lesser known authors who are deserving of contemporary recognition"
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In the Shadow of Agatha Christie : Classic Crime Fiction by forgotten female writers: 1850-1917
by Leslie S. Klinger
Showcases the mystery and detective short stories from female authors who came before Agatha Christie, including Mary Fortune, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Ellen Wood, Elizabeth Corbett, C. L. Pirkis, Geraldine Bonner, Ellen Glasgow, L. T. Meade, Baroness Orczy, M. E. Graddon, Carolyn Wells, Susan Glashell and more.
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Phantom of the Opera
by Gaston Leroux
"This reissue of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera is the first title in The Haunted Library, a new horror classics series presented by the Horror Writers Association and Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks. The award-winning musical based on Leroux's work is world-famous, but many people are unaware that the show was inspired by a novel, originally published in a serialized form. The Phantom of the Opera is a timeless piece of gothic horror that invites the reader into the dark world ofobsession beneath the Palais Garnier opera house and reveals the secrets of the masked man who lives there. An introduction by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Nancy Holder and in-depth annotations will bring this epic love story to life for today's readers"
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The Beetle
by Richard Marsh
"First published in 1897, Richard Marsh's classic work of gothic horror, The Beetle, opens with Robert Holt, an out-of-work clerk seeking shelter in an abandoned house. He comes face to face with a fantastical creature with supernatural and hypnotic powers; a creature who can transform at will between its human and beetle forms and who wrecks havoc when he preys on young middle-class Britons. Featuring an introduction by bestselling author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, the Haunted Library Horror Classics editionof The Beetle is a tale of revenge that takes the reader on a dark journey, one that explores the crisis of late imperial England through a fantastical and horrific lens"
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The House on the Borderland
by William Hope Hodgson
"Two friends, Tonnison and Berregnog, stumble upon an old house in rural Ireland and discover the journal of "the Recluse," an unidentified man who recorded his last days in the house before its destruction. The journal recounts strange visions that dogged the Recluse-terrifying creatures that crawl up from below the house to torment him. But the journal is unfinished, and the friends are left to speculate on the man's fate-and their own. First published in 1908 by William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland is a classic Gothic novel that shaped the genre of horror into what it is today. Praised by iconic artists like H. P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett and presented now by the Horror Writers Association, this story is one that haunts the reader long after the book has been closed"
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Vathek
by William Beckford
"Vathek, the ninth caliph of the Abassides in Arabia, ascends to the throne at an early age and reigns with an iron fist, inspiring terror and unrest among his people. His intense thirst for knowledge (which makes him feel more powerful) and his constantdesire for pleasures of the flesh will ultimately lead to his downfall. When he purchases mysterious glowing swords from a strange merchant, he learns the swords have inscriptions and powers he cannot understand or translate. Vathek sells his soul to find out what they say and becomes eternally damned. Featuring an introduction by acclaimed writer Joe R. Lonsdale, this is the Haunted Library of Horror Classics reprint of the classic Gothic novel Vathek by William Beckford"
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Of One Blood, or, The hidden self : Or, the Hidden Self
by Pauline E. Hopkins
Of One Blood is the last of four novels written by Pauline Hopkins. She is considered by some to be "the most prolific African-American woman writer and the most influential literary editor of the first decade of the twentieth century, though she is one of the lesser known literary figures of the much lauded Harlem Renaissance. Of One Blood first appeared in serial form in Colored American Magazine in the November and December 1902 and the January 1903 issues of the publication, during the four-year period that Hopkins served as its editor.
Hopkins tells the story of Reuel Briggs, a medical student who couldn't care less about being black and appreciating African history, but finds himself in Ethiopia on an archeological trip. His motive is to raid the country of lost treasures -- which he does find in the ancient land. However, he discovers much more than he bargained for: the painful truth about blood, race, and the half of his history that was never told. Hopkins wrote the novel intending, in her own words, to "raise the stigma of degradation from [the Black] race." The title, Of One Blood, refers to the biological kinship of all human beings.
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The Lost World
by Arthur Conan Doyle
When four Englishmen and their guides venture into a "prehistoric," remote plateau in the South American jungle, they must rely on their cunning and intellect to escape from the plateau and its carnivorous inhabitants.
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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
by M.R. James
This 1904 classic collects the earliest ghost stories of author M.R. James. While not gruesome by any means, these classic tales of apparitions and other supernatural horrors remain chilling to this day. Features "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book," "Lost Hearts" "The Mezzotint," "The Ash-Tree," "Number 13," "Count Magnus," "'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad,'" and "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas."
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The King in Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
A collection of strange, macabre short stories, originally published in 1895, are linked together by mention of a fictional, forbidden play which reveals truths so terrible it makes all those who read it go mad.
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The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride to be. The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that is both chilling and terrifying.
