The Top 10 Short Stories - The 20th Century - Horror: The ten best horror stories written in the 20th century

Written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, M R James and 7 more

Narrated by Mark Rice-Oxley, Garrick Hogan and David Shaw-Parker

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In this volume Horror and its evil intents try to burrow into our heads and cavort around as only demons, monsters, phantoms and ghosts can do. They probably have other partners and friends too. And you, sitting there all alone, and listening….. oh dear.

1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - 20th Century - Horror - An Introduction

2 - The Call of Cthulhu - Part 1 by H P Lovecraft

3 - The Call of Cthulhu - Part 2 by H P Lovecraft

4 - The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle

5 - Lost Hearts by M R James

6 - The Music on the Hill by Saki

7 - The Waxworks by A M Burrage

8 - Caterpillars by E F Benson

9 - The Novel of the White Powder by Arthur Machen

10 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson

11 - August Heat by W F Harvey

12 - For the Blood is the Life by F Marion Crawford

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Nov 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835478165

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.