“The Burial of the Rats” is a 1914 short story by master story-teller Bram Stoker. Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1847 – 1912) was an Irish author most famous for his 1897 Gothic novel “Dracula”, a seminal book that continues to influence the vampire genre in print and film to this day. This short, shiver-inducing story is perfect for lovers of the macabre and is not to be missed by fans and collectors of Bram Stoker's bone-chilling horror fiction. Other notable works by this author include: “Miss Betty” (1898), “The Mystery of the Sea” (1902), and “The Jewel of Seven Stars” (1903). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic. Bram Stoker, the master of horror and dark mind behind the most famous vampire novel in history—Dracula—brings us to the edge of our chairs again with a tale of a different variety. Here the horrors are not vampires, nor are they werewolves. Here the horrors are poverty and vicious, snarling rats. A young man finds himself (foolishly) wandering beyond the city walls of 1850s Paris, making his way into the dust piles and garbage gatherings of the paupers. Living among the rags and the war-torn are giant, beady eyed rats. Hideous beasts that clean a dead (or dying) human body down to its skeleton before the flesh is even cold. Add to that a swampy quagmire and some curious psychic insights, and you have a masterful tale of the macabre that is not for the feint of heart.

Bram Stoker is not only the author of Dracula, but he has also written other eleven novels and a collection of short stories. In this essay we analyse these short stories, whose plots will be revealed, to bring to light the characteristics and contradictions of an author who lived the crisis between late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

"The Man" by Bram Stoker is a gothic novel that incorporates elements of horror and romance. It portrays the coming-of-age journey of a young girl named Stephen who grows up in rural England during the 19th Century. The story focuses on Stephen's relationships with her two main love interests and their adventure overseas while delving into the ups and downs of growing up and Stephen's bond with her aunt. The story will leave readers on the edge of their seats with its haunting atmosphere and mysterious characters.

Mason had decided that the rats had to go… they had other plans… (note: very short story!)

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Extraordinary...Sensitive and perceptive, Mr. Hessler is a superb literary archaeologist, one who handles what he sees with a bit of wonder that he gets to watch the history of this grand city unfold, one day at a time.” —Wall Street Journal From the acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones, an intimate excavation of life in one of the world's oldest civilizations at a time of convulsive change Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos. In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter's translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt's homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West's conventional wisdom. Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity--the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time.

Crooken Sands by Bram Stoker is about the life of a London merchant in Crooken Bay in Scotland. Excerpt: "Mr. Arthur Fernlee Markam, who took what was known as the Red House above the Mains of Crooken, was a London merchant, and being essentially a cockney, thought it necessary when he went for the summer holidays to Scotland to provide an entire rig-out as a Highland chieftain, as manifested in chromolithographs and on the music-hall stage. He had once seen in the Empire the Great Prince-"The Bounder King"-bring down the house by appearing as "The MacSlogan of that Ilk," and singing the celebrated Scotch song."

The rat has been described as the shadow of the human: from ancient times through today, it has followed man via routes of commerce and conquest to eventually inhabit nearly every part of the world. Rats have a bad reputation—they spread disease, destroy agricultural produce, and thrive in the darkest corners of human habitation—but they have recently found credibility as a major resource for scientific experimentation. Jonathan Burt here traces the fortunes of the rat in history, myth, and culture. Central to Rat is the history of the relationship between humans and rats and, in particular, the complex human attitudes toward these shrewd creatures. Burt examines why the rat is viewed as more loathsome and verminous than other parasitic animals and considers why humans have had diametrically opposed attitudes about the rat: some cultures greatly admire the rat for its skills, while others consider the rat the scourge of the earth. Burt also draws on a wide range of examples to explore the rat's role in science, culture, and art, from its appearances in children's literature such as The Wind in the Willows to Victorian rat- and dog-baiting pits to its symbolic roles in folklore. Rat offers an intriguing and richly illustrated study of one of nature's most remarkable creatures and ultimately finds that the rat exists as a perverse totem for the worst excesses of human behavior.

Nigel Kneale is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in television fantasy, notably the creation of Quatermass, and his landmark adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 for the BBC. This book is the first in-depth study of another, arguably lesser known but equally as important, Kneale creation: the 1976 Folk Horror anthology television series, Beasts. Each of the six episodes of Beasts was a standalone supernatural drama exploring themes and ideas prevalent throughout Kneale’s work, all within the confines of a lowly British television budget. From pilot episode Murrain to cult favourite Baby, Beasts charted an uncanny British landscape, where the ghost of a dolphin haunts an aquarium and a supermarket is plagued by a mysterious animalistic presence. In researching and writing this book, author Andrew Screen was given rare access to Kneale’s original scripts and production paperwork and provides an exclusive account of Kneale’s trials and tribulations in developing the series. There are also interviews with members of cast and crew, a discussion of episode treatments that were prepared but never realised — and the reasons why Kneale abandoned these at an early stage. Moreover, each storyline is contextualised with real life developments and events, exploring the mythological and cultural inspirations that place the series within its immediate historical framework. Written with full permission from the Kneale estate, THE BOOK OF BEASTS is a comprehensive overview of a cult television series and its enduring impact on viewers today. With a foreword by Johnny Mains.

"Dracula" is the tale of Count Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing. "The Jewel of Seven Stars" tells the tale of Malcolm Ross, a young barrister, pulled into an archaeologist's plot to revive Queen Tera, an ancient Egyptian mummy. "The Man" (The Gates of Life)" is a gothic tale of Stephen, young girl raised as tomboy, and her childhood friend Harold. As many of their close ones die in tragic accidents, through the deaths, Stephen and Harold grow closer. "The Lady of the Shroud" – Rupert Saint Leger inherits his uncle's estate on condition that he lives for a year in his uncle's castle in the Land of the Blue Mountains. One wet night, he is visited in the castle by a pale woman wearing a wet shroud, seeking warmth. He falls in love with her, despite thinking she is a vampire, and he visits the local church where he finds her in a glass-topped stone coffin in the crypt. "The Lair of the White Worm (The Garden of Evil)" – Adam Salton from Australia is contacted by his great-uncle Richard from England in order to establish a relationship. Adam travels to England and quickly finds himself at the centre of mysterious and inexplicable occurrences. "Dracula's Guest & Other Weird Stories" is a collection of nine macabre and gothic tales in which paintings come to life, rats run amok and many other twisted things occur: Dracula's Guest The Judge's House The Squaw The Secret of the Growing Gold A Gipsy Prophecy The Coming of Abel Behenna The Burial of the Rats A Dream of Red Hands Crooken Sands