Scary: books tagged “scary” (2/17) @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9780517530719 (0-517-53071-6, 0517530716)

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Leonard Wolf

ISBN 0517530716 (0-517-53071-6)
Hardcover, Random House Value Pub

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Book summary:

Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]

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The Annotated Frankenstein: ISBN 0517530716 (0-517-53071-6)
Hardcover, Random House Value Pub

ISBN 9780671024239 (0-671-02423-X, 067102423X)

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Bag of Bones

by Stephen King

ISBN 067102423X (0-671-02423-X)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:

No longer content to be the prolific provider of text, King grabs the audio reigns to recount this haunted tale of grief, young love, and otherworldly visits. When 40-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan returns to his lakeside cabin to process his wife's death, he finds the place a beacon for nightmares and ghoulish visits. But there's hope in Kingsville, as this struggling writer falls in love with a young widow named Mattie and her 3-year-old psychic daughter, Kyra. If you've never heard King speak, be warned: 19-plus hours of his western Maine, nasal-drenched tones may be more than some listeners can bear. But there's a certain warmth and believability to King's voice--after all, it's his book and he is a middle-aged bestselling novelist--that jive well with Noonan's character. And since King rarely reads his own work, perhaps his doing so indicates that he's especially pleased with Bag of Bones; most listeners should be as well. (Running time: 19.5 hours, 14 cassettes) --Rob McDonald [via]

More editions of Bag of Bones:

Bag of Bones: ISBN 067102423X (0-671-02423-X)
Softcover, Pocket Books

Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bernie Wrightson

ISBN 0887331939 (0-88733-193-9)
Softcover, Underwood Books

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Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein: ISBN 0887331939 (0-88733-193-9)
Softcover, Underwood Books

Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bernie Wrightson

ISBN 0887331947 (0-88733-194-7)
Hardcover, Underwood Books

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Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus: ISBN 0887331947 (0-88733-194-7)
Hardcover, Underwood Books

ISBN 9780671039721 (0-671-03972-5, 0671039725)

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Carrie

by Stephen King

ISBN 0671039725 (0-671-03972-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:

Why read Carrie? Stephen King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feel as if we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well, if not better, on the page as it does on the screen. Carrie White, bullied by cruel teenagers at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.

News item from the Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966: "Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th."

Although the supernatural pyrotechnics are handled with King's customary aplomb, it is the carefully drawn portrait of the little horrors of small towns, high schools, and adolescent sexuality that give this novel its power and assures its place in the King canon. --Simon Leake [via]

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ISBN 9780681411630 (0-681-41163-5, 0681411635)

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Classics of Horror: Dracula/Frankenstein/2 Books in 1

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram Stoker

ISBN 0681411635 (0-681-41163-5)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr

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Classics of Horror: Dracula/Frankenstein/2 Books in 1: ISBN 0681411635 (0-681-41163-5)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr

ISBN 9780764587269 (0-7645-8726-9, 0764587269)

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Cliffscomplete Shelley's Frankenstein

by Stephen C. Behrendt

ISBN 0764587269 (0-7645-8726-9)
Softcover, Cliff Notes

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Book summary:

In the CliffsComplete guides, the novel's complete text and a glossary appear side-by-side with coordinating numbered lines to help you understand unusual words and phrasing. You'll also find all the commentary and resources of a standard CliffsNotes for Literature.

CliffsComplete Frankenstein is certainly Mary Shelleys greatest literary achievement and one of the most complex literary works of all time. Unlike most Romantic writers, Mary Shelley seems interested in the dark, self-destructive side of human reality and the human soul.

Discover how Dr. Frankensteins creation impacts everyone he meets and save yourself valuable studying time all at once. Enhance your reading of Frankenstein with these additional features:

A summary and insightful commentary for each chapter
Bibliography and historical background on the author, Mary Shelley
A look at the historical context and structure of the novel
Discussions on the novels symbols and themes
A character map that graphically illustrates the relationships among the characters
Review questions, a quiz, discussion topics (essay questions), activity ideas
A ResourceCenter full of books, articles, films, and Internet sites

Streamline your literature study with all-in-one help from CliffsComplete guides!

[via]

More editions of Cliffscomplete Shelley's Frankenstein:

Cliffscomplete Shelley's Frankenstein: ISBN 0764587269 (0-7645-8726-9)
Softcover, Cliff Notes

ISBN 9780451177094 (0-451-17709-6, 0451177096)

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Dolores Claiborne

by Stephen King

ISBN 0451177096 (0-451-17709-6)
Softcover, Signet

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Book summary:

More of a mystery than a horror novel, Dolores Claiborne contains only the briefest glances at the supernatural. The novel presents Stephen King as a writer experimenting with style and narrative, time and perspective. Fans looking for a skin-crawling, page-turning fright or an undead bloodbath will be disappointed, but a patient reader willing to savor King's leisurely study of character and island life will find many rewards. And all of this is not to say that the book is without suspense.

The story unfolds in one continuous chapter, told in the first person by the cranky, 65-year-old housekeeper, Dolores, who is explaining to police officers and a stenographer how and why she killed her husband, Joe, 30 years ago. At the same time, in her rambling monologue, she insists that she did not kill her longtime employer, Vera Donovan--notwithstanding what the residents of Little Tall Island may be whispering. Joe was a drinker, and, as Dolores gradually argues, he deserved to die for the horrifying crimes he committed against his family. But Vera, despite her cantankerous disposition as a lady governing her decaying estate with her precise rules about even the most mundane household chore ("Six pins! Remember to use six pins! Don't you let the wind blow my good sheets down to the corner of the yard!"), was a good woman--or at least not an evil one. She was the woman who hired the young Dolores and kept her on even after Dolores got pregnant again. Dolores cleaned and cared for her even as the old matron faded into senility.

Dolores Claiborne is a rich novel that recalls the regionalist writing of the turn of the century. It is a fine place for a skeptical newcomer--put off by King's reputation for outright terror--to start. And for fans, it is a book that offers new insights into an author who's an old favorite. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

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ISBN 9780743498067 (0-7434-9806-2, 0743498062)

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The Essential Frankenstein

by Leonard Wolf, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Christopher H. Bing

ISBN 0743498062 (0-7434-9806-2)
Softcover, ibooks, Incorporated

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Book summary:

Here is the complete original text of Mary Shelley's classic 1816 novel, fully annotated with thousands of fascinating facts and legends. Includes: background on the Romantic spirit that infuses the novel; commentary by leading contemporary writers; a selected filmography of major Frankenstein films; and dozens of illustrations. [via]

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The Essential Frankenstein: ISBN 0743498062 (0-7434-9806-2)
Softcover, ibooks, Incorporated

ISBN 9780452269682 (0-452-26968-7, 0452269687)

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The Essential Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Leonard Wolf, Christopher Bing

ISBN 0452269687 (0-452-26968-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Horror expert Wolf's sublime edition of this literary masterpiece features in-depth and extensive notes on all the novel's most interesting aspects, plus biographical information revealing how Mary Shelley's turbulent personal life influenced her work. Beautifully illustrated with original line drawings. [via]

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The Essential Frankenstein: ISBN 0452269687 (0-452-26968-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

The Essential Frankenstein

by Robert Jameson

ISBN 0517069741 (0-517-06974-1)
Hardcover, Random House Value Pub

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The Essential Frankenstein: ISBN 0517069741 (0-517-06974-1)
Hardcover, Random House Value Pub

ISBN 9780618130979 (0-618-13097-7, 0618130977)

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Fast Food Nation

by Eric Schlosser

ISBN 0618130977 (0-618-13097-7)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div

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Book summary:

On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.

Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed [via]

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Fast Food Nation: ISBN 0618130977 (0-618-13097-7)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div

Firestarter

by Stephen King

ISBN 0881037257 (0-88103-725-7)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:

Mass market paperback. [via]

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ISBN 9780451527714 (0-451-52771-2, 0451527712)

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Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Walter James Miller

ISBN 0451527712 (0-451-52771-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]

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ISBN 9780791078822 (0-7910-7882-5, 0791078825)

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Frankenstein

by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791078825 (0-7910-7882-5)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Frankenstein: ISBN 0791078825 (0-7910-7882-5)
Hardcover, Facts on File

ISBN 9780451523365 (0-451-52336-9, 0451523369)

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Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 0451523369 (0-451-52336-9)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]

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Frankenstein, Stage 3

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, John Turvey, Per Dahlberg

ISBN 0582541549 (0-582-54154-9)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley

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Frankenstein, Stage 3: ISBN 0582541549 (0-582-54154-9)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley

ISBN 9780451523631 (0-451-52363-6, 0451523636)

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Frankenstein/Dracula/Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram Stoker

ISBN 0451523636 (0-451-52363-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Three horror classicswith an introduction by Stephen King

Some of literatures most popular and enduring horror icons in one indispensable tome.

@NotoriousDOC Just did a bit-torrent-style grave robbery. My new man will be an artful collage. Also, good conversation starter.

Its alive! Id better beat it over the head repeatedly with a fire extinguisher.

So sometimes you build something, and it gets away. Theyre gonna can me at the university if they find out about this.

From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

[via]

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Frankenstein/Dracula/Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: ISBN 0451523636 (0-451-52363-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780877547464 (0-87754-746-7, 0877547467)

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 0877547467 (0-87754-746-7)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:

Mary Shelley?s Frankenstein is remembered as a novel valuable in itself and prophetic of an intellectual world to come. It is seen as depicting a Prometheanism that is still with us. In this text noted critics examine subjects surrounding the novel such as creation as catastrophe, Frankenstein as the negative Oedipus, and a piece by Joyce Carol Oates on Frankenstein?s fallen angel.

The title, Mary Wollsonecraft Shelleys Frankenstein, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Mary Wollsonecraft Shelleys Frankenstein through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Mary Wollsonecraft Shelley, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: ISBN 0877547467 (0-87754-746-7)
Hardcover, Facts on File

Needful Things

by Stephen King

ISBN 0451172817 (0-451-17281-7)
Softcover, Signet

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Book summary:

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Leland Gaunt probes the limits of people's desires when he moves to Castle Rock, Maine; opens his shop, Needful Things; and sets a high price on love, hope, and the human soul. [via]

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Night Shift

by Stephen King

ISBN 0816156875 (0-8161-5687-5)
Hardcover, G K Hall & Co

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Night Shift: ISBN 0816156875 (0-8161-5687-5)
Hardcover, G K Hall & Co

ISBN 9780525945567 (0-525-94556-3, 0525945563)

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Red Dragon

by Thomas Harris

ISBN 0525945563 (0-525-94556-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this legendary horror novel, which is even better than its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. As in Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose.

The sleuth, Will Graham, actually quit the FBI after nearly getting killed by Lecter while nabbing him, but fear isn't what bugs him about crime busting. It's just too creepy to get inside a killer's twisted mind. But he comes back to stop a madman who's been butchering entire families. The FBI needs Graham's insight, and Graham needs Lecter's genius. But Lecter is a clever fiend, and he manipulates both Graham and the killer at large from his cell.

That killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film lab, where he picks his victims by studying their home movies. He's obsessed with William Blake's bizarre painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, believing there's a red dragon within him, the personification of his demonic drives. Flashbacks to Dolarhyde's terrifying childhood and superb stream-of-consciousness prose get us right there inside his head. When Dolarhyde does weird things, we understand why. We sympathize when the voice of the cruel dead grandma who raised and crazed him urges him to mayhem--she's way scarier than that old bat in Psycho. When he falls in love with a blind girl at the lab, we hope he doesn't give in to Grandma's violent advice.

This book is awesomely detailed, ingeniously plotted, judiciously gory, and fantastically imagined. If you haven't read it, you've never had the creeps. --Tim Appelo [via]

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Rosemary's Baby

by Ira Levin

ISBN 0451194004 (0-451-19400-4)
Softcover, Signet

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ISBN 9780739326923 (0-7393-2692-9, 0739326929)

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The Ruins

by Scott Smith

ISBN 0739326929 (0-7393-2692-9)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print

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Book summary:

In 1993, Scott Smith wowed readers with A Simple Plan, his stunning debut thriller about what happens when three men find a wrecked plane and bag stuffed with over 4 million dollars--a book that Stephen King called "Simply the best suspense novel of the year!" Now, thirteen years after writing a novel that turned into a pretty great movie featuring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, Smith is back, with The Ruins, a horror-thriller about four Americans traveling in Mexico who stumble across a nightmare in the jungle. Who better to tell readers if Smith has done it again than the undisputed King of Horror (and champion of Smith's first book)? We asked Stephen King to read The Ruins and give us his take. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham

Guest Reviewer: Stephen King

Stephen King is the author of too many bestselling books to name here, but some of our favorites include: Cell, The Stand, On Writing, The Shining, and the entire Dark Tower series. King also received the National Book Foundation 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, has had many movies and television miniseries adapted from his novels, short stories, and screenplays, and is a regular columnist for Entertainment Weekly. Keep your eyes peeled for Lisey's Story (October 2006), a new television series on TNT based on Nightmares & Dreamscapes (July 2007), and a graphic novel series based on the Dark Tower books coming from Marvel (2007).

When I heard that Scott Smith was publishing a new novel this summer, I felt the way I did when my kids came in an hour or two late from their weekend dates: a combination of welcoming relief (thank God you're back) mingled with exasperation and anger (where the hell have you been?). Well, it's only a book, you say, and maybe that's true, but Scott Smith is a singularly gifted writer, and it seems to me that the twelve years between his debut--the cult smash A Simple Plan--and his return this summer with The Ruins is cause for exasperation, if not outright anger. Certainly Smith, who has been invisible save for his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the film version of A Simple Plan, will have some 'splainin to do about how he spent his summer vacation. Make that his last twelve summer vacations.

But enough. The new book is here, and the question devotees of A Simple Plan will want answered is whether or not this book generates anything like Plan's harrowing suspense. The answer is yes. The Ruins is going to be America's literary shock-show this summer, doing for vacations in Mexico what Jaws did for beach weekends on Long Island. Is it as successful and fulfilling as a novel? The answer is not quite, but I can live with that, because it's riskier. There will be reviews of this book by critics who have little liking or understanding for popular fiction who'll dismiss it as nothing but a short story that has been bloated to novel length (I'm thinking of Michiko Kakutani, for instance, who microwaved Smith's first book). These critics, who steadfastly grant pop fiction no virtue but raw plot, will miss the dazzle of Smith's technique; The Ruins is the equivalent of a triple axel that just misses perfection because something's wrong with the final spin.

It's hard to say much about the book without giving away everything, because the thing is as simple and deadly as a leg-hold trap concealed in a drift of leaves&or, in this case, a mass of vines. You've got four young American tourists--Eric, Jeff, Amy, and Stacy--in Cancun. They make friends with a German named Mathias whose brother has gone off into the jungle with some archeologists. These five, plus a cheerful Greek with no English (but a plentiful supply of tequila), head up a jungle trail to find Mathias's brother&the archaeologists&and the ruins.

Well, two out of three ain't bad, according to the old saying, and in this case; what's waiting in the jungle isn't just bad, it's horrible. Most of The Ruins's 300-plus pages is one long, screaming close-up of that horror. There's no let-up, not so much as a chapter-break where you can catch your breath. I felt that The Ruins did draw on a trifle, but I found Scott Smith's refusal to look away heroic, just as I did in A Simple Plan. It's the trappings of horror and suspense that will make the book a best seller, but its claim to literature lies in its unflinching naturalism. It's no Heart of Darkness, but at its suffocating, terrifying, claustrophobic best, it made me think of Frank Norris. Not a bad comparison, at that.

One only hopes Mr. Smith won't stay away so long next time.--Stephen King

[via]

More editions of The Ruins:

The Ruins: ISBN 0739326929 (0-7393-2692-9)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print

ISBN 9780671039745 (0-671-03974-1, 0671039741)

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Salems Lot

by Stephen King

ISBN 0671039741 (0-671-03974-1)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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Book summary:

Stephen King's second book, 'Salem's Lot (1975)--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil.

Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel, 'Salem's Lot is great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In 'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light." Sounds quite a bit like the idea behind his 1998 novel of a Maine hamlet haunted by unsightly secrets, Bag of Bones. --Fiona Webster [via]

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books tagged “scary”

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