Great Short Tales of Mystery and Terror

The Editors of Reader's Digest have a knack for bringing together compelling stories. Their collection, Great Short Tales of Mystery and Terror, showcases their skill in curating thrilling and suspenseful reads. They're your go-to for engaging short fiction.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, most noted for creating the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and writing stories about him which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy...

Cecil Scott Forester, an Englishman, was born in Cairo in 1899, the son of a British army officer. He was educated in London, and for a time he studied medicine. After a World War I stint in the infantry, however, he decided to be a poet. This was a shortlived pursuit and he soon turned to biography and fiction. He then wrote many best-selling novels—African Queen and The General among them—before he wrote the first of his Hornblower stories in 1937. That first book was Beat to Quarters, chronol...

Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer, known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Source: [Shirley Jackson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson) on Wikipedia.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in...

Evelyn Waugh is the author of Antología de la literatura fantástica, a collection that explores the world of fantasy literature. This anthology showcases Waugh's interest in imaginative and speculative storytelling.

Guy de Maupassant, né le 5 août 1850 au château de Miromesnil près de Tourville-sur-Arques (France) et mort le 6 juillet 1893 dans le 16e arrondissement de Paris, est un écrivain et journaliste littéraire français. Lié à Gustave Flaubert et à Émile Zola, Maupassant a marqué la littérature française par ses six romans, dont Une vie en 1883, Bel-Ami en 1885, Pierre et Jean en 1887-1888, et surtout par ses nouvelles (parfois intitulées contes) comme Boule de Suif en 1880, les *Contes de la...

John Russell is the author of Great Short Tales of Mystery and Terror. He's a writer who knows how to spin a good yarn in the mystery and terror genres. If you like a good scare, his stories are worth checking out.

Born and brought up in England during the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods, Algernon Henry Blackwood spent his early adult life in a variety of occupations in Canada and the U.S.A. before returning to England (<a href=http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood>Wikipedia</a>). He was a lifelong bachelor. His fascination with the supernatural and mysticism was reflected in many of his writings, which influenced numerous 20th century science fiction and fantasy writers.

John Collier is the author of the collection Short Stories from the New Yorker. His work often explores dark humor and the uncanny.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist.

Truman Capote was an American writer, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel".

An English poet.

Montague Rhodes James (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936) was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–18), and of Eton College (1918–36). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–15). Though James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some regard as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the forma...

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Born in north Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian parents, Dahl served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent. He rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. His short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, often very dark h...

Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. His more than five hundred published works -- short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse -- exemplify the American imagination at its most creative. Once read, his words are never forgotten. His best-known and most beloved books, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, are masterworks that readers carry wi...

Leslie Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin in Singapore, the son of a Chinese physician father and an English mother. He started writing in childhood, creating his own magazine with articles, short stories, poetry, editorials, serials, comic strip. In 1926, he legally changed his last name to Charteris. He wrote his first book, X Esquire (1927), as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge. When it was accepted for publication, he left university to became a professional writer. He...

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett was born in Ireland, the first son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany and Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Ernle-Erle-Drax. He spent his childhood at several family properties, including Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent, Dunsany Castle in County Meath, as wells as other family homes such as in London. His schooling was at Cheam, Eton and finally Sandhurst, which he entered in 1896. He became the 18th Baron of Dunsany when his father died in 1...

Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel (David) Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay (October 20, 1905–September 3, 1982) and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee (January 11, 1905–April 3, 1971), to write detective fiction. In a successful series of novels that covered 42 years, Ellery Queen served as both author's name and that of the detective-hero. Movies, radio shows, and television shows have b...

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist.

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon était un écrivain belge. Auteur prolifique, il a publié près de 200 romans et de nombreuses nouvelles. Il est surtout connu pour avoir créé le roman policier Maigret. ---------- Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.^[1][1] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Simenon

Robert Albert Bloch was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of German-Jewish Americans. During the 1930s, he was an avid reader of Weird Tales magazine and H. P. Lovecraft in particular. He wrote to Lovecraft, who responded with advice on writing, and Bloch sold his first published short story, "The Feast in the Abbey" to Weird Tales when he was just seventeen. He continued to write for Weird Tales and went on to become one of its most popular authors, while also contributing to other magazine...

