Not long ago I actually read a story by Bulwer-Lytton, The Haunted and the Haunters (1859), which H.P. Lovecraft described as “one of the best short haunted house tales ever written.” I would agree. Get past the more or less routine first half and things get weirder all the way to the surprise end. Way ahead of its time.
Thank you, Chronos, I’d completely forgotten about that book. Loved it as a kid.
I have an old detective computer game lying around here somewhere. I believe the opening text as the game generates characters, locations, and the like is “It is a dark and stormy night. A murder is being committed.”
I have to object: great or not, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is not a novel. I’ll take back one of those tongue-stickie-outies, if you don’t mind.
Aw, what the hell, this one’s on the house 
Askia
Here are two of my favorites:
*The day was packing heat and cracking wise as the scorching sun torched the hot dry Santa Anas like fry on rice, crispy with a snap, crackle and pop, and poured into the surreal bowl of the Los Angeles Basin as the red winds rattled every dwelling from Bay City bungalow to Bel Air chateau like a china shop in a bullring, the whole stinking, teeming tinderbox as combustible as a drill sergeant at clown college, as unsettling as corn on the cob rationing at an Iowa Society picnic.
Gordon Hauptfleisch
San Diego, CA *
and
*
The thing that goes back and forth inside the old grandfather clock swung like a pendulum.
John Brugliera
W. Lebanon, NH *