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Wednesday 29 April 2015

Afterward [by Edith Wharton]


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.

Read by Charlie Blakemore.

link to the free audiobook

The Willows [by Algernon Blackwood]

The Willows is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known and creepiest stories. Many say it is his best and scariest. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a single strained passage or a single false note. The Willows is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.

link to the free audiobook
The Willows [by Algernon Blackwood]


The Beast With Five Fingers [by W. F. Harvey]

A well off English bachelor receives a legacy from his uncle. This includes the uncle's very large library and a box containing something that used to belong to his uncle. The box has air holes in it. It is not a rat or other small mammal for his collection, but it is something still alive; something very malevolent and something very evil.

LibriVox recording read by Phil Chenevert.

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Trilby [by George du Maurier]

Trilby, published in 1894, fits into the gothic horror genre which was undergoing a revival during the Fin de siècle and is one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle period after Bram Stoker's Dracula.  The story of the poor artist's model Trilby O'Ferrall, transformed into a diva under the spell of the evil musical genius Svengali, created a sensation. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and Trilby, Florida were all named for the heroine, and a variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown (worn in the London stage production of a dramatization of the novel) came to be called a trilby.  The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 potboiler Phantom of the Opera and the innumerable works derived from it, and introduced the phrase "in the altogether" (meaning "completely unclothed") to the English language. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Read by Librivox volunteers.

link to the free audiobook

Monday 27 April 2015

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow [by Washington Irving]


The quiet Dutch community of Sleepy Hollow lay in the Adirondack mountains on the western shore of the mighty Hudson River in America's colonial period. The solitude of the woods was breathtaking, and not even a schoolmaster was immune from the eerie miasma which everyone knew permeated the dense forest. Written in 1820, Washington Irving's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow has become a classic of American literature, and has been retold in many different ways. Here is the original, from Irving's own hand.

link to the free audiobook
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow [by Washington Irving]


Dracula BBC Audio Drama [by Bram Stoker] [Audiobook]

The novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.


Performance by Robert Powell; directed by David Hitchinson; adapted by Dickon Reed; produced by the BBC.

link to the free audiobook
Dracula BBC Audio Drama [by Bram Stoker] [Audiobook]