Stanley Ellin is the editor of The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, a collection that showcases some of the best crime and mystery fiction. He has a keen eye for what makes a great suspenseful story.

Herbert George Wells was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary.

Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 – March 11, 1970) was a prolific American author. A former lawyer, he is best known for the Perry Mason series of legal detective stories, but he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces and also a series of nonfiction books, mostly narrations of his travels through Baja California and other regions in Mexico. The best-selling American author of the 20th century at the time of his death, Gardner also published under numerous pseudonyms, including A. A...

Saki was the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, also known as H. H. Munro, a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays,...

Daphne du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907 in London, England, United Kingdom, the second of three daughters of Muriel Beaumont, an actress and maternal niece of William Comyns Beaumont, and Sir Gerald du Maurier, the prominent actor-manager, son of the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the novel Trilby. She was also the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J.M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan, or The...

Full name Sydney Thomas Burke

A Canadian/British writer of novels and short stories (<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Barr_(writer)>Wikipedia</a>). Born in Scotland, he went with his parents to Canada when he was four, taught and did some writing in Canada until he emigrated to England in 1881 where he did most of his writing and was associated with, inter alia, <a href=http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL215610A>Jerome K. Jerome</a> and Sir <a href=http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL2623297A>Arthur Conan Doyle</a>.

John Dickson Carr was a very highly regarded American mystery writer, though he lived for most of the '30s and '40s in England, married there and set many of his books there (<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dickson_Carr>Wikipedia</a>). His two main detectives, Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, were very English (<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dickson_Carr#Dr._Fell_and_Sir_Henry_Merrivale>Wikipedia</a>).

André Maurois (born Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog; 26 July 1885 – 9 October 1967) was a French author.

Richard Middleton is the author of Great Short Tales of Mystery and Terror. He's a writer who knows how to craft a chilling story. If you enjoy a good scare, his work is definitely worth checking out.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. He then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association, and in 1913 wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fi...

Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley.

Gilbert Highet brought us the chilling "Great Short Tales of Mystery and Terror." He was a scholar who knew how to pick a good spine-tingling story. If you like a good scare, his collections are worth a look.

Alfred McLelland Burrage was a British writer. He was noted in his time as an author of fiction for boys which he published under the pseudonym Frank Lelland, including a popular series called "Tufty". After his death, however, Burrage became best known for his ghost stories. - Wikipedia

A British author and journalist. IAN FLEMING, creator of the world's best-known secret agent, was consultant on foreign affairs to the London Sunday Times. In all, he wrote thirteen James Bond novels. The twelfth, You Only Live Twice, is published in hardcover by New American Library; the thirteenth, The Man with the Golden Gun, was published in the spring of 1965. Mr. Fleming died August 12, 1964, at the age of fifty-six.

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton was a prominent and prolific American author. Many of her novels are set in her home state of California. Her bestseller Black Oxen (1923) was made into a silent movie of the same name. In addition to novels, she wrote short stories, essays, and articles for magazines and newspapers on such issues as feminism, politics, and war. [Wikipedia]

Carl Stephenson is the author behind Prentice Hall Literature -- Platinum. He's a familiar name in educational literature, bringing his expertise to students.

William Wymark Jacobs Born in Wapping, Middlesex, England, UK

George Hitchcock is the editor behind the collection Great Short Tales of Mystery and Terror. He has a knack for bringing together chilling stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you enjoy a good scare, his curated collections are a solid choice.

William Hope Hodgson (15 November 1877 – 19 April 1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Hodgson used his experiences at sea to lend authentic detail to his short horror stories, many of which are set on the ocean, including his series of linked tales forming the "Sargasso Sea Stories". His novels, such as *The House on the Borderl...

Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works (particularly the Archer novels) have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction. Brought up in the pr...

Rudyard Kipling was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, in British India, he is best known for his works of fiction "[The Jungle Book][1]" (1894). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature. ([Source][2]) [1]: /works/OL15400121W/ [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling