Synopses & Reviews
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by award-winning director Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toros favorites, from Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Ray Russells short story Sardonicus,” considered by Stephen King to be perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written,” to Shirley Jacksons The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. Featuring original cover art by Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, these stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.
Haunted Castles
Haunted Castles is the definitve, complete collection of Ray Russell's masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of "Sardonicus," "Sanguinarius," and "Sagittarius." The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile. Engrossing, grotesque, perverted, and completely entrancing, Russell's Gothic tales are the best kind of dreadful.
Review
Praise for Penguin Horror Classics:
“The new Penguin Horror editions, selected by Guillermo del Toro, feature some of the best art-direction (by Paul Buckley) I've seen in a cover in quite some time.” - Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
"Each cover does a pretty spectacular job of evoking the mood of the title in bold, screenprint-style iconography." - Dan Solomon, Fast Company
Review
"Russell links postpulp literature and the Grand Guignol tradition with the modern sensibilities of America in the 1960s. Within him resides a neo-paganistic streak that is passed from Algernon Blackwood and Sax Rohmer to him and other writers of unusual proclivities, such as Bernard J. Hurwood. A fascinating combination of the liberal and the heretic... Russell is the literary equivalent of the Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, a supersaturated neo-Gothiscist who shines above the premises of his material based on style, conviction, and artistic flair." - Guillermo del Toro, from the introduction
Review
“Charles Beaumont was one of
the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre.” —Dean Koontz
“The name of Charles Beaumont will be honored and recognized for generations yet to come.” —Robert Bloch
Synopsis
The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer
It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zonefor his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumonts finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumonts hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.
About the Author
RAY RUSSELL was born in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, and served in the United States Air Force during World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music and eventually joined the editorial staff at
Playboy, helping turn the magazine into a showcase for imaginative fiction. At
Playboy, Russell published such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Robert Bloch, and Charles Beaumont, while also editing many of the bestselling
Playboy anthologies, including
The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and the
Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural. His first novel,
The Case Against Satan, will appear in Penguin Classics in 2014, and his best known work, "Sardonicus," was called by Stephen King "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written. His work also included publications in
The Paris Review and several screenplays, including
Mr. Sardonicus,
The Horror of it All, and
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Russell received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991. He passed away in Los Angeles in 1999.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer. He both cofounded the Guadalajara International Film Festival and formed his own production companythe Tequila Gang. However, he is most recognized for his Academy Award-winning film, Pans Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received Nebula and Hugo awards, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction.