Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination


Edogawa Rampo - 1956
    Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.

The Most Dangerous Game


Richard Connell - 1924
    The Most Dangerous Game features a big-game hunter from New York who becomes shipwrecked on an isolated island in the Caribbean and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.

Miriam


Truman Capote - 1945
    H. T. Miller who wants to spend the remaining years of her life alone in her apartment near the East River after the death of her husband, H. T. Miller. She is very lonely, has no friends to speak of and does not keep in touch with any of her relatives.One day, going into a movie theater, she meets a young, intelligent girl named Miriam. Mrs. Miller is intrigued that the girl's first name is also Miriam…This creepy short story was originally published in the June 1945 issue of Mademoiselle. "Miriam" was one of Capote's first published short stories, and in 1946 it earned an O. Henry Award in the category Best First-Published Story.

The Tomb


H.P. Lovecraft - 1917
    P. Lovecraft written in June 1917 and first published in the March 1922 issue of The Vagrant. It is the first work of fiction that Lovecraft wrote as an adult."The Tomb" tells of Jervas Dudley, a self-confessed day-dreamer. While still a child, he discovers the entrance to a mausoleum, belonging to the family Hyde, whose nearby family mansion had burnt down many years previously. The entrance to the mausoleum is padlocked and slightly ajar. Jervas attempts to break the padlock, but is unable. Dispirited, he takes to sleeping beside the tomb. Eventually, inspired by reading Plutarch's Lives, Dudley decides to patiently wait until it is his time to gain entrance to the tomb.One night, several years later, Jervas falls asleep once more beside the mausoleum. He awakes suddenly in the late afternoon, and believes that a light has been latterly extinguished from inside the tomb. Taking leave, he returns to his home, where he goes directly to the attic, to a rotten chest, and therein finds the key to the tomb.Once inside the mausoleum, Jervas discovers an empty coffin with the name of Jervas Hyde upon the plate. He begins, so he believes, to sleep in the empty coffin each night as its name matches his. He also develops a fear of thunder, and is aware that he is being spied upon, under his father's orders.One night, against his own better judgement, Jervas sets out for the tomb on an overcast night, a night threatening to storm. As he approaches the tomb, he sees the Hyde mansion restored to its former state there is a party in progress, to which he joins, abandoning his former quietude for blasphemous hedonism.During the party, lightning strikes the mansion, and it burns. Jervas loses consciousness, having imagined himself being burnt to ashes in the blaze.He is awoken, screaming and struggling, to find himself being held by two men, his father in attendance. A small antique box is discovered, having been unearthed by the recent storm. Inside is a porcelain miniature of a man, with the initials J.H. Jervas fancies its face to be the mirror image of his own.He begins jabbering that he has been sleeping inside the tomb. His father, saddened by his son's mental instability, tells him that he has been watched for some time and has never gone inside the tomb, and indeed, the padlock is rusted with age. Jervas is removed to a room with barred windows, presumed mad.He then asks his servant Hiram, who has remained faithful to him despite his current state, to explore the tomb a request which Hiram fulfils. After breaking the padlock and descending with a lantern into the murky depths, Hiram return to his master and informs him that there is, indeed, a coffin with a plate which reads 'Jervas' on it. Jervas then states that he has been promised to be buried in that vault and coffin when he dies and thus ends the previous narration.

Roog


Philip K. Dick - 1953
    Unbeknownst to the dog, these are the human's trash cans for garbage. Philip K. Dick sold approximately fifteen short stories himself before becoming a client of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. "Roog" was his first sale but not his first published story.

The Devil and Tom Walker


Washington Irving - 1824
    The story is very similar to that of the ancient German legend of Faust.

