The Light Has Been Broken: 560+ Macabre Classics, Supernatural Mysteries & Dark Tales : The Mark of the Beast, The Ghost Pirates, The Vampyre, Sweeney Todd, The Sleepy Hollow…

The Light Has Been Broken: 560+ Macabre Classics, Supernatural Mysteries & Dark Tales offers a sweeping panorama of the eerie, the Gothic, and the supernatural as conceptualized across centuries and continents. This anthology not only showcases a remarkable diversity in literary styles but also traces the evolution of horror and mystery through its most transformative periods. From the haunting melancholy of Gothic romance to the sharp twists of psychological horror, the collection brings together an astonishing array of voices to chart the depths of human fear and fascination with the unknown. Standout pieces capture the quintessence of their era's anxieties and delights, making the collection a treasure trove for enthusiasts of dark literature. The contributing authors and editors, hailing from varied cultural and historical backgrounds, collectively paint a rich tableau of the human experience with the macabre. Figures such as Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft stand shoulder to shoulder with lesser-known luminaries, offering readers a comprehensive view of the literary movements that have shaped the genre. The anthology aligns with key periods in literary history, including the Romantic fascination with the sublime and the Victorian obsession with the supernatural, while also reaching into the existential depths explored by modern writers. This diverse assembly enriches the anthology, allowing it to act as a gateway into the complex interplay of societal fears, historical events, and the perennial allure of the unknown. The Light Has Been Broken is a must-read for anyone intrigued by the shadows that lurk just beyond the reach of the candlelight. It offers a unique opportunity to explore an unmatched breadth of dark themes, from the whispers of the past that have shaped the genre to the chilling echoes that resonate in contemporary literature. Scholars and casual readers alike will find value in its pages, making it an indispensable addition to any collection. Whether as an academic resource or a source of thrilling escapades, this anthology promises to engage, enlighten, and entertain, inviting readers to partake in a centuries-spanning dialogue about what truly haunts the human soul.

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2404 books
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
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Mark Twain
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, left school at age 12. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher, which furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity and the perfect grasp of local customs and speech manifested in his writing. It wasn't until The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce. Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more cynical and pessimistic. Though his fame continued to widen--Yale and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees--he spent his last years in gloom and desperation, but he lives on in American letters as "the Lincoln of our literature."
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) was an American abolitionist and author of more than 20 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a realistic account of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom.
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1181 books
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 and died on the 30th November 1900. He was an Irish playwright, poet, and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest.
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946 books
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850, changing his second name to ‘Louis’ at the age of eighteen. He has always been loved and admired by countless readers and critics for ‘the excitement, the fierce joy, the delight in strangeness, the pleasure in deep and dark adventures’ found in his classic stories and, without doubt, he created some of the most horribly unforgettable characters in literature and, above all, Mr. Edward Hyde.
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1639 books
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, and critic. Best known for his macabre prose work, including the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” his writing has influenced literature in the United States and around the world.
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648 books
Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker was born November 8, 1847, in Dublin, Ireland. Stoker was a sickly child who was frequently bedridden; his mother entertained him by telling frightening stories and fables during his bouts of illness. Stoker studied math at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1867. He worked as a civil servant, freelance journalist, drama critic, editor and, most notably, as manager of the Lyceum Theatre. Although best known for Dracula, Stoker wrote eighteen other books, including Under the Sunset, The Snake’s Pass, The Jewel of Seven Stars, The Lady of the Shroud, and The Lair of the White Worm. He died in 1912 at the age of sixty-four.
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656 books
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sister authors. Her novels are considered masterpieces of English literature – the most famous of which is Jane Eyre.
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Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights. The novel’s violence and passion shocked the Victorian public and led to the belief that it was written by a man. Although Emily died young (at the age of 30), her sole complete work is now considered a masterpiece of English literature.
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Jack London
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Henry James
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.
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1254 books
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion—which observe and critique the British gentry of the late eighteenth century. Her mastery of wit, irony, and social commentary made her a beloved and acclaimed author in her lifetime, a distinction she still enjoys today around the world.
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631 books
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.
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754 books
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe was born at the beginning of a period of history known as the English Restoration, so-named because it was when King Charles II restored the monarchy to England following the English Civil War and the brief dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. Defoe’s contemporaries included Isaac Newton and Samuel Pepys.
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Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. One of the most revered writers in recent history, many of his works are deemed classic literature. To this day, he maintains an avid following and reputation as one of the greatest storytellers of the past two centuries. In 1907, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1936, but his stories live on—even eighty years after his passing.
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Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) began his literary career writing articles and short stories for Dickens' periodicals. He published a biography of his father and a number of plays, but his reputation rests on his novels. Collins is well known for his mystery, suspense, and crime writings. He is best known for his novels in the emerging genres of Sensation and Detective fiction.
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H. G. Wells
English author H. G. Wells is best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics, and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games. He was born on September 21, 1866, and died on August 13, 1946.
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Robert W. Chambers
Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) was an American writer of novels and short stories in the genres of weird fiction, horror, science-fiction, fantasy, and romantic fiction. He is best known for The King in Yellow, a short story collection published in 1895.
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Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859–1927) was an English writer, essayist and humorist. His most famous work is the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat.
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H. P. Lovecraft
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Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), was a Canadian author best known for her series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, which was an immediate success. The first novel was followed by a series of sequels with Anne as the central character. Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as 500 short stories and poems. She was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada.
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Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was born to well-known parents: author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin. When Mary was sixteen, she met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a devotee of her father’s teachings. In 1816, the two of them travelled to Geneva to stay with Lord Byron. One evening, while they shared ghost stories, Lord Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story of their own. Frankenstein was Mary’s contribution. Other works of hers include Mathilda, The Last Man, and The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.
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The Light Has Been Broken: 560+ Macabre Classics, Supernatural Mysteries & Dark Tales : The Mark of the Beast, The Ghost Pirates, The Vampyre, Sweeney Todd, The Sleepy Hollow…

