Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers Volume 4 features seven spellbinding tales of terror, including the following:
- Lost Hearts (1904) — M.R. James
- The Damned Thing (1898) — Ambrose Bierce
- The Trial for Murder (1865) — Charles Dickens
- John Mortonson’s Funeral (1906) — Ambrose Bierce
- In The Vault (1925) — H.P. Lovecraft
- The Black Cat (1843) — Edgar Allan Poe
- A Dream Within a Dream (1827) — Edgar Allan Poe
With two pieces by Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe, supplemented by stories penned by Charles Dickens, M.R. James, and H.P. Lovecraft, this is a compilation containing some of the finest work from these masters of prose. To be more accurate, one of Poe’s entries in this volume is a poem — “A Dream Within a Dream” — and it’s a wonderful one. Consisting of 24 lines divided into two stanzas, ” A Dream Within a Dream” is a contemplative, self-reflective piece about the ephemeral nature of life.
All of the Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers volumes are excellent. Rather than simply repeating what came before, each entry introduces new authors, new stories, new narrative structures — or sometimes a mix of all three. While I recommend buying the entire series, Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers Volume 4 is a great entry point in a superlative collection of audiobooks that should be in everyone’s library.