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Masters of the Macabre
An exclusive collection of classic horror stories by some of the world's greatest literary masters, created especially for Book-of-the-Month Club members.
Contents:
Washington Irving, "The Adventure of the German Student"
Saki, "The Cobweb"
Charles Dickens, "The Signal-Man"
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
Guy de Maupassant, "The Hand"
Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Body Snatcher"
Mark Twain, "A Ghost Story"
Bram Stoker, "Dracula's Guest"
Thomas Hardy, "The Withered Arm"
Henry James, "The Ghostly Rental"
Contents:
Washington Irving, "The Adventure of the German Student"
Saki, "The Cobweb"
Charles Dickens, "The Signal-Man"
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
Guy de Maupassant, "The Hand"
Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Body Snatcher"
Mark Twain, "A Ghost Story"
Bram Stoker, "Dracula's Guest"
Thomas Hardy, "The Withered Arm"
Henry James, "The Ghostly Rental"
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
2 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,907 books28.7k followersThe name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 24, 2019
This short story collection is extremely short, only coming in at about 100 pages including illustrations. If you take into account page breaks and illustrations, this collection is probably closer to 80 pages and the font is pretty big too. However, all of the stories inside this collection are horror classics. I highly recommend reading this collection if you want an introductory look at classic horror writing, but you aren’t interested in reading longer works by writers from 100 or more years ago that may write in a way that is a little bit cumbersome for modern readers. For me, I had already read the E. a. Poe story, as well as the Washington Irving story, and even the Henry James story, so not all of the stories were new to me. However, they are all quite enjoyable, Some more than others. They all have a traditional horror outline that involves a shocking reveal towards the end of the story. So, don’t expect anything new and different here. However, you can expect quality, classic writing.
May 4, 2022
Ganska tråkig och inte så makaber.
June 2, 2024
Good ol' Book-of-the-Month-Club, a stately institution that I only know of due to second-hand book buying. Forget the covers that are easily stamped by fingerprint residue and overlook the slightly shlocky binding; sometimes, these books were anthologies of finely aged fiction that introduced our literary elders to us uncultured swine. *Masters of the Macabre* - which I bought at a library sale long enough ago to forget where - is a fine example of that well-meaning repackaging. I read it as the penultimate volume of my first-ever October horror-reading spree, which was a bit of a mixed bag (everything I've read has been good but it has been hampered by enjoyment of my beloved science fiction), and I found it an interesting companion to its younger brothers like *Nightmare at 20,000 Feet* by Richard Matheson. Without further ado, let's talk about some of these dusty stories.
--"The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving is not only the book's first story but also its least memorable. It's about this Germanic guy in Revolution-era France who meets a beautiful woman whom he pledges his life too while taking a stroll under the stars, as one dies. Too bad . This story falls prey to an affliction that many of these stories do in that it hinges its whole shock value and spooky appeal on a twist of the macabre that seems pedestrian to us nowadays and doesn't have engaging characters or deeply engrained themes to satisfy us beyond the enjoyment one gets from a decently told campfire tale from 200 years ago. 6/10.
--"The Cobweb" by Saki (my first reading of him, as this was my first time with a lot of these authors) is about a young woman who moves to a new house where an old woman tends to the kitchen and blocks the new inhabitant's design plans. A bit of a petty story without a gripping theme besides , but it had a nice atmosphere that I can still picture in my mind's eye. 6.5/10.
--Charles Dickens' "The Signal-Man" is not only the first story here written by an author I know but also the first engaging tale here. It's a ghost story containing two characters: a man on holiday who stumbles across a train tunnel and the man who runs the train-signaling booth within said tunnel. While its setting rather confused my 21st-century mind for a bit, I think that it was long enough to yield a strong atmosphere and build-up while remaining punchy enough to deliver a ghostly ending that'll make you nod in satisfaction. Since it's a bit older, I think it earns its 7/10.
--I never loved Edgar Allen Poe, but "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is more appealing to my than most of his work. The titular character of M. Valdemar is a dying man who's offered his departing life to his scientist friend to study the effects of mid-mortem mesmerism. It unlocked a whole 1800s-era "science" (in mesmerism) for me and served as a somewhat intriguing and scary look into this bygone era. In this, I'll give it a 7/10.
--"The Hand" is translated from French and was written by Guy de Maupassant. It involves this man who's popular with all the ladies at a party telling a story of an inexplicable death that, to our ears, seems like it can only have been perpetrated by . It was somewhat memorable if not engaging or really thought-provoking; this stuff probably seemed cooler in... 1910. "The Hand" gets a 6.5/10.
--One of my favorite stories here is "The Body Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Instead of inspiring the similarly named movies, which were instead adapted from a Jack Finney novel, these stories show the story of a medical student who has the inkling that the dead bodies his underlings experiment on are really murder victims. The framing of the story is weird - taking several pages to get to the actual story, which is really just conjecture on one of our narrators' parts - but it is rather chilling and just *clicked* with me for some reason. 7.5./10.
