The Burial of the Rats

I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence.

Beyond the genre-defining influence of Dracula, Bram Stoker was also a master of the short story form. This new collection of the author's tales represents his diverse interests in the macabre and uncanny, ranging from the hallucinatory and dreamlike in 'The Shadow Builder' and 'In the Valley of the Shadow' to the more overtly horrifying in the mini- masterpieces of 'The Judge's House' and 'The Burial of the Rats'.

Alongside acknowledged classics of the horror short story canon, this new volume also includes obscurities such as the darkly comic 'Old Hoggen: A Mystery' and the morbid fairy tale 'The Castle of the King' to reflect the full brilliance of the legendary writer.

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes is Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he co-leads the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. He has edited six anthologies for British Library Publishing.

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish author and critic; though best known for the Gothic horror novel Dracula (1897), he also wrote a number of other books such as The Watter's Mou (1895) and The Mystery of the Sea (1902).