The String of Pearls - audiobook
UNKNOWN ( - )
The tale of Sweeney Todd has had many incarnations, most famously the stage and movie musical by Stephen Sondheim. But it all started in 1846 with a serialized telling of the story titled "The String of Pearls" in the weekly magazine "The People's Periodical and Family Library". Called by some a romance, by others a horror story, it is one of the earliest murder mysteries. In "The String of Pearls", Sweeney Todd is less sympathetic than in some of Read more [...]
Category: Horror & Supernatural Fiction
The Beetle - audiobook
Richard MARSH (1857 - 1915)
A story about a mysterious oriental figure who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting, Marsh's novel is of a piece with other sensational turn-of-the-century fictions such as Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated Read more [...]
The House of the Vampire - audiobook
George Sylvester VIERECK (1884 - 1962)
The House of the Vampire is a 1907 novella that is a very unusual vampire story. A young writer comes under the powerful influence of a mysterious older master, who seems to have left a trail of ruined proteges in his wake. The story is as much about the nature of artistic creation as it is a chilling vampire tale. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)
Genre(s): Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Language: English (FULL Audiobook)
Read more [...]
The Parenticide Club - audiobook
Ambrose BIERCE (1842 - 1914)
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?), best known as journalist, satirist and short story writer. Cynical in outlook, economical in style; Bierce vanished while an observer with Pancho Villa's army.
Four grotesque short stories about murder within the family, seen through the gently innocent eyes of family members ... usually the murderer himself.
(Summary written by Peter Yearsley)
Genre(s): Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Language: Read more [...]
Greener Than You Think - audiobook
Ward MOORE (1908 - 1973)
Do remember reading a panic-mongering news story a while back about genetically engineered "Frankengrass" "escaping" from the golf course where it had been planted? That news story was foreshadowed decades previously in the form of prophetic fiction wherein a pushy salesman, a cash-strapped scientist, and a clump of crabgrass accidentally merge forces with apocalyptic consequences. A triple-genre combo of science fiction, horror, and satire, Read more [...]
The Jewel of Seven Stars audiobook
Bram STOKER (1847 - 1912)
The Jewel of Seven Stars (also published under the name: The Jewel of the Seven Stars) is a horror novel by Bram Stoker first published in 1903. The story is about an archaeologist's plot to revive Queen Tera, an ancient Egyptian mummy. (Summary by Wikipedia)
Genre(s): Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Language: English (FULL Audiobook)
Read more [...]
Animal Ghosts audiobook
Elliott O'DONNELL (1872 - 1965)
Summary: This is a collection of ghost stories in which the antagonists are various animals. Divided up into chapters of ghost sightings by each group of animals, you will hear of hauntings by dogs, cats, birds, jungle animals, etc. (Summary by Allyson Hester)
Genre(s): General Fiction, Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Language: English (FULL Audiobook)
Read more [...]
Varney, the Vampyre audiobook
Thomas Peckett PREST (1810 - 1859)
Originally published as a penny dreadful from 1845 until 1847, when it first appeared in book form, Varney the Vampyre is a forerunner to vampire stories such as Dracula, which it heavily influenced.
Flora Bannersworth is attacked in her own room in the middle of the night, and although her attacker is seemingly shot dead, the body is nowhere to be found. The discovery of two small bite marks on Flora's neck leads Mr Marchdale, Read more [...]
Afterward audiobook
Edith WHARTON (1862 - 1937)
Mary and Ned Boyne have fled their dreary life in Wisconsin for a home in rustic Dorsetshire. But you can only run so far, and some things - some secret things - may follow you. A creepy and tragic ghost story from one of the masters. (Summary by John Silence)
Genre(s): Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Language: English (FULL Audiobook)
Read more [...]
Three Ghost Stories audiobook
Charles DICKENS (1812 - 1870)
As a gifted writer with a strong interest in supernatural phenomena, Charles Dickens produced a string of ghost stories with enduring charm. Three of them are presented here, of which The Signal Man is one of the best known. Though quite different from his most celebrated realistic and humorous critical novels, these ghost stories, Gothic and grotesque as they are, are of good portrayal, and worth a read/listen. Summary by Vivian Chan
Genre(s): Read more [...]
