The Vampyre


John William Polidori - 1819
    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.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All


Laird Barron - 2013
    Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron’s stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.Barron returns with his third collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. Collecting interlinking tales of sublime cosmic horror, including “Blackwood’s Baby”, “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven”, and “The Men from Porlock”, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All delivers enough spine-chilling horror to satisfy even the most jaded reader.

Dark Entries


Robert Aickman - 1964
    350 copies.(Out of print).Contents: "Introduction by Glen Cavaliero, "The School Friend", "Ringing the Changes", "Choice of Weapons", "The Waiting Room", "The View" and "Bind Your Hair".As Dr Glen Cavaliero states in his introduction to this new edition of Dark Entries, "It is Robert Aickman's peculiar achievement that he should invest the daylight world with all the terrors of the night".Dark Entries was the first solo collection of "strange stories" by British short story writer, critic, lecturer and novelist, Robert Aickman. First published in 1964 it contains the classic "Ringing the Changes" and perhaps Aickman's best femme fatale in "Choice of Weapons." The version of "The View" is slightly re-written from its first appearance in We are for the Dark.

In a Glass Darkly


J. Sheridan Le Fanu - 1872
    Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant, and Carmilla. The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius, a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. This new annotated edition includes an introduction, notes on the text, and explanatory notes.NB: The Familiar is a revision of The Watcher; Mr. Justice Harbottle is a revision of An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street.

The Widow of Rose House


Diana Biller - 2019
    Now his sudden death allows her to return to New York to make a fresh start, restoring Liefdehuis, a dilapidated Hyde Park mansion, and hopefully her reputation at the same time. However, fresh starts aren't as easy as they seem, as Alva discovers when stories of a haunting at Liefdehuis begin to reach her. But Alva doesn't believe in ghosts. So when the eccentric and brilliant professor, Samuel Moore, appears and informs her that he can get to the bottom of the mystery that surrounds Liefdehuis, she turns him down flat. She doesn't need any more complications in her life―especially not a handsome, convention-flouting, scandal-raising one like Sam. Unfortunately, though Alva is loath to admit it, Sam, a pioneer in electric lighting and a member of the nationally-adored Moore family of scientists, is the only one who can help. Together, the two delve into the tragic secrets wreathing Alva's new home while Sam attempts to unlock Alva's history―and her heart. Set during the Gilded Age in New York City, The Widow of Rose House is a gorgeous debut by Diana Biller, with a darkly Victorian Gothic flair and an intrepid and resilient American heroine guaranteed to delight readers.

A House of Ghosts


W.C. Ryan - 2018
    As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives. At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons who were lost in the conflict. But as his guests begin to arrive, it gradually becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends on the island, the guests will find themselves trapped. Soon one of their number will die. For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one...

A Study in Emerald


Neil Gaiman - 2003
    P. Lovecraft, and of course, Neil Gaiman.A Study in Emerald draws listeners in through carefully revealed details as a consulting detective and his narrator friend solve the mystery of a murdered German noble. But with its subtle allusions and surprise ending, this mystery hints that the real fun in solving this case lies in imagining all the details that Gaiman doesn't reveal, and challenges listeners to be detectives themselves.

Ghost Story


Peter Straub - 1979
    Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.

Poe's Children: The New Horror


Peter StraubM. Rickert - 2008
    Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, Poe’s Children is Peter Straub’s tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities.Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio


Pu Songling - 1740
    With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems.

No One Goes Alone


Erik Larson - 2021
    Was the cause rooted in the physical world . . . or were there forces more paranormal and sinister at work? Available only on audio, because as Larson says, ghost stories are best told aloud.A group of researchers sets sail for the Isle of Dorn in the North Atlantic in 1905 to explore the cause of several mysterious disappearances, most notably a family of four who vanished without a trace after a week-long holiday on the island. Led by Professor James, a prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, they begin to explore the island’s sole cottage and surrounding landscape in search of a logical explanation.The idyllic setting belies an undercurrent of danger and treachery, with raging storms and unnerving discoveries adding to the sense of menace. As increasingly unexplainable events unfold, the now-stranded investigators are unsure whether they can trust their own eyes, their instincts, one another—or even themselves.Erik Larson has written a terrifying tale of suspense, underpinned with actual people and events. Created specifically to entertain audio listeners, this eerie blend of the ghostly and the real will keep listeners captivated till the blood-chilling end.Featuring Erik Larson reading his Notes for a Narrator.

The Hanging Stranger


Philip K. Dick - 1953
    He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself.

The House Next Door


Darcy Coates - 2017
    I began to suspect something was wrong with the gothic building when its family fled in the middle of the night, the children screaming, the mother crying. They never came back to pack up their furniture. No family stays long. Animals avoid the place. Once, I thought I saw a woman's silhouette pacing through the upstairs room... but that seems impossible; no one was living there at the time. A new occupant, Anna, has just moved in. I paid her a visit to warn her about the building. I didn't expect us to become friends, but we did. And now that Marwick House is waking up, she's asked me to stay with her. I never intended to become involved with the building or its vengeful, dead inhabitant. But now I have to save Anna... before it's too late for the both of us.

Yard Work


David Koepp - 2020
    Judge Herman Calvert, eighty-eight, never thought he’d outlive his beloved wife, Marie.Yet now he finds himself alone, a grieving widower, desperate for escape from the home they built together, where every turn brings a painful reminder of his late wife.So the judge retreats to his lake cabin in rural Wisconsin, a place where an old man can find peace and solitude. A place where nature can take its course.But something new has moved in.The judge’s property is crawling with Persicaria perfoliata, an invasive vine that has no earthly business in Wisconsin lake country. And this plant has teeth. Its barbs and tendrils have snaked deep into the ground, choking the life out of everything they touch, including the old oak tree he and Marie planted on their honeymoon.If the judge doesn’t do something, fast, the vine will take everything he has left. And it won’t stop there. He believes it’s after him.Yard Work is a new original story by acclaimed screenwriter, director, and novelist David Koepp. Koepp has written or co-written the screenplays for more than thirty films, including Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-man, Panic Room, War of the Worlds, Ghost Town, and Angels and Demons. His latest film, the Universal Pictures/Blumhouse thriller You Should Have Left starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried, is streaming now. His debut novel, Cold Storage, which The New York Times hailed as "pure, unadulterated entertainment" was published by Ecco in 2019 and is out in paperback this month.Length: 1 hours 24 minutes.

The House of the Vampire


George Sylvester Viereck - 1907
    Republished in this new edition, this Victorian novel operates in the continuum of life and death. What has been can be again, though often terribly transformed. Energetically inventive and infused with a relish for the supernatural, especially the trappings of the dark, The House of the Vampire delivers a horror which we know does not - but none the less conceivably might - exist and threaten ourselves. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, The House of the Vampire is considered a classic among Victorian Gothic stories."He felt the presence of the hand of Reginald Clarke - unmistakably - groping in his brain as if searching for something that had still escaped him. He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a man, disappearing in the wall that separated Reginald's apartments from his room...."George Sylvester Viereck (1884 - 1962), remembered today chiefly for his contributions to fantasy literature, was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States with his family at age 11. He was editor of the magazine The Fatherland, and author of Confessions of a Barbarian and Glimpses of the Great.