Embrace the darkness

Read by Richard Mitchley, Elliot Fitzpatrick, Ghizela Rowe(Unabridged: 16hrs 40mins)

Featuring stories by Franz Kafka, Guy de Maupassant, Nikolai Gogol, Miguel de Cervantes, Leo Tolstoy, Honoré de Balzac, Anton Chekhov & many more

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.

But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?

Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are suddenly upon us in twisted revelation that may thrill, may disturb, but will always engage and help us explore the edge of darkness where some of the very best literature patiently lurks …. waiting …. for the likes of me and you.

1 - Stories From the Shadows - Continental Europe - An Introduction

2 - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka

3 - The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

4 - Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol

5 - The Force of Blood by Miguel de Cervantes

6 - Diary of a Lunatic by Leo Tolstoy

7 - La Grande Breteche by Honoré de Balzac

8 - Vanka by Anton Chekhov

9 - Siegmund Simon by Alfred Lichtenstein

10 - Mateo Falcone by Prosper Merimee

11 - Belphagor by Niccolo Machiavelli

12 - The Devil's Mother-in-Law by Fernan Caballeron

13 - The Devil's Horse by Ion Luca Caragiale

14 - A Red Flower by Vsevolod Garshin

15 - Lucifer by Anatole France

16 - Gentle Breathing by Ivan Bunin

17 - The Murderer by Mikhail Bulgakov

18 - Tomato Sauce by Hanns Heinz Ewers

19 - The Vampire by Jan Neruda

20 - Vampirismus or Aurelia by E T A Hoffman

21 - The Generous Gambler by Charles Baudelaire

22 - The Juniper Tree by The Brothers Grimm

23 - The Spectral Hand by Jean Lorrain

24 - Couching at the Door by D K Broster

25 - The Man on the Bottle by Gustav Meyrink

26 - The Republic of the Southern Cross by Valery Bryusov

27 - The Mouthless by Marcel Schwob

28 - The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller by Gustave Flaubert

29 - The Vision of the Dead Creole by Lafcadio Hearn

30 - Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev

31 - An Unexpected Reunion by Johann Hebel

32 - Wake Not the Dead - Part 1 by Ernst Raupach

33 - Wake Not the Dead - Part 2 by Ernst Raupach