Rip Challenge

Turn-of-the-century Paris was the beating heart of a rapidly changing world. Painters, scientists, revolutionaries, poets—all were there. But so, too, were the Paris was a violent, criminal place, its sinister alleyways the haunts of Apache gangsters and its cafes the gathering places of murderous anarchists. In 1911, it fell victim to perhaps the greatest theft of all time—the taking of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Immediately, Alphonse Bertillon, a detective world-renowned for pioneering crime-scene investigation techniques, was called upon to solve the crime. And quickly the Paris police had a a young Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso....

From the winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, a brilliantly haunting and suspenseful debut set in modern-day Britain where water is running out everywhere except at The Well; the farm of one seemingly ordinary family whose mysterious good fortune leads to suspicion, chaos, and ultimately a shocking act of violence. Ruth Ardingly has just been released from prison to serve out a sentence of house arrest for arson and suspected murder at her farm, The Well. Beyond its borders, some people whisper she is a witch; others a messiah. For as soon as Ruth returns to The Well, rain begins to fall on the farm. And it has not rained anywhere else in the country in over three years. Ruth and her husband Mark had moved years before from London to this ancient idyll in the hopes of starting their lives over. But then the drought began, and as the surrounding land dried up and died, and The Well grew lush and full of life, they came to see their fortune would come at a price. From the envy of their neighbors to the mandates of the government, from the fanaticism of a religious order called the Sisters of the Rose to the everyday difficulties of staying close as husband and wife, mother and child; all these forces led to a horrifying crime: the death of their seven-year-old grandson, drowned with cruel irony in one of the few ponds left in the countryside. Now back at The Well, Ruth must piece together the tragedy that shattered her marriage, her family, and her dream. For she believes her grandson's death was no accident, and that the murderer is among the people she trusted most. Alone except for her guards on a tiny green jewel in a world rapidly turning to dust, Ruth begins to confront her worst fears and learns what really happened in the dark heart of The Well. A tour de force about ordinary people caught in the tide of an extraordinary situation, Catherine Chanter's The Well is a haunting, beautifully written, and utterly believable novel that probes the fragility of our personal relationships and the mystical connection between people and the places they call home.