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Hauffs Märchen: Die Karawane (Kalif Storch, der kleine Muck, das Gespensterschiff, die Rettung Fatmes, die abgehauene Hand, der falsche Prinz)

Wilhelm Hauff, Hörbücher für Kinder

Das große Märchenbuch : Die 1000 schönsten Märchen aus aller Welt: Märchen vom Zaren Saltan, Weihnachtsmärchen, Chinesische Märchen, Morgenländische Märchen

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Wilhelm Hauff

Phantastische Geschichten

Tania Blixen, Pierre Boulle, Juan Antonio Zunzunegui, Pu Sung-Ling, Nicolai Gogol, Marcel Ayme, Wilhelm Hauff, Günter Eich, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Rudyard Kippling

Wer hat die schönsten Schäfchen : Gute-Nacht-Geschichten mit Hannelore & Nina Hoger

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Die schönsten Märchen der Romantik : Der Bauer und sein Sohn + Das Märchen von dem Witzenspitzel + Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia + Rotkehlchen und Kohlmeischen + Der Schlangenkönig + Die Geschichte von Hyazinth und Rosenblütchen + Das kalte Herz

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Der Große Deutsche Märchen Schatz : Das Schönste von den Gebrüdern Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen und Wilhelm Hauff Teil 2

Wilhelm Hauff, Hans Christian Andersen, Gebrüder Grimm

Weihnachten : Gedichte und Geschichten

Wilhelm Hauff

Orientalische Märchen: Die große Hörbuch Box : Die schönsten Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht!

Ludwig Bechstein, Wilhelm Hauff

Gruselkabinett, Box 43: Folgen 168, 169, 170, 171

Georges Rodenbach, Per McGraup, Eric Stenbock, Wilhelm Hauff

Gruselkabinett, Box 40: Folgen 157, 158, 159

Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Wilhelm Hauff

Die Sängerin : Ein fesselnder Roman voller Intrigen und Hindernisse, der die Welt der Oper und Musik in lebendige Charaktere und atmosphärische Szenen hüllt

Wilhelm Hauff

Charles Dickens

Mark Twain

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Oscar Wilde

Robert Louis Stevenson

Edgar Allan Poe

Bram Stoker

Charlotte Brontë

Emily Brontë

Jack London

Henry James

Arthur Conan Doyle

Jane Austen

Thomas Hardy

Daniel Defoe

Rudyard Kipling

Washington Irving

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Wilkie Collins

H. G. Wells

Robert W. Chambers

Jerome K. Jerome

H. P. Lovecraft

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Mary Shelley

Elizabeth Gaskell