100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories

by Charles Dickens and Steve Rasnic Tem

Book Overview

Scared? You will be! Feel your nerves jangle and chills run up and down your spine thanks to the hair-raising genius of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, E. F. Benson, H. P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, Charles Dickens, Robert Barr, and many others who know well how to manipulate a reader's emotions. From Washington Irving comes "The Adventure of My Grandfather" and from Saki, "The Cobweb." Bill Pronzini plays a horrifying...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566190568
• ISBN13: 9781566190565
• Release Date: June 1993
• Publisher: Fall River Press
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great condition 😁😁!!!!!

I haven't read the stories yet but I'm dying to do so. I got to say the book 📚📖 can in great condition anf it looks like akk of the pagee are there. It looks like the book in picture with is great.

An Absolutely Fun Read!

This anthology collection reads more like Tales From The Darkside or Twilight Zone and are well written. If you like that type of genre then these stories are for you..

Hair raising indeed!

The best horror fiction is subtle. This point is missed by the producers of today's horror films, in which blood and gore-and the anticipation thereof-have become a substitute for the storytelling art and the art of horror. Horror can be the ordinary or the possible, taken one step further. Sometimes it is allusive, so that the reader is told, more or less, what happened but not how. Fiction like that of Edgar Allen Poe finds its roots in common fears and foibles of the human psyche stretched to unimaginable ends (for example, guilt in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat"). In other stories, the ending, or what happens next, is left to the reader's imagination. The author plants the seed and fertilizes it, but leaves the reader to reap it. In 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories, Sarrantonio and Greenberg have captured the essence of horror fiction at its best-its subtlety and its interactivity with the reader's mind and emotions. In some, supernatural or science fiction elements play a role, but not at the expense of the psychology. In many of these, the reader must decide how reliable the narrator is. In stories like "Ants" by Chet Williamson, the commonplace becomes the unthinkable. "Examination Day" twists one of the worst fears a schoolchild has into a parent's nightmare, while making a political statement. In several stories, the abuses inflicted on children are turned back upon the parents, guardians, or peers-or are they? Examples include "Holly, Don't Tell" by Juleen Brantingham; "Moving Night" by Nancy Holder; "Making Friends" by Gary Raisor; and "Sredni Vashtar" by Saki. "In the Corn" by Robert Fox is memorable for its setting, the naïveté and vulnerability of its protagonist, and the situations that lie behind and ahead of him. A story like "The Grab" by Richard Laymon deceives the reader by presenting several twists; the game is not what it appears to be at first, and that makes the players' attitude toward it as shown at the end even more horrifying. In real life, sometimes there are crimes that seem inexplicable until the culprits are caught and their depravity shown. In "Down by the Sea near the Great Big Rock" by Joe R. Lansdale, another explanation is revealed-or is it? A few stories combine horror and whimsy, including "The Adventures of My Grandfather" by Washington Irving, "The Kirk Spook" by E. G. Swain, and "The Disintegration of Alan" by Melissa Mia Hall. "Fish Night" by Joe R. Lansdale is beautiful and haunting, with an ending that should not surprise but does. In some cases, though, the horror lies in the tale's realism, for example, "The Upturned Face" by Stephen Crane and "Night Deposits" by Chet Williamson. 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories is a marvelous anthology of the genre. In only a few words and a few pages, each gifted author establishes well-drawn settings, scenarios, and characters, and then sets the reader up for an experience that ranges from amusing but disquieting to disturbing and ter

100 Hair Raising Little Horror Stories!

This is a wonderful book containing hundreds of classic, vintage horror and ghost stories. The tension builds steadily in each story, leading you to gasp in horror or gulp in nervousness. These are examples of some of the work included in this book: "Berenice"- This is a very disturbing tale of a young man driven to misery by an experience with a young woman named Berenice. She passes away one night, and the narrator sees her in his room with grotesque features. He then learns the next morning that Berenice has risen from her grave. Written by Edgar Allen Poe. "The Idea"- This is the story of a man in a suspicious business executive that drives his family away from him with a ghastly idea that will lead to the corruption of his business. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"- A horrifying tale of the narrator attempting to mesmerize a dying man afflicted with a terminal illness. The gruesome occurances that follow the mesmerization will haunt your dreams for weeks. Written by Edgar Allen Poe. "No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman"- This Charles Dickens story tells of an aging man at a branch line that continues to see mysterious spectres outside his post. The narrator meets up with the man and believes him to be in an incompetent state of mind. He changes his mind, however, when the signalman is killed by a ghostly train one evening. "Nightshapes"- A frightening tale about a man driven to insanity when his wife transforms into a werewolf every midnight. He also thinks of himself as a madman. "Night Deposits"- A riveting tale of an elderly man's co-worker who is put into heavy debt by a mill factory. He keeps seeing his friend at night putting money into the night deposit bank slot. He continues to see his friend do this even after the bank is torn down. There are hundreds more stories that you will find both interesting and terrifying in this book. I personally enjoy sitting down and reading four stories at a time. My hands are always shaking by the time I close the book. Pick it up and enjoy!

Masters of the Trickiest Form of Literature

As Frederick Douglass once said, "I confess I love littleness in all things." These ironic and timeless tales are less horrifying than startling for their perfection and originality. There appear to be no prescriptions or standards for the short short horror. Each victim, each critical moment in time and place is unique and unlike its companions in the collection. And why not, when some of the authors are named Twain, Saki, Poe, Lovecraft, Hawthorne and Crane to name a few. Every tale is narrated by a voice that gives away nothing while it adds to the tension. Guaranteed to make you shiver, from laughter, dread or awe, this collection is an extended experience within the unexpected and the unpredictable. My favorite has to be Dark Wings by Phyllis Eisenstein, where the sight of a large bird in flight against a white moon, becomes an obsession with the strangest end a soaring climax I can recall in fiction of this length. As the editors and contributors, Al Sarrantino and Martin H. Greenberg point out in the preface; this form, the short short story, is the hardest of all literary forms to perfect. Every word and every mark of punctuation is critical and must be exact. Though they appear brief and simple, they are about as effortless as say---flying. Just about every decade in the 20th century and many from the 19th are represented in some of the greatest literary giants. Giants of brevity and brilliance. Savor it, but definitely get a copy.