American Supernatural Tales (Penguin Horror) (Penguin Classic Horror)

by S. T. Joshi

Guillermo del Toro (Editor) and S.T. Joshi (Editor)

Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by award-winning director Guillermo del Toro.

American Supernatural Tales is the ultimate collection of weird and frightening American short fiction. As Stephen King will attest, the popularity of the occult in American literature has only grown since the days of Edgar Allan Poe. The book celebrates the richness of this tradition with chilling contributions from some of the nation's brightest literary lights, including Poe himself, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and-of course-Stephen King. By turns phantasmagoric, spectral, and demonic, this is a frighteningly good collection of stories.

S. T. Joshi is a freelance writer, scholar, and editor whose previous books include Documents of American Prejudice; In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women; God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong; Atheism: A Reader; H. L. Mencken on Religion; The Agnostic Reader; and What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays by Mark Twain.

• ISBN10: 0143122371
• ISBN13: 9780143122371
• Publish Date: 3 October 2013 (first published 24 April 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Classics
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780143122371

Reviews

This is an excellent collection of horror tales ranging from the days of Washington Irving to modern day writers. Joshi has selected the cream of the crop for this anthology, some of which can be hard to locate nowadays especially in ebook format. Some of the offerings within include classics like:

The Fall of the House of Usher by Poe
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
Night Surf by Stephen King
Long Distance Call by Richard Matheson
The Vanishing American by Charles Beaumont
The Yellow Sign by Robert Chambers
The Girl With the Hungry Eyes by Fritz Leiber

A must have for horror fans everywhere. My only regret is that there is none of Rod Serling's works included here, for he would fit right in with such a illustrious collection of Ametican masters.