Literary Horror

This annotated edition of the classic Gothic novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly includes an historical introduction, an overview, study of the themes present in the book, and a list of famous quotes.

Visions have always been...my pasture. I almost think there is no wisdom comparable to that of exchanging the realities of life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old histories take one back into centuries that cannot disappoint. I waked one morning from a dream of which all I could recover was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.

Lucina of Greece was orphaned at a young age and brought up by foster parents. Now aged 13, she is sent to be educated by her philosopher guardian in the place he calls Elysium. There, she finds herself the only female in a masculine world: While she proves herself an intellectual equal, she cannot accept the rigidity of the scientific skepticism that disallows her intuition, psychic talents, and capacity for love.

First published in the US in 1988 and in the UK in 1990, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight unsettling stories that explore protagonists' fears and desires, at once illogical and terrifying, and culminate in a disturbing and enigmatic ending. Aickman's "strange stories" (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia; his characters ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds. For fans of the horror genre, Robert Aickman is a must read.

Mo's latest assignment is assisting the police in containing an unusual outbreak: ordinary citizens suddenly imbued with extraordinary abilities of the superpowered kind. Unfortunately these people prefer playing superpranks instead of superheroics. The mayor of London being levitated by a dumpy man in Trafalgar Square would normally be a source of shared amusement for Mo and Bob, but they're currently separated because something's come between them - something evil.

When 21-year-old NYU student Jeff Converse is convicted of a brutal rape and murder that he did not commit, his nightmare has just begun. Jeff is just the latest innocent man to be made a target of the society that controls the underground hell called the Manhattan Hunt Club.

From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research center that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that...

Jean est journaliste dans la presse régionale. Son métier l'amène à rencontrer différentes personnalités de la vie locale afin de faire leur portrait. Quand l'un de ses articles fait polémique, sa femme et son fils se dressent contre lui avec violence et lui reprochent d'être dépassé, infréquentable, irrécupérable.

You open your eyes for what you know is not the first time and you remember nothing. You find out that a catastrophic event known as the Kollaps has destroyed life as we know it. Something crucial has been stolen - but under no circumstances can you know what or why. You’ve got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you’ve got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out. Paralyzed from the waist down, you’re being carried around on the backs of two men who don’t seem anything like you at all.

Light and dark—this is the cursed birthright placed upon Clara and Natasha by their godfather, Drosselmeyer, whose power and greed hold an entire city in his sway. Charming Clara, the favorite, grows into a life of beauty and ease, while ignored and unloved Natasha is relegated to her sister’s shadow. But the opportunity for revenge announces itself one Christmas Eve, when Drosselmeyer arrives at their family gala with the Nutcracker, an enchanted gift that offers entry into an alternate world: the Kingdom of Sweets.

Night falls. It came like a malignant shadow with seductive promises of power. And somewhere in the night...a small girl smiled as her mother burned...asylum inmates slaughtered their attendants...in slimy tunnels once-human creatures gathered. Madness raged as the lights began to fade and humanity was attacked by an ancient, unstoppable evil.

The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

Bram Stoker's masterpiece is at the same time intensely romantic and very modern. It unfolds the story of a Transylvanian Don Juan, the aristocratic Count Dracula who preys on desirous damsels.

Far from the concrete and steel of Boston, the town of Northwood nestles beneath the summit of Mount Sugarloaf. The quiet community seems like the perfect place for Steve and Diane Nailer to raise their family of two children with a third on the way. Their new home is perched on the edge of a forest. A trail through the woods leads to an old Victorian mansion that once housed the town mortuary. But the memories of the dearly departed are the least of what lurks there....

M. R. James (Montague Rhodes James) was a noted British medieval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905-1918) and of Eton College. He is best remembered today for his ghost stories, which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature. As a medieval scholar his output in that field was phenomenal and remains highly respected in scholarly circles.

A shocking murder in the New Zealand bush—and the witness who looks all too familiar—draws a woman back to the very place she swore she’d never return to in this breakneck debut thriller. A child who ran from the forest. A woman who must return to it Growing up with her younger siblings in...

A novel about the rich stories of small places, from the Nobel Prize–winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Books of Jacob and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the...

"Dog days and the fresh bodies are arriving once again." So begins the fall term at South Carolina Medical College, where Dr. Jacob Thacker is on probation for Xanax abuse. His interim career - working public relations for the dean - takes an unnerving detour into the past when the bones of African American slaves, over a century old, are unearthed on the campus. Out of the college’s dark past, these bones threaten to rise and condemn the present.

The fourth of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, Lord of the Horizon, the sequel to Eyes of Horus, is set in Egypt at the close of the dark XIth dynasty and is a profound commentary on the power of fear and the unlimited ability of light to shatter it. Lord of the Horizon is the story of Ra-ab Hotep, heir to the Nomarch of the Oryx. Ra-ab is 21 as the story begins. The dawn for which Ra-ab and the Watchers of the Horizon fought in Eyes of Horus has come, but to "Send Fear into Exile", as the Watchers' password promised, proves difficult.

A phantom has haunted the Paris Opera House for years. Now he is infatuated with singer Christine Daaé. Despite an astonishing debut performance, Christine fails to win the lead in Faust, and the Phantom’s cursed retaliation on the opera house is spectacularly fatal. As the chandelier falls, he kidnaps Christine, and through hidden passages and behind trapdoors, shares his life story with her. To secure her escape, Christine promises to stay true to him forever. But when the Phantom learns of the prima donna’s intention to flee, his passion turns terrifying.