A Dream of Red Hands


Bram Stoker - 1914
    During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

Astounding Science Fiction, February 1943


John W. Campbell Jr.Kolliker - 1943
    John W. Campbell Jr.)The Weapon Makers, Part 1 of 3 (Weapon Shops of Isher #) / A.E. van Vogt; interior artwork by Frank Kramer In Times to Come / essay by unknownFlight into Darkness / Webb Marlowe (i.e. J. Francis McComas); interior artwork by Frank KramerMimsy Were the Borogoves / Lewis Padgett (i.e. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore); interior artwork by KollikerThe Man in the Moon / Henry A. Norton; interior artwork by KollikerGod's Footstool / essay by Malcolm JamesonThe Analytical Laboratory: December 1942 / essay by The Editor (i.e. John W. Campbell Jr.)Blue Ice (Probability Zero series) / Henry KuttnerProbability Zero! / essay by L. Sprague de Camp and Fox B. Holden and Colin Keith and Henry KuttnerEfficiency (Probability Zero series) / Colin Keith (i.e. Malcolm Jameson)Noise is Beautiful! (Probability Zero series) / Fox B. HoldenThe Anecdote of the Movable Ears (Probability Zero series) / L. Sprague de CampBrass Tacks / essay by The Editor (i.e. John W. Campbell Jr.)Opposites—React!, Part 2 of 2 (Seetee serial) / Willi Stewart (i.e. Jack Williamson); interior artwork by Kolliker

Who Goes There?


John W. Campbell Jr. - 1938
    Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient, frozen body of a crash-landed alien. The creature revives with terrifying results, shape-shifting to assume the exact form of animal and man, alike. Paranoia ensues as a band of frightened men work to discern friend from foe, and destroy the menace before it challenges all of humanity! The story, hailed as "one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written" by the SF Writers of America, is best known to fans as THE THING, as it was the basis of Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World in 1951, and John Carpenter's The Thing in 1982. With a new Introduction by William F. Nolan, author of Logan's Run, and his never-before-published, suspenseful Screen Treatment written for Universal Studios in 1978, this is a must-have edition for scifi and horror fans!

The Pear Shaped Man


George R.R. Martin - 1991
    Jessie meets hers when she and her friend Angela move into their new apartment--he lives in the rotten-smelling basement apartment--wet lips, whiny voice, eating Cheez Doodles with warm Coke. He's always waiting for her, inviting her down to his apartment ... he has 'things' to show her. When Jessie's obsession with this repulsive man turns to paranoia, it takes over more than just her life. Locus Poll Award Nominee, World Fantasy Award Nominee, Bram Stoker Award Winner

The Bottle Imp


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1891
    It recounts the mercurial lot of Keawe, a Hawaiian who purchases a bottle inhabited by an imp capable of granting any wish. Yet this enticing object holds a dark curse: anyone who dies with it in his possession will burn forever in hell. And here's the rub: one can sell the bottle only for less than its purchase price. Keawe rids himself of the bottle after acquiring a palatial home. But when he needs it again to ensure his happiness with a newfound love, its cost is, chillingly, one cent, and the responsibility of ownership becomes a good deal more complex.Newly designed and typeset in a modern 5.5-by-8.5-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

It's Such a Beautiful Day


Isaac Asimov - 1954
    It was first published in 1954 in Star Science Fiction Stories No.3, an anthology of original stories edited by Frederik Pohl, and later reprinted in the 1969 collection Nightfall and Other Stories.Set in the year 2117, the story presents District A-3, a newly built suburb of San Francisco, and the world's first community to be built entirely using Doors, a method of travel via teleportation.

Small Town Evil


Ken Berglund - 2013
    When the father realizes that his daughter's condition is getting worse, and that the girl he hit may or may not even exist, he returns to the small town where he had the accident, hoping to find answers.

The Box: Uncanny Stories


Richard Matheson - 2008
    . . someone you don't know. Would you still push the button?"Button, Button," Richard Matheson's chilling tale of greed and temptation, is now the basis of The Box, the new film from the director of Donnie Darko. In addition, this outstanding collection also contains many other unforgettable stories by Matheson, the award-winning author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come."The inventive plots and spare but convincing portraits of ordinary men and women caught up in forces beyond their control demonstrate why Stephen King has called Matheson his most significant influence."--Publishers Weekly

Karain


Joseph Conrad - 1897
    None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs—sunshine and the glitter of the sea...