The Pit and the Pendulum Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/801 en 1842 Short Fiction Horror "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842. The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The narrator of the story is deemed guilty for an unnamed crime and put into a completely dark room. He passes out while trying to determine the size of the room. When he wakes up, he realizes there is a large, deep pit in the middle of the room. He loses consciousness again and awakens strapped on his back, unable to move more than his head. He soon realizes there is a large blade-like pendulum hanging above him, slowly getting closer to cutting through his chest. He finds a way to escape but the walls of his prison start to move and close in on him, pushing him closer and closer to falling into the pit. The story is especially effective at inspiring fear in the reader because of its heavy focus on the senses, such as sound, emphasizing its reality, unlike many of Poe's stories which are aided by the supernatural. The traditional elements established in popular horror tales at the time are followed but critical reception has been mixed. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/801.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/801.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/801.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/801.mobi The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/814 urn:isbn:0553212281 en 1843 Short Fiction Horror Gothic "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1843. It follows an unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity after murdering an old man with a "vulture eye". The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by cutting it into pieces and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator's guilt manifests itself in the hallucination that the man's heart is still beating under the floorboards. It is unclear what relationship, if any, the old man and his murderer share. It has been suggested that the old man is a father figure or, perhaps, that his vulture eye represents some sort of veiled secret. The ambiguity and lack of details about the two main characters stand in stark contrast to the specific plot details leading up to the murder. The story was first published in James Russell Lowell's The Pioneer in January 1843. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is widely considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and one of Poe's most famous short stories. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/814.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/814.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/814.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/814.mobi The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/772 urn:isbn:1420927035 en 1839 Short Fiction Horror The tale opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his comfort. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/772.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/772.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/772.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/772.mobi The Murders in the Rue Morgue Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/795 urn:isbn:0679643427 en 1841 Short Fiction Crime/Mystery "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been claimed as the first detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". Similar works predate Poe's stories, including Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1819) by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Zadig (1748) by Voltaire. C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the mysterious brutal murder of two women. Numerous witnesses heard a suspect, though no one agrees on what language was spoken. At the murder scene, Dupin finds a hair that does not appear to be human. As the first true detective in fiction, the Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe's model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it. Dupin himself reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter". http://www.feedbooks.com/book/795.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/795.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/795.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/795.mobi Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/40 en 1840 Short Fiction Horror Collections Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is a collection of previously-published short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1840. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/40.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/40.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/40.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/40.mobi The Masque of the Red Death Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/789 en 1842 Short Fiction Horror "The Masque of the Red Death", originally published as "The Mask of the Red Death", is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, has a masquerade ball within seven rooms of his abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. When Prospero confronts this stranger, he falls dead. The story follows many traditions of Gothic fiction and is often analyzed as an allegory about the inevitability of death, though some critics advise against an allegorical reading. Many different interpretations have been presented, as well as attempts to identify the true nature of the disease of the "Red Death." http://www.feedbooks.com/book/789.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/789.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/789.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/789.mobi The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/762 en 1846 Short Fiction Horror "The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado") is a short story, written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book. The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year (possibly sometime during the eighteenth century) and concerns the deadly revenge taken by the narrator on a friend who he claims has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive – in this case, by immurement. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/762.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/762.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/762.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/762.mobi The Black Cat Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/759 urn:isbn:0582417740 en 1842 Short Fiction Crime/Mystery "The Black Cat" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It is a study of the psychology of guilt, often paired in analysis with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". In both, a murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminder of his guilt. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/759.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/759.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/759.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/759.mobi The Purloined Letter Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/805 urn:isbn:0801832934 en 1844 Short Fiction "The Purloined Letter" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in The Gift for 1845 (1844) and was soon reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/805.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/805.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/805.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/805.mobi A Descent into the Maelström Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/765 en 1841 Short Fiction Horror Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb. The story is told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old - "You suppose me a very old man," he says, "but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves." The narrator, convinced by the power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of the "old" man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/765.