It’s time for cozy sweaters and chilling ghost stories! Celebrate the spooky season with this 53-hour compilation that spans over 100 years and features beloved authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Edith Wharton, Joyce Carol Oates, and Donald E. Westlake. “There’s enough in this volume to please both dilettantes and devotees among ghost story readers” (Publishers Weekly). The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson, and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you listening with fearful delight. Including such classics as “The Monkey's Paw” and “The Open Window” and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! Table of Contents BUT I’M NOT DEAD YET [Conrad Aiken](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Conrad%20Aiken "Conrad Aiken"): Mr. Arcularis [William Fryer Harvey](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=William%20Fryer%20Harvey "William Fryer Harvey") AKA {author:W.F. Harvey\]: August Heat I’LL LOVE YOU—FOREVER (OR MAYBE NOT) [Ellen Glasgow](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Ellen%20Glasgow "Ellen Glasgow"): The Shadowy Third Ellen Glasgow: The Past [David Morrell](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=David%20Morrell "David Morrell"): But At My Back I Always Hear [O. Henry](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=O.%20Henry "O. Henry"): The Furnished Room [Paul Ernst](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Paul%20Ernst "Paul Ernst"): Death’s Warm Fireside [Andrew Klavan](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Andrew%20Klavan "Andrew Klavan"): The Advent Reunion [R. Murray Gilchrist](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=R.%20Murray%20Gilchrist "R. Murray Gilchrist"): The Return [Rudyard Kipling](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Rudyard%20Kipling "Rudyard Kipling"): The Phantom Rickshaw [Ambrose Bierce](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Ambrose%20Bierce "Ambrose Bierce"): The Moonlit Road [Lafcadio Hearn](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Lafcadio%20Hearn "Lafcadio Hearn"): The Story of Ming-Y Lafcadio Hearn: Yuki-Onna THIS OLD HOUSE [Amyas Northcote](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Amyas%20Northcote "Amyas Northcote"): Brickett Bottom [E.F. Benson](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=E.F.%20Benson "E.F. Benson"): How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery [G.G. Pendarves](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=G.G.%20Pendarves "G.G. Pendarves"): Thing of Darkness [Edward Lucas White](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Edward%20Lucas%20White "Edward Lucas White"): The House of the Nightmare [Hector Bolitho](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Hector%20Bolitho "Hector Bolitho"): The House on Half Moon Street [Dick Donovan](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Dick%20Donovan "Dick Donovan"): A Night of Horror [Vincent O’sullivan](https://www.goodreads.com:443/search/search?q=Vincent O’sullivan "Vincent O’sullivan"): The Burned House KIDS WILL BE KIDS [Rosemary Timperley](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Rosemary%20Timperley "Rosemary Timperley"): Harry [Michael Reaves](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Michael%20Reaves "Michael Reaves"): Make-Believe [A.M. Burrage](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=A.M.%20Burrage "A.M. Burrage"): Playmates [Ramsey Campbell](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Ramsey%20Campbell "Ramsey Campbell"): Just Behind You [A.E. Coppard](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=A.E.%20Coppard "A.E. Coppard"): Adam And Eve and Pinch Me [Steve Friedman](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Steve%20Friedman "Steve Friedman"): The Lost Boy of the Ozarks THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY AROUND HERE [Mark Twain](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Mark%20Twain "Mark Twain"): A Ghost’s Story [Donald E. Westlake](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Donald%20E.%20Westlake "Donald E. Westlake"): In At The Death [Nathaniel Hawthorne](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Nathaniel%20Hawthorne "Nathaniel Hawthorne"): The Ghost of Dr. Harris [Ingulphus](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Ingulphus "Ingulphus"): The Everlasting Club [Isaac Asimov](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Isaac%20Asimov "Isaac Asimov") and [James Maccreigh](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=James%20Maccreigh "James Maccreigh"): Legal Rites [Albert E. Cowdrey](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Albert%20E.%20Cowdrey "Albert E. Cowdrey"): Death Must Die [Frank Stockton](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Frank%20Stockton "Frank Stockton"): The Transferred Ghost [Oscar Wilde](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Oscar%20Wilde "Oscar Wilde"): The Canterville Ghost A NEGATIVE TRAIN OF THOUGHT [August Derleth](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=August%20Derleth "August Derleth"): Pacific 421 [Robert Weinberg](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Robert%20Weinberg "Robert Weinberg"): The Midnight El STOP—YOU’RE SCARING ME [Frederick Cowles](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Frederick%20Cowles "Frederick Cowles"): Punch and Judy [Henry S. Whitehead](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Henry%20S.%20Whitehead "Henry S. Whitehead"): The Fireplace [H.F. Arnold](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=H.F.%20Arnold "H.F. Arnold"): The Night Wire 400 [Fritz Leiber](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Fritz%20Leiber "Fritz Leiber"): Smoke Ghost 406 [Wyatt Blassingame](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Wyatt%20Blassingame "Wyatt Blassingame"): Song of the Dead I MUST BE DREAMING [Wilkie Collins](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Wilkie%20Collins "Wilkie Collins"): The Dream Woman 437 [Washington Irving](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Washington%20Irving "Washington Irving"): The Adventure of the German Student A SÉANCE, YOU SAY? [Joseph Shearing](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Joseph%20Shearing "Joseph Shearing"): They Found My Grave [Edgar Jepson](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Edgar%20Jepson "Edgar Jepson"): Mrs. Morrel’s Last Séance [Joyce Carol Oates](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Joyce%20Carol%20Oates "Joyce Carol Oates"): Night-Side CLASSICS [M.R. James](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=M.R.%20James "M.R. James"): “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad” [W.W. Jacobs](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=W.W.%20Jacobs "W.W. Jacobs"): The Monkey’s Paw W.W. Jacobs: The Toll-House [Edith Wharton](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Edith%20Wharton "Edith Wharton"): Afterward [Willa Cather](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Willa%20Cather "Willa Cather"): Consequences [Cynthia Asquith](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Cynthia%20Asquith "Cynthia Asquith"): The Follower Cynthia Asquith: The Corner Shop [H.P. Lovecraft](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=H.P.%20Lovecraft "H.P. Lovecraft"): The Terrible Old Man [Erckmann-Chatrian](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Erckmann-Chatrian "Erckmann-Chatrian"): The Murderer’s Violin [Saki](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Saki "Saki"): The Open Window Saki: Laura [Fitz-James O’Brien](https://www.goodreads.com:443/search/search?q=Fitz-James O’Brien "Fitz-James O’Brien"): What Was It? [Alexander Woollcott](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Alexander%20Woollcott "Alexander Woollcott"): Full Fathom Five [H.R. Wakefield](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=H.R.%20Wakefield "H.R. Wakefield"): He Cometh and He Passeth By [Perceval Landon](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Perceval%20Landon "Perceval Landon"): Thurnley Abbey THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES [Algernon Blackwood](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Algernon%20Blackwood "Algernon Blackwood"): The Woman’s Ghost Story [Victor Rousseau Emanuel](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Victor%20Rousseau%20Emanuel "Victor Rousseau Emanuel"): The Angel of the Marne [Olivia Howard Dunbar](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Olivia%20Howard%20Dunbar "Olivia Howard Dunbar"): The Shell of Sense [Marjorie Bowen](https://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=Marjorie%20Bowen "Marjorie Bowen"): The Avengi...

A devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception, and an accidental encounter that leads to murder. Fans of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train will love this modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train from the author of the acclaimed The Girl with a Clock for a Heart—which the Washington Post said “should be a contender for crime fiction’s best first novel of 2014.” On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché. But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse... Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda's demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth. Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.

This rediscovered masterpiece captures a chilling moment in the stifling early days of Communist Czechoslovakia. 1950s Prague is a city of numerous daily terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say under pressure to a State Security agent. A loyal Party member might be imprisoned or executed as quickly as a traitor; innocence means nothing for a person caught in a government trap. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.

Welcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England. The year is 1926 and Sarah Grey has landed herself an unlikely new job – personal assistant to Harry Price, London’s most infamous ghost hunter. Equal parts brilliant and charming, neurotic and manipulative, Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England’s many ‘false hauntings’, and never has he left a case unsolved, nor a fraud unexposed. So when Harry and Sarah are invited to Borley Rectory – a house so haunted that objects frequently fly through the air unbidden, and locals avoid the grounds for fear of facing the spectral nun that walks there – they’re sure that this case will be just like any other. But when night falls and still no artifice can be found, the ghost hunters are forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real. And, if so, they’re about to make its most intimate acquaintance.

HER PERFECT LIFE IS A PERFECT LIE. As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve. But Ani has a secret. There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything. With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all” and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears. The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?

History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal. The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics—and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee. Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified. Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince...the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini. David Jaher's extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation's most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other’s orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless Is there life after death?

Thirty-something Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a charming, peaceful suburb of the newly bustling Atlanta. Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Soon, though, they come to realize that more is wrong than their diminished privacy. Surely the house can't be "haunted," yet something about it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart.

In July 1864, Thomas Briggs was travelling home after visiting his niece and her husband for dinner. He entered a First Class carriage on the 9.45pm Hackney service of the North London railway. At Hackney, two bank clerks entered the carriage and discovered blood in the seat cushions; also on the floor, windows and sides of the carriage. A bloodstained hat was found on the seat along with a broken link from a watch chain. The race to identify the killer and catch him as he flees on a boat to America was eagerly followed by citizens both sides of the Atlantic. Kate Colquhoun tells a gripping tale of a crime that shocked the nation.

Postbellum America makes for a haunting backdrop in this historical and supernatural tale of moonlit cemeteries, masked balls, cunning mediums, and terrifying secrets waiting to be unearthed by an intrepid crime reporter. The year is 1869, and the Civil War haunts the city of Philadelphia like a stubborn ghost. Mothers in black continue to mourn their lost sons. Photographs of the dead adorn dim sitting rooms. Maimed and broken men roam the streets. One of those men is Edward Clark, who is still tormented by what he saw during the war. Also constantly in his thoughts is another, more distant tragedy—the murder of his mother at the hands of his father, the famed magician Magellan Holmes...a crime that Edward witnessed when he was only ten. Now a crime reporter for one of the city's largest newspapers, Edward is asked to use his knowledge of illusions and visual trickery to expose the influx of mediums that descended on Philadelphia in the wake of the war. His first target is Mrs. Lucy Collins, a young widow who uses old-fashioned sleight of hand to prey on grieving families. Soon, Edward and Lucy become entwined in the murder of Lenora Grimes Pastor, the city's most highly regarded—and by all accounts, legitimate—medium, who dies mid-seance. With their reputations and livelihoods at risk, Edward and Lucy set out to find the real killer, and in the process unearth a terrifying hive of secrets that reaches well beyond Mrs. Pastor. Blending historical detail with flights of fancy, "Things Half in Shadow" is a riveting thriller where "Medium" and "The Sixth Sense" meet "The Alienist"—and where nothing is quite as it seems...

