The Gates of Hell

The Gates of Hell is a collection of twenty-six stories originally published in 1910. These tales, in the tradition of the contes cruels, range from a man who keeps a secret with devastating effects to a maniac who finds thrills in witnessing violent accidents, to a blind man who purposely loses his eyesight, to a prostitute who sleeps with the man who executed her husband... These rich and carefully plotted stories ratchet up suspense, sentence by bewitching sentence. Their horror is based...