Agreed. Stoker was all over the map, qualitatively. Some of his writing is simply dreadful. Other things are quite good; the majority is somewhere in between.
I would second "The Judge's House" (with some slight reservations), and "The Burial of the Rats", but I would also suggest, for pure nastiness, "The Squaw".
My own take on his other novels (at least those I have read) is fairly close to HPL's.
The Jewel of the Seven Stars is relatively good, though flawed.
The Lair of the White Worm has a marvelous idea, but the handling strikes me as amateurish and clumsy (others, however, disagree, so you may want to check it out yourself). I have not read
The Lady in the Shroud yet, so cannot say on that one. There is also the short piece usually published as "Dracula's Guest", which was originally intended (according to many sources) as part of the novel, but which was left out due to space considerations (as it is usually described). A nicely evocative piece, that one, and you may want to read it in conjunction with the novel.
There is a
Best Ghost and Horror Stories of Bram Stoker, ed. by Richard Dalby, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and S. T. Joshi, from Dover, which brings together a fair number of his better short tales. There are also other collections of his shorter work available in new and used editions if you search around a bit.
Amazon.com: Best Ghost and Horror Stories (Dover Horror Classics) (9780486297163): Bram Stoker: Books
Incidentally, though I am somewhat reluctant to suggest an anthology edited by Davies, you can find
The Jewel of the Sevel Stars, with
both endings, in his anthology
Return from the Dead: A Collection of Classic Mummy Stories, which also includes Jane Webb's "The Mummy", Edgar Allan Poe's "Some Words with a Mummy", and Doyle's "The Ring of Thoth" and what is perhaps the quintessential mummy tale, "Lot 249".
