Ray Bradbury

Charles Beaumont

William Shatner

Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes. Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind.

Selected Stories

Perchance to Dream

The Hunger, and Other Stories

Roger Anker

Briefly describes Beaumont's life and career as a writer, and shares a selection of his stories and brief reminiscences by friends and fellow writers

The Howling Man

J. B. Priestley

James Purdy

Since 2005, Valancourt Books has earned a reputation as one of the foremost publishers of lost and rediscovered classics, reissuing more than 400 unjustly neglected works from the past 250 years. In this third volume of horror stories, the editors of Valancourt Books have selected fifteen tales (and one macabre poem) - all by Valancourt authors - for this new collection featuring horror from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. This volume features a previously unpublished contributions by Steve Rasnic Tem, Eric C. Higgs, and Hugh Fleetwood, as well as thirteen other tales that have never or seldom been reprinted. In this volume, you will encounter tales of ghosts, haunted houses, black magic, monsters, demonic babies, and vengeful spirits. Stories of the strange and sinister, of a boy who unwisely disobeys his grandfather's warning never to go up the stairs, a man whose apparently irrational terror of fire proves all too justified, an unpopular man who discovers a shocking new way of making friends, an ancestor who exerts a chilling influence from beyond the grave. With stories ranging from frightening to horrific to weird to darkly humorous, by a lineup of authors that includes both well-known masters of horror fiction and acclaimed authors of literary fiction, this is a horror anthology like no other.

The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Three

WOMAN CAN PUSH HIM OVER THE BRINK TOO EASILY, ALAS . . . Excerpt "Areterio-what was that you said?" "-sclerosis." "Bunky?" "Yes." "Our Bunky?" "Yes." "God!" "Sic transit gloria mundi. A rare case. Poor chap went out like a light. Just like a light." "But I mean- Bunky, of all people! Up in his studies, young, well off, good-looking, everything to live for!" "Ave at que vale, old boy." "I can't believe it." "Here today, gone tomorrow." "God!" Up until now, Lorenzo Gissing had thought about death, when he thought about it at all, which was practically never, as one of those things which one didn't think about. The frequency of its occurrence among the lower classes made it especially impossible. None of his relatives had ever died, to his knowledge. Nor had any of his good chums. In fact, he had never once looked upon a human corpse. The entire subject, therefore, was dismissed as pointless, morbid and not a little scatological, no more to be worried over than the other diseases that came as direct sequels to unclean living habits. So the news of Bunky Frith's rather pell-mell departure from this world affected Lorenzo as few things had. His reaction was one of total disbelief followed by an angry sense of betrayal. He took to his rooms. He refused to eat. He slept little and then fitfully, leaping to the floor from time to time and cursing, knocking the blue china about, and gazing at his image in the mirror.

Hair of the Dog

Best of Beaumont

With tales from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, this new collection features sixteen macabre gems, including three original works and many others that have never or seldom been reprinted by. -- Page 4 of cover.

Set in the late 1970's during the closing stages of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia's long and bitter Bush War, this terrifyingly vivid, true-to-life account paints an unforgettable picture of life and death on a remote African outpost, deep in the arid heart of the terrorist-infested bushveld. This extraordinarily brutal yet, ultimately, heart-warming real-life drama lays bare the unrelenting horror and constant danger that all those who lived there faced in this chilling cat-and-mouse conflict, the tragic consequences of which still resonate to this day.

A Place Called Charlie Tango

The Supreme Court has ordered an end to racially segregated schools, and folks in the predominantly white Southern town of Caxton are prepared grudgingly to comply with the ruling. At least until Adam Cramer, a handsome and smooth-talking young man, arrives in town and begins to make incendiary speeches and stoke the flames of racial prejudice. But Cramer is not what he seems. Who is he really, and what is the sinister truth behind his agenda? As tensions build and violence flares, it all leads to an explosive and disturbing conclusion! As compelling and relevant today as when first published, Charles Beaumont's "The Intruder" (1959) has lost none of its power to shock, and modern readers will find Cramer's bigoted rhetoric eerily familiar in light of today's civil rights debates. Beaumont (1929-1967), better known for his "Twilight Zone" scripts and his weird and brilliant short fiction, earned widespread acclaim for this novel, which was adapted for a controversial 1962 film by director Roger Corman, who contributes a new introduction to this edition. "An excellent novel that makes the skin crawl with fear and anticipation ... Recommended." - "Library Journal" "Lean, muscular prose ... a plot that moves from crisis to crisis with ominous terror ... memorably convincing." - "Saturday Review" "Tautly and even excitingly written ... the situations do not develop so much as explode." - "New York Times Book Review"

The Intruder (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

The barren plains of mars held a secret, a yellow metal waiting to be found.

The Beautiful People

Richard Matheson

Rod Serling

Between light and shadow, science and superstition, fear and knowledge is a dimension of imagination. An area we call the Twilight Zone. Adapted by Anne Washburn (Mr Burns) and directed by Olivier Award-winner Richard Jones, this world premiere production of the acclaimed CBS Television Series The Twilight Zone lands on stage for the first time in its history. Or its present. Or its future. Stage magic and fantasy unite as the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

The Twilight Zone

With Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot arriving, read the stories that inspired some of the show's greatest episodes, including "The Howling Man"! The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone—for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including seven that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes. Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely. "[Beaumont’s] imagination, as Perchance to Dream amply shows, was more than most writers enjoy in the longest of lifetimes." -NPR For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Charles Beaumont

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