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/765.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/765.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/765.mobi The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Francis Scott Fitzgerald http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3431 en 1922 Short Fiction This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler's "Note-books." The story was published in "Collier's" last summer and provoked this startling letter from an anonymous admirer in Cincinnati: "Sir-- I have read the story Benjamin Button in Colliers and I wish to say that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic I have seen many peices of cheese in my life but of all the peices of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest peice. I hate to waste a peice of stationary on you but I will." This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3431.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3431.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3431.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3431.mobi The Gold-Bug Edgar Allan Poe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/774 urn:isbn:0486268756 en 1842 Short Fiction http://www.feedbooks.com/book/774.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/774.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/774.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/774.mobi The Call of Cthulhu Howard Phillips Lovecraft http://www.feedbooks.com/book/18 urn:isbn:0786926392 en 1926 Short Fiction Horror "The Call of Cthulhu" is one of H. P. Lovecraft's best-known short stories. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in Weird Tales, February 1928. It is the only story written by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu himself makes a major appearance. It is written in a documentary style, with three independent narratives linked together by the device of a narrator discovering notes left by a deceased relative. The narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the information he possesses, illustrating the story's first line: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far." This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/18.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/18.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/18.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/18.mobi The Island of Dr. Moreau H. G. Wells http://www.feedbooks.com/book/33 urn:isbn:0553214322 en 1896 Novels Science Fiction Edward Prendick is shipwrecked in the Pacific. Rescued by Doctor Moreau's assistant he is taken to the doctor's island home where he discovers the doctor has been experimenting on the animal inhabitants of the island, creating bizarre proto-humans... This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/33.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/33.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/33.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/33.mobi The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1 urn:isbn:068983571X en 1902 Novels Crime/Mystery The rich landowner Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead in the park of his manor surrounded by the grim moor of Dartmoor, in the county of Devon. His death seems to have been caused by a heart attack, but the victim's best friend, Dr. Mortimer, is convinced that the strike was due to a supernatural creature, which haunts the moor in the shape of an enormous hound, with blazing eyes and jaws. In order to protect Baskerville's heir, Sir Henry, who's arriving to London from Canada, Dr. Mortimer asks for Sherlock Holmes' help, telling him also of the so-called Baskervilles' curse, according to which a monstrous hound has been haunting and killing the family males for centuries, in revenge for the misdeeds of one Sir Hugo Baskerville, who lived at the time of Oliver Cromwell. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1.mobi The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8 urn:isbn:0553213695 en 1912 Short Fiction Horror The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin". This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.mobi The Lost World Arthur Conan Doyle http://www.feedbooks.com/book/67 urn:isbn:0812564839 en 1912 Novels Adventure The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in South America where prehistoric animals (dinosaurs and other extinct creatures) still survive. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. Interestingly, for a seminal work of dinosaur-related fiction, the animals only occupy a small portion of the narrative. Much more time is devoted to a war between early human hominids and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/67.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/67.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/67.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/67.mobi The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1421 urn:isbn:0199536953 en 1892 Short Fiction Crime/Mystery Collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective and illustrated by Sidney Paget. These are the first of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, originally published as single stories in the Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892. The book was published in England on October 14, 1892 by George Newnes Ltd and in a US Edition on October 15 by Harper. The initial combined print run was 14,500 copies. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1421.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1421.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1421.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1421.mobi Macbeth William Shakespeare http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2935 urn:isbn:0521606861 en 1606 Plays Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare's plays, and is his shortest tragedy, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606. It is frequently performed at both amateur and professional levels, and has been adapted for opera, film, books, stage and screen. Often regarded as archetypal, the play tells of the dangers of the lust for power and the betrayal of friends. For the plot Shakespeare drew loosely on the historical account of King Macbeth of Scotland by Raphael Holinshed and that by the Scottish philosopher Hector Boece. There are many superstitions centred on the belief the play is somehow "cursed", and many actors will not mention the name of the play aloud, referring to it instead as "The Scottish play". (From Wikipedia) http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2935.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2935.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2935.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2935.mobi The Invisible Man H. G. Wells http://www.feedbooks.com/book/34 urn:isbn:0451528522 en 1897 Novels Science Fiction The Invisible Man is an 1897 science fiction novella by H.G. Wells. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Magazine in 1897, and published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who theorises that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and his body does not absorb or reflect light, then he will be invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but cannot become visible again, becoming mentally unstable as a result. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/34.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/34.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/34.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/34.mobi