In the dark of night, one light still yet burns.

Frightened fingers tremble as brittle pages turn.

Fireside Mystery Theatre presents The Midnight Reading, a special summer series of dramatic recitations of dark

masterpieces in miniature by the masters of the macabre. Hello, I'm Ali Silva. Over a hundred years

before the brothers Grimm, it was a French author named Charles Perol who almost single-handedly established

the groundwork for a literary genre known as the modern fairy tale. Perol, much the same as the more

famous German brothers who succeeded him, collected old folk tales and used them as the basis for

his enchanted fables. In 1695 at the budding age of

69, parole published what was to become the most enduring work of his literary career, a volume

called Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, with theier subtitle, Tales of Mother Goose.

It was with this book that Parole introduced to the world at large the wondrous flights

of fancy on display in tales such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, and Little

Red Riding Hood.

Considering the fact that stories such as these have been

loved by children for generations, it can be something of a startling experience to read

parole's versions today, which are often violent, cruel, and downright terrifying in contrast

to the popular perceptions we have of these juvenile tales.

All the best and most lasting children's stories have at least a few ounces of darkness

tucked between their colorful pages. But perhaps no fairy tale is as ominous as the

nightmarish bluebeard, whose title character easily takes his place among literature's

most abhorrent and depraved villains. Here to read Charles Perrault's Bluebeard is our own Mary

Murphy. There was once a man who had fine houses, both in town and country, a deal of silver

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