Welcoming the summer with 7 classic and less classic horror books

The summer is here. It is true that this year has taken a little longer to come and I have enjoyed a splendid weather of cool and rain everywhere. But now. Comes the heat, what for me it is synonymous with terror and hell, although I was born on July 5. It will be two or three loooong months of sweat and shelter in the dark and the air conditioners.

But in the end, it is what it touches. And the fact is that I don't like to be scared when I read either, but I admit that sometimes it doesn't hurt and many readers do like it. So to greet the summer, there they go a few horror titles. Revered classics of Stoker, Poe or Stevenson, some horror in Roman Hispania and some mixture of science fiction with atavistic fears.

The Burrow of the White Worm - Bram Stoker

Dracula possibly overshadowed the rest of the work of this Irish writer. But The Burrow of the White Worm has a special hole for me. My first contact with this story was radiophonic And when I read it later, I was just as fascinated. In fact, it has also influenced some of my black stories.

Stoker published it already in 1911, when he was already very ill and with serious financial difficulties that he always had. So it was his last novel because he died the following year. It is said that he wrote it under the influence of drugs and that it is a recreation of the English legend of the Lambton worm. That was the name of a creature half snake and half dragon, who lived hidden in the depths of a well. Stoker brought back these more supernatural and fantastic aspects in addition to incorporating more plots with new intrigue, revenge and romance.

But in the background is the classic fight between good and evil, personified in Adam salton, a wealthy Australian, and Lady Arabella March, his neighbor in another mansion in the middle of the English countryside and a woman as beautiful as mysterious and, ultimately, the seductive but deadly human form of the worm of the title.

In 1988 the British director Ken Russell hizo a movie version quite free with Hugh Grant protagonist.

Snowy hell - Ismael Martínez Biurrun

Written in 2006 was the first novel of this writer and screenwriter from Pamplona. In it he tells us the story of Caelius Rufus, a veteran of the Legion, former scribe in the troops of Pompey the Great. But now Celio lives in a permanent state of terror and on the verge of going crazy. He wants to forget but he also wants to tell what happened to him in Hispania. When he meets another Legion veteran, a survivor of the heinous events he witnessed, he can do so at last.

So we found out what happened in the winter of 75 BC in Hispania, on a break in the fight between Pompey and the rebel Sertorius. We will know the story of the tribune arrays, a man caught between his loyalty to Rome and his Basque origin. In Celio's memories we will attend the mission that Arranes undertakes to the mountains, where he and his men will meet an ancient terror that hides deep in the forest.

Gothic frenzy - Various authors

The Valdemar publishing house is a benchmark in horror literature and in this volume presents us with a selection of 7 stories of the most characteristic authors of the genre of gothic narrative. They are:

  • Maddalena or the Fate of the Florentines, by Horace Walpole.
  • The nymph of the fountain, by William Beckford.
  • The Anaconda, by Matthew G. Lewis.
  • El vampiro, by John W. Polidori.
  • The dice, by Thomas de Quincey.
  • Leixlip Castle, by Charles R. Maturin.
  • The dream, by Mary Shelley.

Invasion of the rats - James Herbert

This English writer worked as singer and later as art director from an advertising agency. In 1977 he decided to dedicate himself to writing entirely. It is known especially for its works dedicated to the horror genre. Several of his novels have been taken to film, television, radio and even the world of video games, like this one.

Mix of science fiction horror novel these animals star, rats, which by a strange mutation, have become monstrous and gigantic beings that feed on human flesh, invade the city of London and devour its inhabitants. And alternating the horror episodes we have the psychological analysis of the characters and their stories, such as those of a homosexual or a prostitute, etc. Its rhythm also leads to a progressive tension that manages to trap the reader.

Olalla - Robert Louis Stevenson

The great Scottish writer is another classic of the genre and Olalla is a horror story published in the Fantastic Stories Collection of 1897The merry men and other tales and fables, that appeared just before The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.

The story belongs to a subgenre very popular during the Victorian period, the Shillingshocker, which, generally, is set within a structure of crime and violence. Its protagonist is a wounded soldier, who travels to Spain to recover. There he meets a mysterious and charming young woman, Olalla, the daughter of his host, and part of a family that hides a abominable secret.

The circle of the wolf - Antonio Calzado

Calzado is a Cordovan author who moves within the historical novel with large doses of fantasy and terror. In this story the main character, Daniel, sees how his marriage ends when his daughter dies. He secludes himself in his solitude until he receives a letter from his cousin Anxo, a civil guard in a Galician village, who offers him a vacation there. Daniel moves into a mansion owned by his great-uncle, whose son was obsessed with lycanthropy. And then, suddenly, a series of murders occur that convulses the life of the town.

Complete stories - Edgar Allan Poe

And how could Master Poe be missing from this selection of horror titles? These Complete stories bring together a total of seventy among which are the most classic such as Manuscript found in a bottle, Berenice, The Plague king, Ligeia, The crimes of the rue Morgue, The devil in the bell tower, The fall of the Usher House, Eleonora, The Well and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Red Death Mask, The Oval Portrait, The Black Cat, The Gold Beetle The barrel of amontillado.


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