Famous Modern Ghost Stories audiobook
Dorothy SCARBOROUGH (1878 - 1935)
An entertaining selection of "modern" ghost stories selected "to include specimens of a few of the distinctive types of modern ghosts, as well as to show the art of individual stories."
Sure to please the love of the supernatural in all of us! (summary by J. M. Smallheer)
Genre(s): Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Language: English (FULL Audiobook)
Read more [...]
The Last of the Valerii Audiobook
by Henry James (1843-1916)
An unnamed American painter resident in Rome serves as narrator in this story, watching as his god-daughter Martha, becomes the wife of Prince Marco Valerio. The young bride is eager to use some of her American fortune in the service of archeology at the Villa Valerio, her husband's somewhat run down Roman house. Archeology can be, her god-father suggests, a rather expensive hobby, but to his (and her) surprise, the dig brings to light Read more [...]
The Monkey's Paw audiobook
by W. W. Jacobs (1863-1943)
The Monkey's Paw was written in 1902 by W.W. Jacobs. It's a dark brooding tale which promises from the start that the light you see at the end of the tunnel is actually an oncoming train. Mr and Mrs White of Laburnum Villas step out toward that light by taking up the three wishes granted to the owner of the Monkey's Paw. Terrible things have happened to previous owners of this artifact but surely the Whites will fare better than those who Read more [...]
Varney, the Vampyre audiobook
Thomas Peckett PREST (1810 - 1859)
Originally published as a penny dreadful from 1845 until 1847, when it first appeared in book form, Varney the Vampyre is a forerunner to vampire stories such as Dracula, which it heavily influenced.
Flora Bannersworth is attacked in her own room in the middle of the night, and although her attacker is seemingly shot dead, the body is nowhere to be found. The discovery of two small bite marks on Flora's neck leads Mr Marchdale, Read more [...]
Dracula audiobook
Bram STOKER (1847 - 1912)
The classic vampire story by Bram Stoker revolves around a struggle between good and evil, tradition and modernity, and lust versus chastity. The author didn't invent vampires, but his novel has so captured the public's imagination that he is rightly considered their popularizer. Listen and you will meet not only the Count himself, but heroes Jonathan Harker and Abraham Van Helsing, plus an array of madmen, psychiatrists, and fair maidens who cross paths Read more [...]
The House on the Borderland audiobook
by William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918)
In 1877, two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. While there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned it. Its torn pages seem to hint at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility. This is a classic novel that worked to slowly bridge the gap between the British Read more [...]
The Ghost Pirates audiobook
by William Hope Hodgson
The Ghost Pirates is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils (of quasi-human aspect, and perhaps the spirits of bygone buccaneers) that besiege it and finally drag it down to an unknown fate. With its command of maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, this book at times reaches enviable peaks of power. (Summary by Wikipedia)
The Read more [...]
Douglas Duane audiobook
by Edgar Fawcett (1847-1904)
An introverted, kind-hearted book collector befriends a mad scientist, who isn't exactly a good friend. When the scientist falls in love with the book collector's fianc?e, he concocts an evil plot to have her for his own. What transpires goes in a direction that even Douglas Duane didn't see coming. Edgar Fawcett was a prolific author of standard fiction. With Douglas Duane he stepped out of his genre and created a memorable work of mad scientist Read more [...]
The Lost Stradivarius audiobook
by John Meade Falkner (1858-1932)
The Lost Stradivarius (1895), by J. Meade Falkner, is a short novel of ghosts and the evil that can be invested in an object, in this case an extremely fine Stradivarius violin. After finding the violin of the title in a hidden compartment in his college rooms, the protagonist, a wealthy young heir, becomes increasingly secretive as well as obsessed by a particular piece of music, which seems to have the power to call up the ghost Read more [...]
The Haunted Hotel, A Mystery of Modern Venice audiobook
by Wilkie Collins
A kind, good-hearted genteel young woman jilted, a suspicious death or two that only a few think could be murder, strange apparitions appearing in an hotel all combine to create a horrifying conundrum. Who was the culprit and will finding out finally put an end to the mystery? (Summary by Kehinde)
Read more [...]