Literary Horror

While on routine patrol in the tinder-dry Topanga Canyon, environmental scientist Rafael Salazar expects to find animal poachers, not a dilapidated antique steamer trunk. Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It also promises to reveal a terrible secret - the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Conventional wisdom has it that the origins of the horror genre are found in the nineteenth century, in works like Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this paradigm-shaking new book, Bible scholar and cultural historian Brandon Grafius argues that the Bible is, among other things, the world's first work of horror literature. The tropes and themes that we find in slasher movies, body horror, folk horror, and zombie apocalypses were kickstarted by the Bible. Before Godzilla, there were the monsters arising from the sea in the book of Daniel.

Benedict is an inventor whose life’s work is a clean energy machine. It has just made him an overnight sensation and his family is suddenly wealthy. Benedict’s wife, Karen, and his teenage daughters, Charlotte and Poppy, are proud of him. But there are problems Benedict is too busy to see: Karen is deeply unhappy in the marriage and contemplating an affair, Charlotte, who is dealing with a chronic illness, is growing more and more distant, and Poppy is cracking under the pressures of her social circle. And there’s another problem.

The Black Knight Chronicles: lots of vampires. No sparkles. Serious snark. This bundle includes books one through there: Hard Day's Knight, Back in Black, and Knight Moves.

March 1928. The Great War has been over for ten years, but Freddie still hasn't recovered from the loss of his brother. Even now, on holiday in south-west France, he cannot escape his grief. When his car crashes, Freddie stumbles down from the hills to a village nearby. There he meets Marie, a beautiful young woman who is also mourning a lost generation. Her story of the fate of her family moves him deeply.

Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother, John, in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her 50s who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John's rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door...and turning a blind eye to the women's laundry in the hamper that isn't hers. For years she's buried the signs of John's devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind - until the day John is crippled by a heart attack.

Eyes of Horus is the story, told in the first person, of Ra-ab, heir to the Nomarch of the Oryx, one of 18 provinces in Egypt. He comes to learn that the Oryx is different from the rest of Egypt, in that it is still in touch with the light. The rest of Egypt is plagued by fear and ruled by corruption. The pharaoh is an ineffectual ruler. The priests have replaced the worship of Ptah with the worship of Set. Only the Oryx has cast off these shackles - and it is from the Oryx that a silent brotherhood arises of the eyes of Horus - the Watchers of the Horizon.

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, was an Irish writer known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo. His book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, comprises two parts, the first being the "Kwaidan Proper" and the second, "Insect-Studies", which consists of an essay each on ants, butterflies and mosquitos. According to the author, most of the folk tales and ghost stories in the first part were translated from old Japanese texts. The themes encompass resurrection, sacrifice, magic, and the realm of dreams.

Four years ago, the Eternal Slumber Funeral Home put Chicken Teater in the ground. Now undertaker Emma Lee Raines is digging him back up. The whole scene is bad for business, especially with her granny running for mayor and a big festival setting up in town. But ever since Emma Lee started seeing ghosts, Chicken's been pestering her to figure out who killed him.

In the Forest, set in the west of Ireland, is the story of a young man who shoots dead three people in a forest glade. The young man, Mich O'Kane, is "not all there in the head" as one character puts it. By puberty, he is already committing petty crimes, ending up in borstal. By the time he is back home he has also served time in a British jail and is an institutionalised criminal.

The Rhys who has existed for centuries is gone. Stripped of his ability to shift forms, Rhys can no longer embody the majestic, powerful dragon he was at birth. Cut off from his heritage by one of his own, this Dragon King must remain a man, haunted by demons who torment his every waking moment. The darkness would swallow him whole, except a woman so beautiful and haunted becomes the one beam of light in his world.

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's only novel. Written between October 1845 and June 1846, Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell"; Bronte died the following year, aged 30. Wuthering Heights and Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey were accepted by publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre.

Victor Frankenstein learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger and more powerful than the average man. Frankenstein rejects the creature, and lives to regret his desire to create life, after it kills his brother William. Frankenstein is a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus.

Working in the ER, Dr. Marie Lavant sees the darkest side of New Orleans. But the bloody wounds of patients are not the only things that haunt her. As the descendent of a legendary voodoo queen, Marie is cursed with the ability to communicate with spirits of the dead.

A young man commits all types of sins, but only his portrait shows the ravages of his life. Oscar Wilde's Faustian classic. Gothic horror at its best.

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.

Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.

Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-30s and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.

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.