--One of my other favorites is "A Ghost Story" by Mark Twain. I haven't read Twain in almost a decade, and even then it was in abbreviated form for children, so I really didn't expect it to be this funny, especially when the first few pages of the haunted hotel scene being set didn't quite do it for me. But by the time the misplaced ghost appeared, I was getting a big kick out of this one. Humorous and with style; 7.5/10.
--I really need to read *Dracula*, and I guess that "Dracula's Guest" (which exists in the limbo between "inspiration for" and "turned into" Stoker's biggest success) is a solid intro to that. Our protagonist is a rather foolish fellow who insists on wandering down a path to an old abandoned village that his guide says is massively cursed. Seems like a good reason not to go contend with the spirits, but... you do you, bud, even if it . Decent enough with a passable twist ending that could've been better drawn. 6.5/10.
--"The Withered Arm" by Thomas Hardy is good too; by golly, I think this collection's better than I remember! This one is segmented into different chapters flip-flopping perspectives between different figures on this late-1800s homestead from the lord's new wife to the older woman who bore his son and was cast aside. The new wife starts noticing a bizarre skin condition on her arm, and the older woman takes her to see who's cast this curse, and things spiral out of control from there. They finally reunite when . Maybe it's just length of story that makes it seem like stuff doesn't really happens in this one, but I also can't really see the moral. There's some clever irony, but... is it really that clever? I'll leave that up to you and give this a 7/10.
--Finally, with Henry James' "The Ghostly Rental", I can talk about prose. I've read some good prose this month (including M. John Harrison, Richard Matheson, and Dan Simmons), and I think that a large part of good writing is unique an memorable word choice, which leads to unique and memorable sentences. "The Ghostly Rental" has enough of those to be the best story in this collection on just that merit, let alone the babushka doll-like layers of hauntings versus hoaxes centering around a man's encounters with an older man who enters a haunted house on the first night of every quarter for a purpose that you'll have to read to find out. I'll definitely consider reading more James because he seems to be one of those 1800's writers whose prose can actually connect with me, but until then, I'll have to sleep at night knowing only this work's rating, an 8/10.
And there you have it, folks, the Book-of-the-Month-Club's *Masters of the Macabre*. What overall rating does the book get anyways? I was thinking a 6.5/10 at first (meaning good, but not really my thing), but after reviewing my thoughts on all the stories, I think it has to get a 7/10 (a good book that I enjoyed reading and would consider reading more of in the future). I always enjoy the chance to read more fiction from before 1900, and I even got a couple names to add to my classical-reading list. Time will tell when I get around to them in between the mounds of science fiction that I've accumulated just so it can sit in Purgatory with only the hope of being read, but you can find out at my profile here on Goodreads. Check it out if you can, and whether you do or don't, just be weary of spirits whether you're on the old-timey train, prancing through the site of a European revolution, extorting your father, or even wandering through a village that everyone besides you thinks is haunted.
--"The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving is not only the book's first story but also its least memorable. It's about this Germanic guy in Revolution-era France who meets a beautiful woman whom he pledges his life too while taking a stroll under the stars, as one dies. Too bad . This story falls prey to an affliction that many of these stories do in that it hinges its whole shock value and spooky appeal on a twist of the macabre that seems pedestrian to us nowadays and doesn't have engaging characters or deeply engrained themes to satisfy us beyond the enjoyment one gets from a decently told campfire tale from 200 years ago. 6/10.
--"The Cobweb" by Saki (my first reading of him, as this was my first time with a lot of these authors) is about a young woman who moves to a new house where an old woman tends to the kitchen and blocks the new inhabitant's design plans. A bit of a petty story without a gripping theme besides , but it had a nice atmosphere that I can still picture in my mind's eye. 6.5/10.
--Charles Dickens' "The Signal-Man" is not only the first story here written by an author I know but also the first engaging tale here. It's a ghost story containing two characters: a man on holiday who stumbles across a train tunnel and the man who runs the train-signaling booth within said tunnel. While its setting rather confused my 21st-century mind for a bit, I think that it was long enough to yield a strong atmosphere and build-up while remaining punchy enough to deliver a ghostly ending that'll make you nod in satisfaction. Since it's a bit older, I think it earns its 7/10.
--I never loved Edgar Allen Poe, but "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is more appealing to my than most of his work. The titular character of M. Valdemar is a dying man who's offered his departing life to his scientist friend to study the effects of mid-mortem mesmerism. It unlocked a whole 1800s-era "science" (in mesmerism) for me and served as a somewhat intriguing and scary look into this bygone era. In this, I'll give it a 7/10.
--"The Hand" is translated from French and was written by Guy de Maupassant. It involves this man who's popular with all the ladies at a party telling a story of an inexplicable death that, to our ears, seems like it can only have been perpetrated by . It was somewhat memorable if not engaging or really thought-provoking; this stuff probably seemed cooler in... 1910. "The Hand" gets a 6.5/10.
--One of my favorite stories here is "The Body Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Instead of inspiring the similarly named movies, which were instead adapted from a Jack Finney novel, these stories show the story of a medical student who has the inkling that the dead bodies his underlings experiment on are really murder victims. The framing of the story is weird - taking several pages to get to the actual story, which is really just conjecture on one of our narrators' parts - but it is rather chilling and just *clicked* with me for some reason. 7.5./10.
