Eleven Classic Short Stories

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When his friend Cunningham warns Van Cheele that there is a wild beast in his woods, he pays scant attention. But later, following an encounter in the woods with an uncanny, wild-looking youth who speaks o

A man adrift on the sea wakes to find himself stranded on a slimy expanse of hellish black mire. What he later finds there is enough to unhinge his sanity and reduce him to a hopeless morphine addict, forever

Something has been raiding Octavian Ruttle's hen house. The prime suspect is his neighbour's tabby cat. A death sentence is decided upon, and reluctantly carried out - much to the anger of the children who own the cat.

Poe's classic tale of horror. Prince Prospero locks himself and his many wealthy guests in his abbey, safe from The Red Death - a hideous plague that is ravaging the land. But for how long can they cheat death?

Conradin is a lonely young boy who lives with his guardian, Mrs de Ropp. She is a dull, cheerless woman who makes life dull and cheerless for Conradin, who might succumb to illness, were it not for his vivid

A classic tale of horror and madness from H.P. Lovecraft. A university student takes a room in a Paris lodging house. He meets another tenant, Erich Zann, an old man who plays the viol. At night, the student lies awake listening

A bachelor travelling in a train compartment accepts an invitation to amuse a group of bored children by telling them a story.

A ghost story from M.E. Braddon."Can death part us? I would return to you from the grave, Gertrude. My soul would come back to be near mylove. And you - you, if you died before me - the cold earth would not hold you

Cornelius Appin comes to Lady Blemley's house party with a remarkable discovery: he has learned how to teach animals to speak, and his first successful pupil is Lady Blemley's roving cat, Tobermory.

A train traveller makes the acquaintance of a man who tells the macabre, blackly comic story of how he and another group of train passengers managed to survive being stranded in a snowstorm.

While Frampton Nuttel waits to present himself to Mrs. Sappleton, her niece tells him the eerie tale of her aunt's "great tragedy".