Showing results by author "Ambrose Bierce" in All Categories

Carcosa is a fictional land that first appeared in Bierce’s 1886 story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (included in this collection), and later is appeared Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow. It has since been used by many other fantasy and horror writers and poets. This collection explores Carcosa and other fictional cities found in nineteenth-century poetry and short stories. The works of these classic and innovative writers are given new life, and a new generation of listeners will have the chance to voyage to Carcosa … and beyond.

Written over three decades as a series of instalments for magazines and newspapers, The Devil’s Dictionary is a charmingly eccentric satirical dictionary that tackles all aspects of life with caustic humour and cutting observation.

Written by Ambrose Bierce, and narrated by Mike Vendetti, this story concerns a man from the ancient city of Carcosa who awakens from a sickness-induced sleep to find himself lost in an unfamiliar wilderness. Carcosa was subsequently borrowed by Robert W. Chambers as the setting of his fictional play, The King in Yellow, and features heavily in many of the stories in the book of the same name. These concepts were further expanded upon by H. P. Lovecraft in his Cthulhu Mythos stories.

Horror and the supernatural are the background of Bierce's short stories. His style is marked by vivid description, grim situations, and sardonic twists of fate. In terms of technique, he was far ahead of his time and his short stories are among the very best in American literature.

Ambrose Bierce left behind a nasty reputation and more than 90 short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius. This volume of selected stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time.

CONTENTS: 1. The Imp of the Perverse [Poe], 2. The Devil in the Belfry [Poe], 3. The Crawling Chaos [Lovecraft], 4. Aunt Joanna [Sabine Baring-Gould], 5. The Outsider [Lovecraft], 6. The Hound [Lovecraft], 7. The Disinterment [Lovecraft], 8. The Horror At Martin's Beach [Lovecraft], 9. The Tree On The Hill [Lovecraft], 10. The Outgoing of The Tide [John Buchan], 11. The Curse of Yig [Lovecraft], 12. The Haunter Of The Dark [Lovecraft], 13. Berenice [Poe], 14. The Angel Of The Odd [Poe], 15. Black Ram [Baring-Gould], 16. The Cask Of Amontillado [Poe], 17. Dracula's Guest [Bram Stoker].

A thoroughly engaging collection of great classic tales by the very best American authors. 1. 'From Beyond' by H. P. Lovecraft 2. 'The Mysterious Card and the Card Unveiled' by Cleveland Moffett 3. 'Pigs Is Pigs' by Ellis Parker Butler 4. 'The Club of One-Eyed Men' by Arthur Somers Roche 5. 'Afterward' by Edith Wharton 6. 'The Furnished Room' by O. Henry 7. 'A Descent into the Maelström' by Edgar Allan Poe 8. 'Regret' by Kate Chopin 9. 'The Terrible Old Man' by H. P. Lovecraft 10. 'The Dumb Man' by Sherwood Anderson

Critically acclaimed audiobook reader Barnaby Edwards (Doctor Who, The Voyage of the Beagle, Space Danger) performs 11 tales of ghostly gothic spookiness. From tales of vampyres and spirits to devil’s deals and ethereal coachmen. Short but oh so sweet, these 11 stories from some of the most lauded authors of the Gothic period prove that you need only a few pages to tell a truly terrifying tale.

A masterful collection of horror fiction by widely acclaimed authors whose contributions to the genre have been lost in the shadow of Poe. Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. There were American, English, and continental writers who preceded Poe and influenced his work. Similarly, there were many who were in turn influenced by Poe's genius and produced their own popular tales of supernatural literature.

In Edgar Allan Poe's eerie title story, an old man's diseased eye drives the narrator to murder. But while the murderer can rid himself of the eye, he can't silence the old man's heart.

A veritable library of listening in this splendid collection of American Short Stories! This boxed set includes all stories from Volumes 1, 2 and 3.

In this missive Ambrose Bierce recounts two days in his life, April 6 and April 7, 1862, perhaps the two most significant days of his life. He and over 100,000 other combatants have gathered about a small church near the town of Corinth, "a wretched place--the capital of a swamp, two days' march west of the Tennessee River". The church is Shiloh, and it will lend its name to the great battle that took place there.

Ambrose Bierce participated in one of the bloodiest wars in American history, and though he survived, the war haunted him the rest of his life. Today we have a name for the demon that haunts many of those "more fortunate" who survive: post-traumatic stress disorder. In World War I and World War II they called it shell-shocked. The battle of Chickamauga was surpassed in casualties only by the battle of Gettysburg.

"Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him." This line was written by Ambrose Bierce in his short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Death by execution has historically been ritualized, perhaps to absolve those accomplishing the execution from guilt or blame.

In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of 26 short stories detailing the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War.

Included: The Apparition Of Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe, Alice Addertongue by Benjamin Franklin, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, Prosper Mérimée by Mateo Falcone, Napoleon And The Spectre by Charlotte Bronte, The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask Of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe, An Honest Thief by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Frog by Edgar Allan Poe, The Knitted Collar by Mary Anne Hoare.

A dimly lit coroner's inquest sets the scene for "The Damned Thing", which relates the strange and savage death of Hugh Morgan, a solitary man who found himself haunted - and eventually hunted - by an unseen creature stalking the untouched woods near a small, rural village.

This collection of eerie stories explores the darkest regions of the mind. Included in the selections are Bierce's most famous tale, "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge", "A Watcher By the Dead", "The Death of Halpin Frayser", "A Cold Greeting", "A Wireless Message", "An Arrest", "The Isle of Pines", "A Fruitless Assignment", "At Old Man Eckert's", "The Spook House", "The Other Lodgers", "The Thing At Nolan", "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field", "An Unfinished Race", "Charles Ashmore's Trail", "Science to the Front", "The Famous Gilson Bequest", and more.

Volume 7 starts off with Edgar Allan Poe's story of a gifted boy hounded by his shadow, "William Wilson". We take to the sky's with a pilots investigation into unexplainable events thousands of feet above ground in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Horror of the Heights". Next up, Ambrose Bierce plays with time in "The Suitable Surroundings".

A farmer, while crossing a field, mysteriously disappears into thin air before the eyes of several witnesses, resulting in a legal proceeding to determine whether he's dead.