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The Mummy! : A Victorian tale of the 22nd century
by Loudon
"Inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this foundational work of science fiction was also written by an imaginative young woman and published in the early 19th century. This tale, however, has a futuristic setting of 2126 and its "monster," an intelligent mummy, serves as a friend and counselor to mankind. The author's intriguingly prescient visions of social and technological advances include a form of the internet"
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Fantasmagoriana
by edited by A.J. Day
It was on a 'dark and stormy night', during the summer of 1816 that an eccentic group of English literati gathered at the Villa Diodati. The atmosphere at the Villa was charged by the violent streaks of lightening that licked at the mountain tops and split a black sky. As the wind outside whipped up the surface of lake Leman into a cauldron of waves the occupants of the Villa; Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Dr John Polidori, Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont, whipped themselves into a gothic frenzy with recitals of haunting poetry and ghost stories. The stories that they read came from a book, originally written in German, that had recently been translated into French. The book that they read from was called Fantasmagoriana. Fantasmagoriana has a unique place in literary history. This is the first full translation of the stories that inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Dr John Polidori's The Vampyre.
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Lovecraft Country : A Novel
by Matt Ruff
Blends multiple genres in a visceral exploration of the Jim Crow era and its legacy, tracing the story of young Army vet Atticus Turner, who in 1954 Chicago travels with his publisher uncle and childhood friend to search for his missing father only to encounter human and supernatural terrors at the estate of a descendant of slave owners.
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The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories
by Arthur Machen
Arthur Machen is a significant figure in supernatural and horror literature, in the genre of 'weird fiction'. This collection brings together his best horror tales with a full contextual introduction and which helps to illuminate Machen's place in the literary and cultural milieu of 1890s Britain.
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The Monk
Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in by its mixture of bloodshed, sex and scandal.
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Supernatural Horror in Literature
by H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), the most important American supernaturalist since Poe, has had an incalculable influence on all the horror-story writing of recent decades. Although his supernatural fiction has of late been enjoying an unprecedented fame, it is still not widely known that he wrote a critical history of supernatural horror in literature that has yet to be superseded as the finest historical discussion of the genre. This extraordinary work is presented in this volume in its final, revised text.
With incisive penetration and power, Lovecraft here formulates the aesthetics of supernatural horror, and summarizes in masterful fashion the range of its literary expression from primitive folklore to the tales of his own 20th-century masters. Following a discussion of terror-literature in ancient, medieval and renaissance culture, he launches on a critical survey of the whole history of horror fiction from the Gothic school of the 18th century (when supernatural horror finally found its own genre) to the time of De la Mare and M. R. James. The Castle of Otranto, Radcliffe, "Monk" Lewis, Fathek, Charles Brockden Brown, Melmoth the Wanderer, Frankenstein, Bulwer-Lytton, Fongué's Undine, Wuthering Heights, Poe (an entire chapter), The House of the Seven Gables, de Maupassant's Horla, Bierce, The Turn of the Screw, M. P. Shiel, W. H. Hodgson, Machen, Blackwood, and Dunsany are among the authors and works discussed in depth. Lovecraft also notices a host of lesser supernatural writers — enough to draw up an extensive reading list.
By charting so completely the background for his own concepts of horror and literary techniques, Lovecraft throws light on his own fiction as well as on the horror literature which has followed in his influential wake. For this reason this book will be especially intriguing to those who have read and enjoyed Lovecraft's fiction as an isolated phenomenon. These and other readers, searching for a guide through the inadequately marked region of literary horror, need search no further. New introduction by E. F. Bleiler.
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The Book of Hallowe'en : The Origin and History of Halloween
by Ruth Edna Kelley
Since its original publication in 1919, Ruth Edna Kelley's THE BOOK OF HALLOWE'EN remains the all time classic exploration of Halloween history, from the mysterious year end rites of the ancient Celts, to the autumnal reign of Samhain, the Druid god of death, to the coming to Europe of Christianity and "All Saints Day," to the charming early 20th Century Halloween beliefs and customs of Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, France, Germany and America. Filled with Halloween poems, games and tried and true ancient methods for divining the future (especially for discovering the identity of one's future spouse!), THE BOOK OF HALLOWE'EN opens a captivating window into the past of one of today's most beloved holidays.
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The Werewolf of Paris : a novel
by S. Guy Endore
Follows the experiences of outcast Bertrand Caillet, who travels across pre-Revolutionary France seeking to calm the raging instincts, fog-enshrouded visions, and sexual depravity of his inner beast.
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Earth abides
by George R. Stewart
"First published in 1949 and the winner of the inaugural International Fantasy Award in 1951, Earth Abides went on to become one of the most influential science-fiction novels of the twentieth century. It remains a fresh, provocative story of apocalypticpandemic, societal collapse, and rebirth"
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The Last Man
by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, whose gothic style and progressive ideas have had a permanent influence on literary history. Daughter of political philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley quickly developed ideas about female independence, sexual freedom, and how to compromise in the face of nineteenth century English convention. Her 1826 novel, “The Last Man”, reflects Shelley’s fears about civilization and the shortcomings of human behavior. The narrator discovers a prophetic manuscript, written in 2100 by the last survivor of a twenty-first century apocalypse, which recounts how a deadly plague spread throughout Europe and the world. The scribe, Lionel Verney, describes a world that is both fantasy, and a reflection of Shelley’s reality. She used this novel to scrutinize the machinations of politics and philosophy, and reflect upon pitfalls of human behavior—selfishness, brutality, pride—that she saw in the world around her.
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The Blazing World
by Margaret Cavendish
A fanciful depiction of a satirical, utopian kingdom in another world that can be reached via the North Pole. It is the only known work of utopian fiction by a woman in the 17th century, as well as an example of what we now call 'proto-science fiction' — although it is also a romance, an adventure story, and even autobiography.
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