Book picks similar to
J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales V1 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
horror
short-stories
classics
ghost-stories
The Ghosts of Varner Creek
Michael Weems - 2007
Left with his alcoholic and abusive father, Sol lived his life believing the story he'd been told, the story all the people of Varner Creek believed about what happened that summer. But in a plot of twists and family secrets that will leave the reader reaching for their jaw upon the floor, Sol is taken back to his childhood by the spirits he knew in life when he passes away so many years later . . . it is only then he learns what secrets The Ghosts of Varner Creek have been keeping so many years. "Very well written . . . this debut novel is a real page turner with some very interesting characters."-Jani Brooks, Romance Review Today This was a wonderfully woven story about an American family, their secrets, tragedies, love lost and redeemed. - Goodreads 5 Star Review from Robert Stadnik, author of Exodus Of The Phoenix, Phoenix Among The Stars, and Tales Of A Former Child Superhero. Terrific book! This story was haunting and chilled me to the core. I couldn't read fast enough to find out what happened to the characters. I was definitely hooked from the very beginning. I would recommend this book if you are looking for a great mystery. - Nook 5 Star Review Never anything but page-turning . . . I was hooked on this book right from the start. - Dr. Jon P. Bloch, Professor, Author, and Reviewer for The Kindle Book Review, blog website.
The Horror on the Links
Seabury Quinn - 2017
P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn.Quinn’s short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales’s original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin’s knack for solving mysteries—and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)—captivated readers for nearly three decades.Collected for the first time in trade editions, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, and including all thirty-two original Weird Tales covers illustrated for de Grandin stories, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero.The first volume, The Horror on the Links, includes all of the Jules de Grandin stories from “The Horror on the Links” (1925) to “The Chapel of Mystic Horror” (1928), as well as an introduction by Robert Weinberg.
The House of a Hundred Whispers
Graham Masterton - 2020
It's not a place many would choose to live - yet the Governor of Dartmoor Prison did just that. When Herbert Russell retired, he bought All Hallow's Hall - a rambling Tudor mansion on the edge of the moor, and lived there all his life.Now he's dead, and his estranged family are set to inherit his estate. But when the dead man's family come to stay, the atmosphere of the moors seems to drift into every room. Floorboards creak, secret passageways echo, and wind whistles in the house's famous priest hole. And then, on the morning the family decide to leave All Hallow's Hall once and for all, their young son Timmy goes missing.
Sympathy for the Devil
Tim PrattCharles Stross - 2001
His traps and machinations are the stuff of legends. His faces are legion. No matter what face the devil wears, Sympathy for the Devil has them all. Edited by Tim Pratt, Sympathy for the Devil collects the best Satanic short stories by Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, and many others, revealing His Grand Infernal Majesty, in all his forms. Thirty-five stories, from classics to the cutting edge, exploring the many sides of Satan, Lucifer, the Lord of the Flies, the Father of Lies, the Prince of the Powers of the Air and Darkness, the First of the Fallen... and a Man of Wealth and Taste. Sit down and spend a little time with the Devil.
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream
Christopher GoldenJames A. Moore - 2018
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. Marley untying the bandage that holds his jaws together. The hideous children--Want and Ignorance--beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The heavy ledgers Marley drags by his chains. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Bestselling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.Absinthe & angels by Kelley Armstrong --Christmas in Barcelona by Scott Smith --Fresh as the new-fallen snow by Seanan McGuire --Love me by Thomas E. Sniegoski --Not just for Christmas by Sarah Lotz --Tenets by Josh Malerman --Good deeds by Jeff Strand --It's a wonderful knife by Christopher Golden --Mistletoe and holly by James A. Moore --Snake's tail by Sarah Langan --The second floor of the Christmas hotel by Joe R. Lansdale --Farrow Street by Elizabeth Hand --Doctor Velocity: a story of the fire zone by Jonathan Maberry --Yankee swap by John M. McIlveen --Honor thy mother by Angela Slatter --Home by Tim Lebbon --Hiking through by Michael Koryta --The hangman's bride by Sarah Pinborough
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
Robert E. Howard - 2004
Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century—he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan wasn’t the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard’s fertile imagination. “He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.”Collected in this volume, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Gary Gianni, are all of the stories and poems that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. Together they constitute a sprawling epic of weird fantasy adventure that stretches from sixteenth-century England to remote African jungles where no white man has set foot. Here are shudder-inducing tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, of dark sorceries wielded by evil men and women, all opposed by a grim avenger armed with a fanatic’s faith and a warrior’s savage heart.
