Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in "Graham's Magazine" in 1841. It has been recognized as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his tales of "ratiocination," his concept of analyzing a fictional crime to find the resolution. Brand new idea in its day.Poe's amateur detective, C. Auguste Dupin, takes an interest in the murder in Paris of two women. It was terribly brutal but difficult to categorize; there appeared to be no robbery or sexual assault, no obvious reason for the crimes. The newspapers carried sensational headlines. Dupin gets involved because the man arrested for the crimes, Monsieur Le Bon, had previously done him a favour. It becomes a challenge to Dupin.Get set for a step back in the history of detective fiction that leaves the impression that it was written just a short while ago.Librarian's note: this entry is for the story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." It is the first of three in the author's Dupin series. Collections of the series, including those under this title, and other stories by the author, are located elsewhere on Goodreads. Each of the Dupin stories can be found by searching Goodreads for "a C. Auguste Dupin Short Story."

    Here you will find the secrets of eternal youth, souls that exchange bodies, and ancient Englishmen and Romans newly thawed out of ice. In addition to several stories by Mary Shelley, this volume also features a brand new story by renowned science fiction author Michael Bishop, which serves as a narrative introduction for this collection. Mary Shelley's considerable reputation rests squarely on the shoulders of her one great novel - Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, published anonymously in 1818 and revised under her own byline in 1831. Her powerful tale of blasphemous creation is perhaps more familiar to modern readers through its many film adaptations as it is from the book itself. From Boris Karloff's electrifying performance as Frankenstein to Kenneth Branaugh's latest directorial rendering, the story has received numerous interpretations which have renewed interest in the book time and time again. However, Shelley's other works have not fared as well as Frankenstein. She wrote just a handful of novels, of which only The Last Man (1826) has remained sporadically in print. A precursor to such disaster novels as George R. Stewart's Earth Abides and Richard Jeffries' After London, The Last Man follows its protagonist Lionel Verney through a distant future world which has been depopulated by plague. The shorter works of Mary Shelley have remained difficult to find. During her lifetime, she published just over two-dozen stories, only three of which were of interest to readers of science fiction and fantasy. In addition to these three supernaturally-themed stories, two additional stories were published after Shelley's death. "Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman," was printed in a volume of reminisces by a magazine editor who had commissioned the story thirty years earlier. "Valerius: The Reanimated Roman," a story in a similar vein to "Roger Dodsworth," remained unpublished until 1976, when both stories were discovered by Charles E. Robinson, a Shelley scholar and professor of English at the University of Delaware.Contents"The Unexpected Visit of a Reanimated Englishwoman": Introduction by Michael Bishop"The Mortal Immortal: A Tale""Transformation""Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman""The Dream""Valerius: The Reanimated Roman"

    But every wish has a consequence, and the White family finds they are completely unprepared for what comes next. The Monkey’s Paw is a classic horror tale that gives new meaning to the phrase “be careful what you wish for.”The Monkey’s Paw has become a classic horror story and has been adapted numerous times, including into episodes of such popular television series as The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Tales from the Crypt.HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

    The family -- which refuses to believe in him -- is in Wilde's way a commentary on the British nobility of the day -- and on the Americans, too. The tale, like many of Wilde's, is rich with allusion, but ends as sentimental romance...

    Published the same year as her first novel, Adam Bede, this overlooked work displays the gifts for which George Eliot would become famous—gritty realism, psychological insight, and idealistic moralizing. It is unique from all her other writing, however, in that it represents the only time she ever used a first-person narrator, and it is the only time she wrote about the supernatural. The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella’s publication). But it is easier still to read the story as the exciting and genuine precursor of a moody new form, as well as an absorbing early masterpiece of suspense.The Art of The Novella SeriesToo short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

    Are their malefactions at the root of the haunting -- or is there something darker, something much more unknowable at work? (Jacketless library hardcover.)

    He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and indeed put to the test, the existence of spirits.His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen.Chilling as some of these stories are, Dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge, insanity, pre-cognition and dream visions, he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity.

    A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society’s elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey’s imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend’s glamorous facade.   When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day. But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey’s sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre.   John William Polidori’s The Vampyre is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola. Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and misattributed to Polidori’s friend Lord Byron, The Vampyre has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.

    'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil doppelganger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like 'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the pieces in this volume form a start contrast to the social realism of Gaskell's novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.Laura Kranzler's introduction discusses how Gaskell's tales, with their ghostly doublings and transgressive passions, show the Gothic underside of female identity, domestic relations and male authority. This edition also contains a chronology, further reading and explanatory notes.

    Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible.""The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known short stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.

    Each begins in a quietly factual way, making all the more dramatic the crescendo of fear and puzzlement that ensues as each new circumstance is revealed. Even without his supremely logical brain child, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle shows that his tales are unbeatable for thrills and excitement.Contents:Tales of terror:The horror of the heightsThe leather funnelThe new catacombThe case of Lady SannoxThe terror of Blue John GapThe Brazilian catTales of mystery:The lost specialThe beetle-hunterThe man with the watchesThe japanned boxThe black doctorThe Jew's breastplateThe nightmare room.

    Amid bloody and eerie scenes, his daughter is possessed by Tera's soul, and her fate depends upon bringing Tera's mummified body to life.

    Written when he was only 22 years old, the tale also features some of Rudyard Kipling’s most crystalline prose, and one of the most beautifully rendered, spectacularly exotic settings he ever used. Best of all, it features two of his most unforgettable characters, the ultra-vivid Cockneys Peachy Carnahan and Daniel Dravot, who impart to the story its ultimate, astonishing twist: it is both a tragedy and a triumph.

    This collection also includes The Star, A Dream of Armageddon, The Cone, A Moonlight Fable, The DiamondMaker, The Lord of the Dynamos, and The Country of the Blind. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 5.5-by-8.5-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

    He was a gullible and excitable fellow, often so terrified by locals' stories of ghosts that he would hurry through the woods on his way home, singing to keep from hysterics. Until late one night, he finds that maybe they're not just stories. What is that dark, menacing figure riding behind him on a horse? And what does it have in its hands? And why wasn't schoolteacher Crane ever seen in Sleepy Hollow again?