Showing results by narrator "Walter Zimmerman" in All Categories

The Phantom of the Opera is a Gothic novel, combining romance, horror, mystery, and tragedy. The story is about a mysterious figure who terrorizes a Paris opera house for the unwitting benefit of a young singer he loves.

Known for his wit and sardonic humor, Ambrose Bierce wrote horror with the intensity of Edgar Allan Poe. Many think Bierce outdid Poe in the genre. Included are nine short stories: "The Eyes of the Panther", "A Watcher by the Dead", "The Death of Halpin Frayser", "The Suitable Surroundings", "An Adventure at Brownville", "Moxon's Master", "Mysterious Disappearances", "The Famous Gilson Bequest", and "The Secret of Macarger's Gulch".

Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. As a protégé of Flaubert, his short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless resolution. In Growing Old two middle-aged men discuss their feelings about aging which leads to one telling a heart rending story about young love and its unexpected aftermath.

In this Poe-like tale, set in "an old gray house", a man exacts a bizarre revenge on his unfaithful wife and her lover. This chilling story is one of Balzac's most popular.

Joseph Sheridan LeFanu was one of the major figures of 19th centrury supernaturalism. He helped move supernaturalist fiction away from the Gothic's emphasis on external sources of terror and toward a focus on the effects of terror, thus helping to create the psychological basis for supernaturalist and horror lit that continues today.

In this story, an old witch takes pity on a poor soldier and gives him a box with remarkable powers. As a result, he has many astounding adventures.

Diable - A Dog, first appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine June, 1902. Unlike Buck in The Call of the Wild, this fiercely independent dog was anything but man's best friend. Most thought he was a devil but, as the story says his master Black Leclère was also a devil, "and the twain were well matched."

Honore de Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He was a keen observer of detail and presented in his stories an unfiltered representation of society. He is known for his multi-faceted characters. Even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Christ In Flanders is a story of faith..and a miracle.

Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, published 1899, drew a storm of criticism for its "shocking, morbid, and vulgar" story and quickly went out of print. The novel was not resurrected until the 1950s, when participants in the growing women's movement recognized its importance. Today, The Awakening is among the most-read American novels in colleges and universities and is considered an early example of American realism.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar tells the tale of a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death to see if he can communicate with him after he is dead. While a tale of suspense and horror, it was also, at the time of its publication, a bit of a hoax since it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many took it to be a factual. Poe toyed with this for a while before admitting it was a work of pure fiction.

Leo Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists for such works as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He also wrote a number of outstanding short stories. This is one of his best.

The Four Million was written in 1906 when roughly four million people lived in New York City. It opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only "400" people in New York City who were really worth noticing.

Charles Dickens, like many Victorian writers, loved to write supernatural stories during the Christmas season. The most famous, of course, is A Christmas Carol, but there were many other such stories including, Number One Branch Line: The Signalman, The Trial for Murder, and The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton. This particular story has many parallels to A Christmas Carol but also has many unique feathers.

Pushkin was one of the giants of 19th century Russian literature but, unlike Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, he was most famous for his short stories. The Shot, one of his most anthologized, tells the story of a terrible revenge.

C. Auguste Dupin is a Frenchman who decides to solve the mysterious brutal murder of two women in Paris. Numerous witnesses are quoted in the newspaper as having heard a suspect, though the witnesses each think it was a different language. As the first true detective in fiction, the Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

No one plumbs deeper depths of the psyche than French and Russian authors. This second wide-ranging collection of 19th-century literary masterworks, presented in their entirety, not only entertains, but provides insight into 19th-century mores and the mysteries of human nature.

Machiavelli cut his political teeth during the Renaissance, a time of intense hatred between Italian city states. Machiavelli was a man of action, a devout patriot. He wrote The Prince to describe how a leader could unite Italy and put a stop to the senseless conflict. This edition includes an addenda and Machiavelli's biography of Castruccio Castracani: his archetypal prince.

Raskolnikov, a student in St. Petersburg, murders an old woman, a money-lender, to prove his theory that violence purifies the strong. But no sooner is the deed done than Raskolnikov begins to feel remorse. What follows is one of the greatest psychological studies in world literature.

Guy de Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story as well as one of the form's finest writers. His stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements

When Chadwick Newsome lingers too long in Paris, his mother, a wealthy New England widow, sends her fiancé, Lambert Strether, to fetch him home. Newsome refuses, extending his stay while Strether finds himself lured by the intrigue of Parisian life. Published in 1903, The Ambassadors is regarded as a masterpiece of American fiction for its exceptional structure, its moral significance, and its depiction of the contrasting New and Old World cultures. Henry James considered this his finest novel.