Del Toro’s Horror Fiction Favorites

American Supernatural TalesPenguin is bringing out a new edition of American Supernatural Tales edited by S. T. Joshi, whose vast resume includes editing the recently published Nolan on Bradbury.

American Supernatural Tales covers two centuries of weird and frightening American short fiction by Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stephen King.

The collection, which first appeared in 2007, is projected as part of a six-volume series of the best in classic horror curated by Guillermo del Toro.

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.

The series is due in September. The other titles are:

The Raven
Tales and Poems
Edgar Allan Poe, Guillermo del Toro

The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Laura Miller

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories
H. P. Lovecraft, Guillermo del Toro, S. T. Joshi

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, Guillermo del Toro, Elizabeth Kostova

Haunted Castles
Ray Russell, Guillermo del Toro

The volumes feature original cover art by Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley.

 [Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

10 thoughts on “Del Toro’s Horror Fiction Favorites

  1. Did you take those listings from Amazon, or something like that? Because it commits Amazon’s worst sin. Notice how the name listings run authors and editors together indiscriminately? Anyone who didn’t already know that “The Haunting of Hill House” is a novel by Shirley Jackson wouldn’t be able to tell from this listing that the other names’ roles are distinctly subsidiary. As a library cataloger, whose job is to maintain such distinctions, I hate that confusing, unhelpful, sloppy, indiscriminate lumping. At least the publisher’s pages to which you link gives the distinctions.

  2. Happy morning to you, too. You clicked through so you already know these listings came from Penguin. But feel free to drop by and give Amazon a slap anytime the urge strikes you. They certainly deserve it.

  3. No, I didn’t already know the listings came from Penguin. Penguin didn’t give the listings in that format. Someone decided to replace intelligent distinctions with dumb lumping, and I’d be sorry if it was you.

  4. When I wrote, “Penguin didn’t give the listings in that format,” I meant on the Penguin pages that you linked to in the post. All you’re proving now is that you chose to take the formatting in your post from the badly-formatted Penguin page that you didn’t link to rather than from the well-formatted Penguin pages that you did link to. The source doesn’t make this any less regrettable, especially as you had a better example right in front of you.

    And yes, I blame Amazon, because they pioneered this kind of crappy listing, and now everyone thinks they have to copy them.

  5. Between this and my inability to use commas properly I’m one strike away from the Queen revoking my right to use the English language.

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  6. Sorry, it just got up my professional gore. I imagine you get a lot of that in your professional capacity, too, especially right now.

  7. Books I already own in a different format, most which I have read. The Amazon linkage problem–and associations–often produce an overabundance of lstings. Any introduction by any writer tends to shw up on any inquirey, not just requests for titles by an individual writer.

  8. But I see the covers are a bit different. Who drew them?

    Even as my last comment sounded cranky, I realise it does introduce a new audience to Ray Russell, who not as well known as the others.

  9. T.E.D. Klein and Ray Russell, while vastly different horror writers, definitely need to be introduced to new readers! “Sardonicus” still holds up, and Russell’s novel INCUBUS is an outrageously tasteless pulp-horror treat. Klein’s quiet, carefully composed short fiction from the 1980s is worth reading today as well. Glad to see Del Toro’s going for the lesser-known greats!

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