This edition also features exclusive story fragments, a biography of Howard by scholar Rusty Burke, and “In Memoriam,” H. P. Lovecraft’s moving tribute to his friend and fellow literary genius.
Skulls in the stars --The right hand of doom --Red shadows --Rattle of bones --The castle of the devil --Death's black riders --The moon of skulls --The one black stain --The blue flame of vengance --The hills of the dead --Hawk of Basti --The return of Sir Richard Grenville --Wings in the night --The footfalls within --The children of Asshur --Solomon Kane's homecoming --Solomon Kane's homecoming (variant).
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral
Robert Westall - 1991
Soon after steeplejack Joe Clarke begins work on one of the spires of Muncaster's medieval cathedral, terrible things start to happen and Joe realizes that there is a malevolent force connected to the spire's gargoyle.
The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Terror
August Derleth - 1959
The Black Gondolier and Other Stories
Fritz Leiber - 1998
Assembled here is a selection of Mr. Leiber's best horrific tales, many of which have been virtually unobtainable for decades. From the riveting "Spider Mansion" and "The Phantom Slayer" from Weird Tales to the more recent "Lie Still, Snow White" and "Black Has Its Charms" from rare, small-press magazines, this collection provides an overview of Leiber's fifty-plus years as an acknowledged master of the weird tale. While much of Leiber's seminal science-fiction and fantasy remains in print, his work in the field of supernatural horror has been sadly neglected until now. Edited by John Pelan and Steve Savile.
Things We Say in the Dark
Kirsty Logan - 2019
But we can visit our fears at night, in the dark. We can turn them over and weigh them in our hands and maybe that will protect us from them. But maybe not.The characters in this collection find their aspirations for happy homes, happy families and happy memories dissected and imbued with shimmering menace. Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation; another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool. Couples wrestle with a lack of connection to their children; a schoolgirl becomes obsessed with the female anatomical models in a museum; and a cheery account of child’s day out is undercut by chilling footnotes.These dark tales explore women’s fears with electrifying honesty and invention and speak to one another about female bodies, domestic claustrophobia, desire and violence. From a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter, Things We Say in the Dark is a powerful contemporary collection of feminist stories, ranging from vicious fairy tales to disturbing horror and tender ghost stories.KIRSTY LOGAN WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF BRITAIN'S TEN MOST OUTSTANDING LGBTQ WRITERS by Val McDermid for the International Literature Showcase in 2019
The Murders of Molly Southbourne
Tade Thompson - 2017
Experience the horror of Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Southbourne.The rule is simple: don't bleed.For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories
Peter HainingElizabeth Bowen - 2007
Wodehouse, John Steinbeck, and Ian Rankin
Ghosts by Gaslight
Jack DannRobert Silverberg - 2011
Seventeen all-new stories illuminate the steampunk world of fog and fear!Modern masters of the supernatural weave their magic to revitalize the chilling Victorian and Edwardian ghostly tale: here are haunted houses, arcane inventions, spirits reaching across the centuries, ghosts in the machine, fateful revelations, gaslit streets scarcely keeping the dark at bay, and other twisted variations on the immortal classics that frighten us still.
It Will Just Be Us
Jo Kaplan - 2020
Its labyrinthine halls, built by her mad ancestors, are filled with echoes of the past: ghosts and memories knotted together as one. In the presence of phantoms, it's all Sam can do to disentangle past from present in her daily life. But when her pregnant sister Elizabeth moves in after a fight with her husband, something in the house shifts. Already navigating her tumultuous relationship with Elizabeth, Sam is even more unsettled by the appearance of a new ghost: a faceless boy who commits disturbing acts—threatening animals, terrorizing other children, and following Sam into the depths of the house wielding a knife. When it becomes clear the boy is connected to a locked, forgotten room, one which is never entered, Sam realizes this ghost is not like the others. This boy brings doom. As Elizabeth's due date approaches, Sam must unravel the mysteries of Wakefield before her sister brings new life into a house marked by death. But as the faceless boy grows stronger, Sam will learn that some doors should stay closed—and some secrets are safer locked away forever.