The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

by Anthony Horowitz (Editor, Contributor), Pete Johnson (Contributor), Stephen King (Contributor)

stories contented in this
1/ Pete Johnson - Secret Terror

2/ Stephen King - Battleground

3/ Robert Westall - The Vacancy

4/ Guy de Maupassant - The Twitch

5/ Laurence Staig - Freebies

6/ Roald Dahl - Man from the South

7/ Kenneth Ireland - The Werewolf Mask

8/ John Gordon - Eels

9/ Bram Stoker - Jonathan Marker's Journal

10/ Anthony Horowitz - Bath Night

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Juvenile, Childrens, Adult

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 1994

About the author

Anthony Horowitz, OBE is ranked alongside Enid Blyton and Mark A. Cooper as "The most original and best spy-kids authors of the century." (New York Times). Anthony has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he is also the writer and creator of award winning detective series Foyle’s War, and more recently event drama Collision, among his other television works he has written episodes for Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. Anthony became patron to East Anglia Children’s Hospices in 2009.

On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from them and to be entitled the House of Silk.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/anthon...

Reviews

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really very scary. I have a feeling these stories are directed at children but I must say if I was a child I would find it impossible to sleep! I was especially scared by a story about a killer bath (which sounds hilarious but in reality is claustrophobic and terrifying). A nice change from my other books I have been reading although a shame the stories aren't written by Anthony Horowitz.

[Hafsa Sabira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of ten horror stories or I should say, ten classic horror stories by diffrent writers.

Being a fan of Horror stories, I have had my fair share of horror stories and now not many can chill my bones like before. So, as I expected, none of these stories seemed horrific to me. These do not really raise fear , but more like a surprised kind of feeling. However, it's quite enjoyable if you give up the 'horror' part.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wasn't until I read the reviews that I learned that this was not a collection written entirely by Anthony Horrowitz. Sorry, other authors for not thinking about you while reading this...

I might have figured out that this was a collection of stories from different authors since the final story "Bath Time" was a story I already knew (from a Horowitz Horror). And I could have known if I had taken the time to read the table of contents. But since I never do that, I was left in the dark. It's my own fault, basically. The other stories were luckily all new to me. I'm a big fan of short horror stories so normally you might expect me to rate such collections 5 stars. This collection, however, had a few stories that were just a little to weird and farfetched for me, like the Stephen King story "Battleground". I know that short stories can't always explain everything because of their format, but with this one I was just left with too many questions. Plus I couldn't really see myself being frightened of toy soldiers even if they have rocket launchers (which is one of these weird questions I was left with...are there any toy soldier sets that come with rocket launchers? Not in my country as far as I know, but hey, maybe that's just me)

There were luckily also a lot of stories I did enjoy. I think my favourite was "Man from the South" which really had an eerie vibe even though the narrator is not in imminent danger.

All in all I would have liked that the stories were a little bit better connected (these were stories from different places, different times, different themes), mainly because them being so different makes it difficult to give an appropriate rating...Goodreads problems...

[Rabia Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 out of the 10 stories in this book were ace! The others were really mediocre but overall the concept was great and the stories were a good, short length.

[Hazel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great collection, this includes the Roald Dahl story about the man who likes to bet, and a familiar one about toy soldiers that I didn't remember was by Steven King. Some of the authors have the unfortunate tendency to set their stories in England and have their characters use US slang. shudder

[Mala · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up as a respite between some heavy duty reading.
As a book meant for children of 10yrs & above,the horror content is suitably mild though can't say that of the only sci-fi one by Robert Westall called'The Vacancy'.That one was enough to scare even an adult in a sad kind of way.

All the usual suspects r there:King,Dahl ,Bram Stoker & Horowitz himself.
The stand out story,though,is the cover pic one,by John Gordon called'Eels': a psychological horror chiller.
Roald dahl's 'Man from the South' is quite macabre &Stephen King's'Battleground' is delightful,but rest r just so-so & quite predictable esp. Kenneth Ireland's'The Werewolf Mask',,the tale by Maupassant & strangely enough by Horowitz himself;the story called'Bath Night'about an antique bathtub.

It would make a good gift for children who like a good scare but definately not for relaxing an adult!
For adolescent readers i would give it 3/5 rating.

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not so scary but very entertaining. The stories were not the type to send chills down the spine but enjoyed reading them

[Paschalis]

elibrary

[Eric St.Denis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice selection of horror stories.

[Bill Borre]

"Man from the South" by Roald Dahl - wc

[Mateo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was about different stories on horror. They all were stories from different books connected together to make this one. This book goes from creepy tarantula's to evil bathtubs. Are you ready for a scare?
I can connect to the first story about tarantulas because I am bug phobia like her. She was being watched by spiders and she also said that they are the true devil. I really hate spiders also. At the end something was crawling down her face.
I gave this book 3 stars because it really didn't have many efforts put into it. Also to me they weren't even scary stories. There was only about 2 disturbing parts. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a little fright, and read this only at night or its not scary.

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A short anthology of horror stories aimed at the YA reader.
includes:
# Secret Terror • Pete Johnson
# 25 • Battleground • Stephen King
# 43 • The Vacancy • Robert Westall
# 57 • The Twitch • Guy de Maupassant; trans. by Anthony Horowitz
# 65 • Freebies ["Call-Back"] • Laurence Staig
# 79 • Man from the South ["Collector's Item"] • Roald Dahl
# 97 • The Werewolf Mask • Kenneth Ireland
# 111 • Eels • John Gordon
# 125 • Jonathan Harker's Journal from Dracula [Dracula] • Bram Stoker
# 131 • Bath Night • Anthony Horowitz

Some not-so-bad stuff, some pretty good stuff, some quite forgettable stuff. My biggest question is: why bother putting together an anthology and make it so short? I guess they think younger people will be intimidated by "big" books?

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology of short, creepy stories. I enjoyed them, and I may use a couple of them in my class.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

a couple were pretty creepy

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly creepy, everything I would expect from just reading the title in passing.

[raquel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. I feel like Horowitz went out of his way to find cliched, badly written and racist horror stories.

[Sim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice short stories in the horror genre. Good for a horror starter.. Its a book i will save for my kids to read when they are older for sure.

[Janet Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor story selection, and the good couple of them I had already read.