The Beetle
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"A fun new way to encounter the spine-tinglers of yesteryear." —Booklist
A horror classic for the modern reader, presented by the Horror Writers Association.
Rediscover the classic and come face-to-face with a creature "born of neither god nor man"
First published in 1897, Richard Marsh's classic work of gothic horror, The Beetle, opens with Robert Holt, an out-of-work clerk seeking shelter in an abandoned house. He comes face to face with a fantastical creature with supernatural and hypnotic powers; a creature who can transform at will between its human and beetle forms and who wrecks havoc when he preys on young middle-class Britons.
Featuring an introduction by bestselling author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, the Haunted Library Horror Classics edition of The Beetle is a tale of revenge that takes the reader on a dark journey, one that explores the crisis of late imperial England through a fantastical and horrific lens.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ripe with melodrama and purple prose, this ripping horror classic from Marsh, first published in 1897, epitomizes the style of the Victorian penny dreadful. Four sections, each narrated by a different character, interlock to relate the tale of an ancient Egyptian entity known as the child of Isis, who has traveled to London to torment Paul Lessingham, a member of Parliament, and his fianc e, Marjorie Lindon, as revenge for an indiscretion Paul committed during his travels in Egypt two decades earlier. Marsh creates an eerie atmosphere by keeping his story's supernaturalism tantalizingly ambiguous; it's never clear whether the occasional transformations of the child of Isis into the insect of the title are genuine or illusory. An overly chatty cast slows the tale's pace to a crawl and their penchant for conveniently fainting or falling into gibbering incoherence during dramatic moments reduces the novel to a clump of sensational set pieces. Though some readers will enjoy this novel's maximalist gothic flourishes, others will find the tale a bit over the top.
