Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Go Bump in the Night


Alfred Hitchcock - 1940
    

DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense


Joyce Carol Oates - 2017
    That genius is on full display in her new collection of seven feverishly unsettling works, Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense.In the title story, a precocious eleven-year-old named Jill is in thrall to an older male relative, the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family. Without telling her parents Jill climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In “The Drowned Girl,” a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student, as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. In “Great Blue Heron,” a recent widow grieves inside the confines of her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into that great flying predator—unerring and pitiless in the hunt. And in the final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies,” a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe, to a harrowing fate.At the heart of this meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read With the Door Locked - Volume 1


Alfred HitchcockIsaac Asimov - 1975
    Hijack by Robert L. Fish 2. Tomorrow and ... Tomorrow by Adobe James 3. Funeral in Another Town by Jerry Jacobson 4. A Case for Quiet by William Jeffrey 5. A Good Head for Murder by Charles W. Runyon 6. The Invisible Cat by Betty Ren Wright 7. Royal Jelly novelette by Roald Dahl 8. Light Verse by Isaac Asimov 9. The Distributor by Richard Matheson 10. How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies' Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue by John Keefauver 11. The Leak by Jacques Futrelle 12. All the Sounds of Fear by Harlan Ellison 13. Little Foxes Sleep Warm by Waldo Carlton Wright 14. The Graft Is Green novelette by Harold Q. Masur (This is volume 1 of Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked. It should not be combined with volume 2, or with the complete work.)

Tales of the Unexpected


Roald Dahl - 1979
    A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate. Impeccable servants whose bland masks slip for one vertiginous instant.In these deliciously nasty stories an internationally acclaimed practitioner of the short narrative works his own brand of black magic: tantalizing, amusing, and sometimes terrifying readers into a new sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary. Included in Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected are such notorious gems of the bizarre as "The Sound Machine," "Lamb to Slaughter," "Neck," and "The Landlady."Cover illustration by Seth JabenCover design by Heidi NorthContents:- Taste- Lamb to the Slaughter- Man from the South- My Lady Love, My Dove- Dip in the Pool- Galloping Foxley- Skin - Neck - Nunc Dimittis - The Landlady - William and Mary - The Way Up to Heaven- Parson's Pleasure- Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat- Royal Jelly- Edward the Conqueror- The Sound Machine- Georgy Porgy - The Hitchhiker- Poison - The Boy Who Talked with Animals- The Umbrella Man- Genesis and Catastrophe- The Butler

The Bad Seed


William March - 1954
    This paperback reissue includes a new P.S. section with author interviews, insights, features, suggested reading and more.What happens to ordinary families into whose midst a child serial killer is born? This is the question at the center of William March's classic thriller. After its initial publication in 1954, the book went on to become a million–copy bestseller, a wildly successful Broadway show, and a Warner Brothers film. The spine–tingling tale of little Rhoda Penmark had a tremendous impact on the thriller genre and generated a whole perdurable crop of creepy kids. Today, The Bad Seed remains a masterpiece of suspense that's as chilling, intelligent, and timely as ever before.

Vertigo


Boileau-Narcejac - 1954
    from the French "D'entre les Morts" by Geoffrey Sainsbury. First published as "The Living and the Dead" in Great Britain in 1956.

Full Throttle


Joe Hill - 2019
    . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.

Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night


James PattersonEric Van Lustbader - 2006
    Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for Thriller to keep you up all night.

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe


Edgar Allan Poe - 1845
    Master of the short story form, Edgar Allan Poe composed tales of terror, horror, death, ruin, murder, and revenge. Many of the sixty-eight tales included in this collection—"The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Black Cat," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Tell-Tale Heart," for example—have become landmarks of our literature. Poe also wrote the world's first detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which introduced C. Auguste Dupin, the paragon of that now ubiquitous modern character: the thinking man's sleuth. This volume also includes Poe's novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, an unearthly sea adventure replete with shipwrecks, ghastly specters and the eternal lure of the unknown.

The Burning Air


Erin Kelly - 2013
    It was a lapse of judgement. If I could have foreseen the rippling aftershocks that followed I would have acted differently, but by the time I realised the extent of the consequences, it was too late.The MacBrides have always gone to Far Barn in Devon for Bonfire Night, but this year everything is different. Lydia, the matriarch, is dead; Sophie, the eldest daughter, is desperately trying to repair a crumbling marriage; and Felix, the youngest of the family, has brought a girlfriend with him for the first time. The girl, Kerry, seems odd in a way nobody can quite put their finger on - but when they leave her looking after Sophie's baby daughter, and return to find both Kerry and the baby gone, they are forced to ask themselves if they have allowed a cuckoo into their nest...Gripping and chilling, with a killer twist, The Burning Air reaffirms Erin Kelly as one of Britain's foremost psychological thriller writers.

Good Behavior


Blake Crouch - 2013
    While on the job, she overhears a man hiring a hit man to kill his wife. Letty may not be winning any morality awards, but even she has limits. Unable to go to the police, Letty sets out to derail the job, putting herself on a collision course with the killer that entangles the two of them in a dangerous, seductive relationship.Good Behavior comprises three interlinked novellas (The Pain of Others, Sunset Key, and Grab), which together form a novel-length portrait of Blake Crouch’s all-time favorite character creation, Letty Dobesh. This edition is the complete Letty Dobesh collection.

Rear Window


Cornell Woolrich - 1942
    His name represents steamy, suspenseful fiction, chilling encounters on the dark and sultry landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in this special collection, are his classic thrilers, including 'Rear Window', the story of Hal Jeffries who, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer. Also included are such haunting, heart-stopping tales as those involving a man who finds his wife buried alive; a girl trapped with a deranged murderer who likes to knife his victims while dancing; and a woman seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.Rear window --I won't take a minute --Speak to me of death --The dancing detective --The light in the window --The corpse next door --You'll never see me again --The screaming laugh --Dead on her feet --Waltz --The book that squealed --Death escapes the eye --For the rest of her life

Girl A


Abigail Dean - 2021
    She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

Strangers on a Train


Patricia Highsmith - 1950
    Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he’ll murder Haines’s wife if Haines will murder Bruno’s father. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy finds himself trapped in Highsmith’s perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary crimes. The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith’s prolific career, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday life.

The Chain


Adrian McKinty - 2019
    But a cell phone call from an unknown number changes everything: it's a woman on the line, informing her that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will see her again is to follow her instructions exactly: pay a ransom, and find another child to abduct. This is no ordinary kidnapping: the caller is a mother herself, whose son has been taken, and if Rachel doesn't do as she's told, the boy will die. "You are not the first. And you will certainly not be the last." Rachel is now part of The Chain, an unending and ingenious scheme that turns victims into criminals—and is making someone else very rich in the process. The rules are simple, the moral challenges impossible; find the money fast, find your victim, and then commit a horrible act you'd have thought yourself incapable of just twenty-four hours ago. But what the masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children. It turns out that kidnapping is only the beginning.