Oscar Wilde’s intriguing story of the beautiful, vain, sinful and indulgent young Dorian Gray,  who houses his conscience in a portrait which slowly and hideously decays while he, ever more indulgent and under the influence of a poisonous “French” novel, remains untouched by age…  but at a terrifying price…

Brought to life by Crispin Bonham-Carter’s stunning performance, The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the last works of classic gothic horror fiction.

Available in MP3 or iPod audiobook format, download The Picture of Dorian Gray for just £7.95. exclusively from Silksoundbooks.

This audio book, read by star actor Sir Derek Jacobi tells the tale of Dr Frankenstein and the horrendous monster he unleashes on the world when he tinkers with the laws of Nature.

Frankenstein was the product of one of the most famous ghost story telling sessions in history; Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and several others were stranded on the shores of Lake Geneva during a particularly sodden summer. They challenged each other to come up with the most ghastly and soul rending story their sizable literary talents could muster and the hands-down winner came from Shelley’s wife – Mary Shelley.

The novel that emerged several years later has been recognised as one of the most chilling and gruesome horror stories ever written and it is certainly one of the most famous. It is however fathoms more than this, it’s a moving account of a battle for independence, it’s a warning against man’s pride in his ability to change the world with his blind pursuit of science.

It was a nightmare from which he was furious to have been woken which triggered Robert Louis Stevenson’s most successful and famous work. Having been stirred from what he termed “a fine bogey tale” Stevenson set about putting his nightmare onto paper. It reputedly took him only three days to write but the story of a split personality, warring with itself between righteousness and immorality is as much a part of modern thought as it became in 1885.

The story of the upright and moral Dr Jekyll and his horrific and uncontrollable other within has been seen as an allegory for the chronic duality of the Victorian Era with its insistence on outward respectability and its underbelly of vice and exploitation. History has it that the first draft of the novella was burnt by Stevenson in response to his wife’s criticisms, possibly about the explicitly sexual nature of the wild Mr Hyde’s nocturnal exploits, and the chilling vagueness of the final version’s descriptions of his pursuits adds to the Victorian nature of the story as much as to the horror of the man.

Download Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and receive A Lodging for the Night by Robert Louis Stevenson FREE!

Trapped by the strength of the public adoration of his character Sherlock Holmes, Conan-Doyle was desperate to write other works not involving the sleuth. The Tales of Terror and Mystery have all the recognisable qualities that made Conan-Doyle’s work so popular, the attention to gruesome detail the meticulous logic and the intricate and wittily bemusing plotting, yet they are free of the constraints put on Conan-Doyle by Mr Holmes.

These stories let loose the adventurous side of the rational and logical mind that many associate with Conan-Doyle - the side that pulled him away from his medical studies as a young man to the Arctic Circle on a whaling ship and more importantly the side that led him to a firm belief that grew throughout his life in the occult and the spiritual.