Showing results for "Spiders" in Anthologies & Short Stories

A classic from the queen of mystery: Agatha Christie...

In this gripping tale from science fiction master H.G. Wells, three relentless pursuers chase a fleeing girl and her companion across a desolate wilderness—only to enter a remote valley shrouded in silence, stillness...and something far worse. As drifting globes of cobweb descend like ghostly invaders, the hunters become the hunted in a surreal battle against monstrous, skyborne spiders.

Here's an emotional tale of family secrets set in 2038. Jen has been estranged from her father, a Shakespearian actor, ever since he got divorced from her mother years and years ago. But when her mother dies, Jen is astonished to discover that she has left her ex-husband a fortune in her will. Jen tries to confront her father, but first she must get past the robot that cares for him. This is a Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon nominee, and the winner of the Locus Award for best short story of 1997.

It’s bad enough that its venom-dripping chelicerae can slice through flesh like warm butter. Worse? It’s right there under the bunk. It’s a fact now. To make it through the night, the children must obey the rules: don’t get out of bed, stay out of the shadows, and don’t wake the beast. But as the threats multiply, so do the rules of survival. And with the safety of dawn still hours away, the fun is just beginning.

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer, born in Italy and educated in the USA. He also studied at the universities of Cambridge and Heidelberg. He was a prolific writer in many fields, but it was his novels that were most popular, commanding a large following. His stories of the macabre and supernatural are very highly regarded. Roy Macready reads five of them from Uncanny Tales.

The creator of Dracula, Bram Stoker, wrote many other novels and works of short fiction. Here are four of his short stories which have some of the same weird, unsettling, and entertaining qualities as his gothic masterpiece. They are "The Judge's House", "The Secret of the Growing Gold", "The Squaw", and "A Dream of Red Hands."

Oscar Wilde's classic comic ghost story was the first of his short stories to be published, in February 1887. It relates the experiences of Mr. Hiram B. Otis, an American minister, and his family when they move into Canterville Chase, an ancient pile haunted by the previous owner's dead ancestor, Sir Simon. Of course, Mr. Otis declares, "There is no such thing, sir, as a ghost", and all of Sir Simon's hauntings have no effect on the skeptical American family, with the exception of the daughter, Virginia, despite his most strenuous efforts.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was born in Dublin, Ireland and is acknowledged as an influential writer in the genre of gothic and supernatural fiction of the 19th century. Many of his short stories were originally published in various magazines. Here are six of them: “The White Cat of Drumgonnial”, “Dickon the Devil”, “The Drunkard's Dream”, “The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts”, “The Vision of Tom Chuff”, and “An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House”.