Vampire Stories

By: Arthur Conan Doyle, Martin H. Greenberg, Robert Eighteen-Bisang

Narrated by: Steven Menasche

Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.

As the best-selling Twilight series has dominated bookstores, it's the perfect time to offer the first-ever compilation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's vampire tales. Get ready to sink your teeth into this heart-stopping anthology. Each of these 12 short stories has been pulled from obscurity and hand selected for this collection. Conan Doyle's famous friendship with vampire king Bram Stoker is thought to have influenced these many blood-sucking tales, including "The Captain of the Pole Star," about a medical student on an arctic voyage haunted by a heat-draining Eskimo vampire and "The Three Gables," in which vampirism is cunningly used as a metaphor for capitalism.Featuring an introduction by world-renowned vampire expert, Robert Eighteen-Bisang, this is a must-have anthology for all vampire lovers, and for any Arthur Conan Doyle enthusiast.

©2009 Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Tekno Books (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Very disappointing

Sadly, none of this book succeeded at providing the promised amusement. The last story, a Holmes story not written by Doyle, was outright insulting, while the early stories had dialog that felt stilted and unnatural, far from what I’ve come to expect from the illustrious author. To top it all off, I found most of the stories to be boring and unfulfilling.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I lack adequate grey matter to appreciate the nuance in these stories and what I view as stilted language is appropriate to the setting and time. But if you are like me, I’d give this one a pass.

like nails on a chalkboard

I LOVE Doyle, but this narration was Terrible. Horrible accents, mispronounced words and overall poor understanding of what he was reading.

Poor Narration…

As others said in their reviews, the title was misleading. I might’ve enjoyed it a bit more with a different narrator. He didn’t give life to the book, in my opinion. Hopefully this was just a hard book for him to narrate.

a fun book

I like the Conan Doyle books. this was definitely not all about vampires. the "female" voices were a bit off.

Some good stories

I enjoyed many of the stories, however I feel the title of the book was a bait and switch. I don’t even believe the word vampire was used in the first four or five stories. No vampire appeared in any of the stories. Besides this fact they were good short stories.

where are the vampires?

the stories are great. but the title is a bit misleading,considering though you could argue that there are vampire like creatures in two of the stories, There really not any vampires in this book atleast not we understand them today or even during Victorian times.
in short if you're looking for a book about vampires this isn't it. One could even make the argument that this entire book is Victorian clickbait.

entertaining enough, not much to do with vampires

the narrator wasnt my favorite and "vampire" is a loose concept more to do with a characters personal self or seeming. interesting fun stories though.

Would be better with a different narrator

Although the stories were decent, only a few seemed to actually involve a vampire. I have loved his writing for as long as I have been reading and he does a phenomenal job at bringing his characters to life. That said, I wish they had named it something that let you know it wasn't all vampire short stories.
The narrator was VERY hard to listen to. He would pause in strange spots and seemed to trip up over words. I had to play it at 1.3x speeds so I wouldn't get so frustrated with his reading.

Misleading

This was a huge disappointment:

The narrator’s attempts at accents were ludicrous and even annoying;
the foreword was missing; and
the term “vampire” in the title was misleading (seriously, y’all, The Ring of Thoth” is a mummy story).

Worst—not all the stories were written by Doyle!

Definitely returning this book!

Not What One Would Hope

Ooooo my god. It was wonderful to discover some of Doyle's non-sherlock fiction, after hearing about it for so long. I'm sure much of it can hold the reader's attention and maybe even go further than that but NOT if youv'e got this particular audio version. IT WAS TERRIBLE.

The narrator seems convinced he is reading P.G. Wodehouse rather than Doyle's thrillers and it is off putting in such a bizarre and obnoxious way that turns suspense into drudgery. His accents are laughable and he mispronounces all kinds of things that you wouldn't think it possible to get wrong. It was just...so confusing.

That being said, most of Doyle's writing is no less enjoyable than any classic Sherlock tale. I'd love to sit down and read them IRL rather than by audio and get a better feel for them. I have to note however, be prepared for much more racial/ethnic/social discrimination from Doyle than you might find in the more well-known writings. It goes from descriptions that almost fly under the radar about class and wealth to downright disgusting systemic categorizations about blacks and other racial minorities of the period. The "Gables" story towards the end starts out especially gross and that's when I just had to put it down.