--One of my other favorites is "A Ghost Story" by Mark Twain. I haven't read Twain in almost a decade, and even then it was in abbreviated form for children, so I really didn't expect it to be this funny, especially when the first few pages of the haunted hotel scene being set didn't quite do it for me. But by the time the misplaced ghost appeared, I was getting a big kick out of this one. Humorous and with style; 7.5/10.
--I really need to read *Dracula*, and I guess that "Dracula's Guest" (which exists in the limbo between "inspiration for" and "turned into" Stoker's biggest success) is a solid intro to that. Our protagonist is a rather foolish fellow who insists on wandering down a path to an old abandoned village that his guide says is massively cursed. Seems like a good reason not to go contend with the spirits, but... you do you, bud, even if it . Decent enough with a passable twist ending that could've been better drawn. 6.5/10.
--"The Withered Arm" by Thomas Hardy is good too; by golly, I think this collection's better than I remember! This one is segmented into different chapters flip-flopping perspectives between different figures on this late-1800s homestead from the lord's new wife to the older woman who bore his son and was cast aside. The new wife starts noticing a bizarre skin condition on her arm, and the older woman takes her to see who's cast this curse, and things spiral out of control from there. They finally reunite when . Maybe it's just length of story that makes it seem like stuff doesn't really happens in this one, but I also can't really see the moral. There's some clever irony, but... is it really that clever? I'll leave that up to you and give this a 7/10.
--Finally, with Henry James' "The Ghostly Rental", I can talk about prose. I've read some good prose this month (including M. John Harrison, Richard Matheson, and Dan Simmons), and I think that a large part of good writing is unique an memorable word choice, which leads to unique and memorable sentences. "The Ghostly Rental" has enough of those to be the best story in this collection on just that merit, let alone the babushka doll-like layers of hauntings versus hoaxes centering around a man's encounters with an older man who enters a haunted house on the first night of every quarter for a purpose that you'll have to read to find out. I'll definitely consider reading more James because he seems to be one of those 1800's writers whose prose can actually connect with me, but until then, I'll have to sleep at night knowing only this work's rating, an 8/10.
And there you have it, folks, the Book-of-the-Month-Club's *Masters of the Macabre*. What overall rating does the book get anyways? I was thinking a 6.5/10 at first (meaning good, but not really my thing), but after reviewing my thoughts on all the stories, I think it has to get a 7/10 (a good book that I enjoyed reading and would consider reading more of in the future). I always enjoy the chance to read more fiction from before 1900, and I even got a couple names to add to my classical-reading list. Time will tell when I get around to them in between the mounds of science fiction that I've accumulated just so it can sit in Purgatory with only the hope of being read, but you can find out at my profile here on Goodreads. Check it out if you can, and whether you do or don't, just be weary of spirits whether you're on the old-timey train, prancing through the site of a European revolution, extorting your father, or even wandering through a village that everyone besides you thinks is haunted.
April 23, 2019
Not all of these landed, as what happens with most anthologies, but I did have my favorites (in no particular order):
“The Adventure of the German Student” Washington Irving
“The Signal-Man” Charles Dickens
“The Hand” Guy de Maupassant
“A Ghost Story” Mark Twain
“Dracula’s Guest” Bram Stoker
“The Withered Arm” Thomas Hardy
I will say I am extremely surprised that I didn’t enjoy the Poe story. I think my solid tops were Stoker’s, Maupassant’s, and Irving’s stories. 3.5/5 stars.
“The Adventure of the German Student” Washington Irving
“The Signal-Man” Charles Dickens
“The Hand” Guy de Maupassant
“A Ghost Story” Mark Twain
“Dracula’s Guest” Bram Stoker
“The Withered Arm” Thomas Hardy
I will say I am extremely surprised that I didn’t enjoy the Poe story. I think my solid tops were Stoker’s, Maupassant’s, and Irving’s stories. 3.5/5 stars.
June 29, 2025
The Adventure of the German Student • Washington Irving ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Cobweb • Saki ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Signal-Man • Charles Dickens ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar • Edgar Allan Poe ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Hand • Guy de Maupassant ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Body Snatcher • Robert Louis Stevenson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Ghost Story • Mark Twain ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Withered Arm • Thomas Hardy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Ghostly Rental • Henry James ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Cobweb • Saki ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Signal-Man • Charles Dickens ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar • Edgar Allan Poe ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Hand • Guy de Maupassant ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Body Snatcher • Robert Louis Stevenson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Ghost Story • Mark Twain ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Withered Arm • Thomas Hardy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Ghostly Rental • Henry James ⭐️⭐️⭐️
February 8, 2018
A very nice little selection of Victorian era horror stories.
November 1, 2018
This is an interesting collection of horror tales to experience on Halloween. Vincent Price lends his voice to these stories of terror. It is done well.
May 30, 2024
Great anthology.
October 29, 2013
BORING!!!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews