A spine-chilling collection of horror tales.

Pamphlet on Edgar Allan Poe (4 p.) laid in.

A glorious title from classic Marvel history returns, for a suitably suspenseful tale springing from the pages of Secret Empire! The Black Widow is dead...but someone out there is killing her old enemies one by one. With a broken heart and a bloody trail to follow, Clint Barton - the Avenger known as Hawkeye - is looking for answers. And the only person alive who may have them is another of Natasha Romanoff 's ex-boyfriends - Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier! Can Clint and Bucky trust each other long enough to honor the Black Widow's legacy, and unravel the web of mysteries that Natasha Romanoff left behind? COLLECTING: TALES OF SUSPENSE 100-104

High interest-low vocabulary books.

A new selection for the NEA’s Big Read program A compact selection of Poe’s greatest stories and poems, chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts for their Big Read program. This selection of eleven stories and seven poems contains such famously chilling masterpieces of the storyteller’s art as “The Tell-tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and such unforgettable poems as “The Raven,” “The Bells,” and “Annabel Lee.” Poe is widely credited with pioneering the detective story, represented here by “The Purloined Letter,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Also included is his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he lays out his theory of how good writers write, describing how he constructed “The Raven” as an example.

Dark, brilliant fiction from the New York Times-bestselling author: “Oates’ spookiness is visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.”―Booklist In the title story of her taut new fiction collection, Joyce Carol Oates writes: Life was not of the surface like the glossy skin of an apple, but deep inside the fruit where seeds are harbored. There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself—as demonstrated in these six stories. One tale opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In “The Long-Legged Girl,” an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgwood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband’s latest conquest? In “The Sign of the Beast,” when a former Sunday school teacher’s corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder—but is he really responsible? And another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in “Night-Gaunts,” a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft. “Consummately well-written, stylistically dashing...forthrightly nightmarish.”―Kirkus Reviews

Collecting the complete early adventures, solo series and rare graphic novel appearances of the Black Widow! From her debut as a Russian spy through her early days with the Avengers and her character-defining solo series, the story of Natasha Romanoff is one of comics' most captivating. She evolves from villain to teammate and finally into a hero all her own. She plays the spy game and fights in the dark corners of the Marvel Universe. And not one of her foes will soon forget the sting of the Black Widow! COLLECTING: TALES OF SUSPENSE (1959) 52-53, 57, 60, 64; AVENGERS (1963) 29-30, 36-37, 43-44; AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1963) 86; AMAZING ADVENTURES (1970) 1-8; DAREDEVIL (1964) 81; BIZARRE ADVENTURES (1981) 25; MARVEL FANFARE (1982) 10-13; SOLO AVENGERS (1987) 7; BLACK WIDOW: COLDEST WAR (1990); PUNISHER/BLACK WIDOW: SPINNING DOOMSDAY'S WEB (1992); DAREDEVIL/BLACK WIDOW: ABATTOIR (1993); MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS (1988) 135; DAREDEVIL ANNUAL (1967) 10; FURY/BLACK WIDOW: DEATH DUTY (1995); JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (1951) 517-519; MATERIAL FROM AVENGERS (1963) 16, 32- 33, 38-39, 41-42, 45-47, 57, 63-64, 76

Before Steve Ditko revolutionized comic book super-heroes with the Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, he applied his incomparable storytelling mastery to taught suspense-thrillers. These chilling stories were cast with nervous-eyed dreamers and sweaty-palmed schemers, none of whom make it out with getting theirs. They were parables of wrenching psychological tension, expressed by one of comic book's most unique creative minds, and they will leave you curled up and screaming for more-whether you like it or not! Marvel is honored to collect Ditko's complete stories of suspense in two beautifully restored Omnibus volumes. From his very fi rst Marvel work in 1956 through to his last five-page masterpiece, every iconic Silver Age Ditko short is collected in these incomparable Omnibus editions. COLLECTING: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (1952) 33, 38, 50-73, STRANGE TALES (1951) 46, 50, 67-91, TALES TO ASTONISH (1959) 1-26, TALES OF SUSPENSE (1959) 1-15, 17-24, STRANGE WORLDS (1958) 1-5, WORLD OF FANTASY(1956) 16-19, AMAZING ADVENTURES (1961) 1-6, JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS (1950) 45, 51, MYSTERY TALES (1950) 40, 45, 47, TWO-GUN WESTERN (1956) 4, WORLD OF SUSPENSE (1956) 2, MARVEL TALES (1949) 147, SPELLBOUND (1952) 29, STRANGE TALES OF THE UNUSUAL (1955) 5, ASTONISHING (1951) 53, WORLD OF MYSTERY (1956) 3, 6, BATTLE (1951) 63, GUNSMOKE WESTERN (1955) 66

Mystery and terror lurk in the pages of these great suspense tales written by some of the masters of the short story during the last hundred years.

Seven tales of terror in a collection of scary stories.