Sarah Piper's lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist a ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis—rich, handsome, scarred by World War I, and obsessed with ghosts—has been summoned to investigate the spirit of nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is haunting the barn where she committed suicide. Since Maddy hated men in life, it is Sarah's task to confront her in death. Soon Sarah is caught up in a deperate struggle. For Maddy's ghost is real, she's angry, and she has powers that defy all reason. Can Sarah and Alistair's assistant, the rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance—before she destroys them all?

By the author of the New York Times bestseller The Postmistress Maisie Thomas spends every summer at Grange House, a hotel on the coast of Maine ruled by the elegant Miss Grange. In 1896, when Maisie turns 17, her visit marks a turning point. On the morning after her arrival, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery: drowned lovers, found clasped in each other's arms. It's only the first in a series of events that casts a shadow over Maisie's summer. As she considers the attentions of two very different young men, Maisie also falls under the gaze of Miss Grange, who begins to tell her disturbing stories of her past. Rich with the details, customs, and language of the era, Grange House is a wonderfully atmospheric, page-turning novel of literary suspense and romance.

The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary—and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul. "What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that―the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.

Two hundred years ago, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of Children’s and Household Tales. Now, at a veritable fairy-tale moment—witness the popular television shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time and this year’s two movie adaptations of “Snow White”—Philip Pullman, one of the most popular authors of our time, makes us fall in love all over again with the immortal tales of the Brothers Grimm. From much-loved stories like “Cinderella” and “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Rapunzel” and “Hansel and Gretel” to lesser-known treasures like “Briar-Rose,” “Thousandfurs,” and “The Girl with No Hands,” Pullman retells his fifty favorites, paying homage to the tales that inspired his unique creative vision—and that continue to cast their spell on the Western imagination.

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "Roger Clarke tells this [the story that inspired Henry James' The Turn of the Screw] and many other gloriously weird stories with real verve, and also a kind of narrative authority that tends to constrain the skeptical voice within… [an] erudite and richly entertaining book." —New York Times Book Review "Is there anybody out there?" No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. What explains sightings of ghosts? Why do they fascinate us? What exactly do those who have been haunted see? What did they believe? And what proof is there? Taking us through the key hauntings that have obsessed the world, from the true events that inspired Henry James' classic The Turn of the Screw right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a story of class conflict, charlatans, and true believers. The cast list includes royalty and prime ministers, Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler. The chapters cover everything from religious beliefs to modern developments in neuroscience, the medicine of ghosts, and the technology of ghosthunting. There are haunted WWI submarines, houses so blighted by phantoms they are demolished, a seventeenth-century Ghost Hunter General, and the emergence of the Victorian flash mob, where hundreds would stand outside rumored sites all night waiting to catch sight of a dead face at a window. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe.

Six of Poe’s most macabre tales are presented in this powerfully illustrated edition that comes with an unabridged CD narration of four of the shorter tales. The classic tales included on the 75 minute CD and read by Edward Blake are “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” The two longer tales in the collection are the heart-stopping “The Pit and the Pendulum” and the chilling “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In addition to his striking woodcut-type illustrations, Michael McCurdy has written fascinating headnotes about the origin of each tale and an introduction about Poe.

When the 9th Duke of Rutland died alone in the cramped family archives on April 21, 1940, his son and heir, Charles, ordered the room sealed. Sixty years later, Catherine Bailey became one of the first historians allowed inside. What she discovered when she began reading through the duke's letters was a mystery involving one of the most powerful families in British society in the turbulent days leading up to World War I. The 9th Duke, who had devoted his entire adult life to organizing and cataloging several hundred years' worth of family correspondence, had carefully erased three periods of his life from the record. But why? Filled with fascinating real-life characters, a mysterious death, family secrets, and affairs aplenty. The Secret Rooms is an enthralling, page-turning true story that reads like an Agatha Christie novel.

Life of Poe / \[by James Russell Lowell\] — The gold-bug—The murders in the rue Morgue—The mystery of Marie Rogêt—A descent into the maelstrom—The fall of the house of Usher—The masque of the red death—The cask of amontillado—The pit and the pendulum—Ligeia—The purloined letter—The spectacles—Some words with a mummy—Maelzel's chess-player—The oblong box—The premature burial—The oval portrait.

The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James that first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly magazine (January 27 - April 16, 1898). In October 1898 it appeared in The Two Magics, a book published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate... An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them. Excerpt: I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days - found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.

The remoter parts of the English Fens are forlorn, lost and damp even in the height of summer. At Iyot Lock, a large decaying house, two young cousins, Leonora and Edward are parked for the summer with their ageing spinster aunt and her cruel housekeeper. At first the unpleasantness and petty meannesses appear simply spiteful, calculated to destroy Edward's equanimity. But when spoilt Leonora is not given the birthday present of a specific dolly that she wants, affairs inexorably take a much darker turn with terrifying, life destroying, consequences for everyone.

A sinister Gothic tale in the tradition of The Woman in Black and The Fall of the House of Usher New England, the 1890s. A man calling himself Doctor John Shepherd arrives at an isolated women's mental hospital to begin work as assistant to the owner Dr Morgan. As Shepherd struggles to conceal his own dark secrets, he finds the asylum has plenty of its own. Who is the woman who wanders the corridors by night with murderous intent? Why does the chief nurse hate him? And why is he not allowed to visit the hospital's top floor? Shocked by Morgan's harsh treatment of the patients, and intrigued by one of them, Jane Dove, a strange amnesiac girl who is fascinated by books but cannot read, Shepherd embarks upon an experiment to help her. As he attempts to solve the mystery of Jane's past his own troubled history begins to catch up with him and she becomes his only hope of escape, as he is hers. In this chilling literary thriller everyone has something to hide and no one is what he or she seems. The Girl Who Couldn't Read is the long-awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed international bestseller Florence and Giles but can also be read as a gripping standalone novel.

A gripping, sinister Gothic tale inspired by and in the tradition of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw In 1891, in a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence and her younger brother are neglected by her guardian uncle. Banned from reading, Florence devours books in secret and talks to herself?and narrates her story?in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles. After the sudden violent death of the children's first governess, a second teacher, Miss Taylor, arrives, and immediately strange phenomena begin to occur. Florence becomes convinced that the new governess is a malevolent spirit who means to do Giles harm. Against this powerful enemy, Florence must use all her intelligence and ingenuity to protect her little brother and preserve her private world. This gothic page-turner in the tradition of The Woman in Black and The Fall of the House of Usher is told in a startlingly different and wonderfully captivating narrative voice.

“The vivid flashes of lightning that shot every now and then through the cracks of the closely shuttered window, making a skeleton of its framework, added not a little to its terror, there being no other light in the room save that....” An abandoned inn, a crime that took 16 years to be discovered, a generational story of love and betrayal all await the listener in this rendition of Anna Katharine Green’s The Forsaken Inn. A bride arrives on her wedding night and leaves the next day...or did she? Sixteen years later her long-deceased corpse is found at the inn and the unraveling of the mystery of her death begins. Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935), a prolific author and “the mother of the detective novel,” wrote The Forsaken Inn in 1889. It is a standalone murder mystery with hints of gothic paranormal influences. ©1909 Anna Katharine Green (P)2020 Voices of Today

Somewhere in London a madman was at large. And then one night there came a knock at the door of a quiet lodging house in the Marylebone Road... This novel, based on the Jack the Ripper murders, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock.

The beloved, bestselling author of The Birth House and The Virgin Cure is back with her most beguiling novel yet, luring us deep inside the lives of a trio of remarkable young women navigating the glitz and grotesqueries of Gilded-Age New York by any means possible, including witchcraft... The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, Adelaide Thom ('Moth' from The Virgin Cure) has left her life in the sideshow to open a tea shop with another young woman who feels it's finally safe enough to describe herself as a witch: a former medical student and "gardien de sorts" (keeper of spells), Eleanor St. Clair. Together they cater to Manhattan's high society ladies, specializing in cures, palmistry and potions—and in guarding the secrets of their clients. All is well until one bright September afternoon, when an enchanting young woman named Beatrice Dunn arrives at their door seeking employment. Beatrice soon becomes indispensable as Eleanor's apprentice, but her new life with the witches is marred by strange occurrences. She sees things no one else can see. She hears voices no one else can hear. Objects appear out of thin air, as if gifts from the dead. Has she been touched by magic or is she simply losing her mind? Eleanor wants to tread lightly and respect the magic manifest in the girl, but Adelaide sees a business opportunity. Working with Dr. Quinn Brody, a talented alienist, she submits Beatrice to a series of tests to see if she truly can talk to spirits. Amidst the witches' tug-of-war over what's best for her, Beatrice disappears, leaving them to wonder whether it was by choice or by force. As Adelaide and Eleanor begin the desperate search for Beatrice, they're confronted by accusations and spectres from their own pasts. In a time when women were corseted, confined and committed for merely speaking their minds, were any of them safe?

One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she never met: Aunt Margaret, beautiful and speechless, and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the ruins of the pleasure garden. And brooding Uncle Philip loves only the life-sized wooden puppets he creates in his toyshops. The classic gothic novel established Angela Carter as one of our most imaginative writers and augurs the themes of her later creative works. "Beneath its contemporary surface, this novel shimmers with blurred echoes—from Lewis Carroll, from 'Giselle' and 'Coppelia,' Harlequin and Punch… It leave behind it a flavor, pungent and unsettling" —The New York Times Book Review

A chilling literary horror novel about a young couple who purchase and live in a haunted house. Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It tells the eerie story of a young couple haunted by their new home. Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture—claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James. Written in creepy, potent prose, The Grip of It is an enthralling, psychologically intense novel that deals in questions of home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, mapping itself onto bodies and the relationships we cherish.

In this riveting debut novel, See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt recasts one of the most fascinating murder cases of all time into an intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love. On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell—of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence. As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now? Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling.

Serial meets Ruth Ware’s In A Dark, Dark Wood in this inventive and twisty psychological thriller about a mega-hit podcast that reopens a murder case—and threatens to unravel the carefully constructed life of the victim’s daughter. The only thing more dangerous than a lie...is the truth. Josie Buhrman has spent the last ten years trying to escape her family’s reputation and with good reason. After her father's murder thirteen years prior, her mother ran away to join a cult and her twin sister Lanie, once Josie’s closest friend and confidant, betrayed her in an unimaginable way. Now, Josie has finally put down roots in New York, settling into domestic life with her partner Caleb, and that’s where she intends to stay. The only problem is that she has lied to Caleb about every detail of her past—starting with her last name. When investigative reporter Poppy Parnell sets off a media firestorm with a mega-hit podcast that reopens the long-closed case of Josie’s father’s murder, Josie’s world begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the unexpected death of Josie’s long-absent mother forces her to return to her Midwestern hometown where she must confront the demons from her past—and the lies on which she has staked her future.

Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

Alternate cover for ISBN 9780425190371 (currently here). The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman. For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...

The crumbling summerhouse called Wild Fell, soaring above the desolate shores of Blackmore Island, has weathered the violence of the seasons for more than a century. Built for his family by a 19th-century politician of impeccable rectitude, the house has kept its terrible secrets and its darkness sealed within its walls. For a hundred years, the townspeople of Alvina have prayed that the darkness inside Wild Fell would stay there, locked away from the light. Jameson Browning, a man well acquainted with suffering, has purchased Wild Fell with the intention of beginning a new life, of letting in the light. But what waits for him at the house is devoted to its darkness and guards it jealously. It has been waiting for Jameson his whole life - or even longer. And now, at long last, it has found him!

Set in London in 1837, Anna Mazzola's THE UNSEEING is the story of Sarah Gale, a seamstress and mother, sentenced to hang for her role in the murder of Hannah Brown on the eve of her wedding. Perfect for any reader of Sarah Waters or Antonia Hodgson. 'With this intricately woven tale of trust, self-trust and deceit, Anna Mazzola brings a gritty realism to Victorian London. Beautifully written and cleverly plotted, this is a stunning debut, ranked amongst the best' MANDA SCOTT After Sarah petitions for mercy, Edmund Fleetwood is appointed to investigate and consider whether justice has been done. Idealistic, but struggling with his own demons, Edmund is determined to seek out the truth. Yet Sarah refuses to help him, neither lying nor adding anything to the evidence gathered in court. Edmund knows she's hiding something, but needs to discover just why she's maintaining her silence. For how can it be that someone would willingly go to their own death?

My name is Amelia Gray. I'm a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I've always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe. It started with the discovery of a young woman's brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I've been hired to restore. The clues to the killer, and to his other victims, lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I've vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.