Dark Twain: A Compendium of Oddities, Nightmares, and Wonderments

Dark Twain: A Compendium of Oddities, Nightmares, and Wonderments

Most people think of Mark Twain as the author of entertaining tales such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. He’s known for his wit and creativity more than anything horrifying or disturbing. But Twain did have a dark side, and it led him, on occasion, to pen tales snatched from the shadows of his imagination. A doomed ship, a cat with a nose for quartz, a human bloodhound, ghosts, and even the devil make an appearance in the short stories included here. These stand alongside a few dark poems and several true stories of nature’s wrath—displayed in the desert, a volcano cauldron, and an inland sea of death. And this is not to mention the human horrors of slavery, bullying, and cruelty that you will find in these pages. Dark Twain is a collection of short stories and excerpts of works chronicling Twain’s own harrowing experiences, culled from his Roughing It and other sources. From Virginia City, Nevada, to Hannibal, Missouri; from an abandoned graveyard to the microscopic sea in a drop of water to a "passenger comet," Twain takes the reader on journeys odd, frightening, and always unforgettable. Dark Twain is a sometimes horrifying, sometimes satirical look into the sometimes twisted but always brilliant mind of an American legend.