Haunted Castles

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Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by award-winning director Guillermo del ToroFilmmaker 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 Toro’s favorites, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ray Russell’s short story “Sardonicus,” considered by Stephen King to be “perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written,” to Shirley Jackson’s 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 CastlesHaunted 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.Dear B&N customer, I'm very pleased to share with you, Penguin Horror, a series I have curated that features canonical works by authors who have been formative to my life as a reader and who have inspired my creative and artistic endeavors through my whole career.For me, a lifelong passion for classic horror began partly with reading Penguin Books in English, and one of my earliest loves, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the purest of parables, brought a sense of familiarity and comfort to an awkward adolescent boy growing up in Mexico, who felt, in some sense, a bond with the Creature himself.The discovery of the horror tale as a young child was fortuitous and, in many ways, it served the same purpose as fairy tales did in my childhood. Internal conflicts are externalized and played out as we enter the worlds written by Mary Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft in a similar manner that they are when we read the Grimms or Hans Christian Andersen or Oscar Wilde. These tales allow us to articulate our anxieties and fears in absolute safety. And, just as the fairy tale, the horror tale can serve as both a liberating or repressive social tool, and remains always an accurate mirror to the social climate of its time.These works of literature collected here in Penguin Horror by masters of the genre including perennial favorites like Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and an author that I trust will be a revelation to new generations of horror lovers: Ray Russell. These titles go hand-in-hand with a collection of classic supernatural short stories from Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and many others, selected by a true scholar of the Genre: S.T. Joshi. This collection provides new readers with an opportunity to inhabit the haunted castles of our minds, and to look deeply into those dark mirrors that reflect all that we fear.For to learn what we fear is to learn who we are.Sincerely,Guillermo del Toro