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Borderland is a heart-pounding horror gothic that follows Jono on an epic quest to find himself in the face of unbelievable challenges. A fresh, mind-bending tale exploring Indigenous identity, the impact of colonization, and what happens when you take a stand.

Jono, a city-born Indigenous teenager is trying to figure out who he really is. Life in Brisbane hasn't exactly made him feel connected to his Country or community. Luckily, he's got his best friend, Jenny, who has been by his side through their hectic days at St Lucia Private.

After graduating, Jono and Jenny score gigs at the Aboriginal Performing Arts Centre and an incredible opportunity comes knocking - interning with a documentary crew. Their mission? To promote a big government mining project in the wild western Queensland desert. The catch? The details are sketchy, and the land is rumoured to be sacred. But who cares? Jono is stoked just to be part of something meaningful. Plus, he gets to be the lead presenter!

Life takes a turn when they land in Gambari, a tiny rural town far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Suddenly, Jono's intuition becomes his best guide. He's haunted by an eerie omen of death, battling suffocating panic attacks, and even experiencing visions of Wudun - a malevolent spirit from the Dreaming. What's the real story behind the gas mining venture? Are the documentary crew hiding something from Jono? And could Wudun be a messenger from the land, fighting back against the invasion?

Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. Although a tomboy in her childhood, by the age of 17 she is "in training for a heroine" and is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels, among which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite.

When Catherine Moorland is asked to go to Bath, she is immersed in the world of attentive men and elaborate balls. But when one of her suitors takes her to his family estate, Northanger Abbey, she becomes lost in the gothic mystery which surrounds it.

Besides exploring social and romantic themes, it also satirised the excesses of the 'gothic' novels that were popular at the time. In this context the famous horror writer H.P. Lovecraft described it as a "merited rebuke to a school which had sunk far towards absurdity".

"Two years after I killed Blyth, I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did my young cousin Esmeralda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through."

Bill Easter and his common law wife Peggy Tey, two small-time crooks down on their luck, have been hired to help steal the legendary treasure of Renaissance goldsmith Guido Calamai. Calamai's masterpiece, the Cyclops Goblet, rumoured to possess the power to kill whoever drinks from it, is under lock and key at the Danemere Museum, the gift of the rich and eccentric millionaire Sir Thomas Moscow. But when the goblet is discovered to be a fake, Bill and Peggy must locate the real treasure, and to find it, they'll need to break Sir Thomas's daughter, a murderous madwoman, out of an asylum. From there, the trail leads to a remote Scottish island contaminated with anthrax, where the treasure - and the shocking truth behind its deadly power - is hidden. Unprepared for the horror they will uncover, will Bill and Peggy survive to enjoy their big payday, or will they become the next victims of the Cyclops Goblet?

Written in Dickensian prose, This House Is Haunted is a striking homage to the classic nineteenth-century ghost story. Set in Norfolk in 1867, Eliza Caine responds to an ad for a governess position at Gaudlin Hall. When she arrives at the hall, shaken by an unsettling disturbance that occurred during her travels, she is greeted by the two children now in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There is no adult present to represent her mysterious employer, and the children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, another terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.

From the moment Eliza rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence that lives within Gaudlin's walls. Eliza realizes that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall's long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past. Clever, captivating, and witty, This House Is Haunted is pure entertainment with a catch.

Welcome to a land Ray Bradbury calls "the Undiscovered Country" of his imagination--that vast territory of ideas, concepts, notions and conceits where the stories you now hold were born. America's premier living author of short fiction, Bradbury has spent many lifetimes in this remarkable place--strolling through empty, shadow-washed fields at midnight; exploring long-forgotten rooms gathering dust behind doors bolted years ago to keep strangers locked out.. and secrets locked in. The nights are longer in this country. The cold hours of darkness move like autumn mists deeper and deeper toward winter. But the moonlight reveals great magic here--and a breathtaking vista.

The October Country is many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night. The October Country's inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder; and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's The October Country is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.

Table of Contents:

• The Crowd - (1943) - short story
• The Emissary - (1947) - short story
• Jack-in-the-Box - (1947) - short story
• The Jar - (1944) - short story
• The Lake - (1944) - short story
• The Man Upstairs - (1947) - short story
• The Scythe - (1943) - short story
• Skeleton - (1945) - short story
• The Small Assassin - (1946) - short story
• There Was an Old Woman - (1944) - short story
• Uncle Einar - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story
• The Dwarf - (1954) - short story
• The Next in Line - (1947) - novelette
• The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse - (1954) - short story
• The Wind - (1943) - short story
• The Cistern - (1947) - short story
• Homecoming - [The Elliott Family] - (1947) - short story (variant of The Homecoming 1946)
• The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone - (1954) - short story
• Touched with Fire - (1954) - short story

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.

Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London's Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, and punctuated by rants from radio talk show host Lush Rimbaud, a.k.a. Luke Ransom, Tran's ex-lover, who is dying of AIDS and who intends to wreak ultimate havoc before leaving this world, Exquisite Corpse unfolds into a labyrinth of murder and love. Ultimately all four characters converge on a singular bloody night after which their lives will be irrevocably changed -- or terminated.

Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. Exquisite Corpse confirms Brite as a writer who defies categorization. It is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.

In the French Quarter of New Orleans the Mardi Gras celebrations conceal a different group of pleasure-seekers. For Zillah, Molochai and Twig, the party has been going on for centuries, fuelled by sexual frenzy, green Chartreuse and innocent blood. Born in horror and brought up in suburban Maryland, Nothing has always suspected he's different from other teenagers - and when he has his first taste of human blood, he knows he is right. Ghost is the singer of the band Lost Souls. When Nothing is drawn into Zillah's fatal circle, Ghost has to decide whether to save the boy - or abandon him to his bloody birthright. "Lost Souls" is a dark, decadent and delicious work of fantasy from the mistress of modern horror.

Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries.

The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

Contents:

• Wieland, or, The Transformation - (1798) - novel
• Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist - (1803) - novella

One of the earliest major American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism.

Months after the last of the Wells sons jumped out of his bedroom window in Axton House (incidentally forgetting to open it first), a strange couple of Europeans arrive in Virginia to take possession of the estate. A. is the 23-year-old unforeseen scion; Niamh is the mute punk teen girl he refers to as his associate or his bodyguard. Both are ready to settle into their new cushy lifestyle, and the rumors about the mansion being haunted add to their excitement. But ghosts are not in any way the deepest secret of the house.

Through journals, letters, security footage, audio recordings, and ciphers, we follow A. and Niamh as they delve into Wells' dubious suicide, the secret society he founded and its mysterious Game -- a "bourgeois pastime" of global proportions -- in Edgar Cantero's dazzling and original gothic adventure.

More than forty-five years after his first collection was published, here is an original volume of David Case's macabre Gothic tales that showcases the author's remarkable psycho-sexual fiction combined with the tropes of the classic horror story.

Taking its title from the classic 1971 novella, Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales also includes such memorable stories as 'Anachrona', 'The Foreign Bride' and his Frankenstein-inspired short novel 'The Dead End'.

With a personal Introduction from award-winning editor Stephen Jones and an exclusive Afterword by acclaimed film writer Kim Newman, in which he discusses how the title story was adapted into the crawling-hand horror movie -And Now the Screaming Starts!, this volume showcases the work of one of the genre's finest exponents of the macabre.

With its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it?

This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that The King in Yellow 'achieves notable heights of cosmic fear'.

Table of Contents:

• The Repairer of Reputations
• The Mask
• In the Court of the Dragon
• The Yellow Sign
• The Demoiselle d'Ys
• The Prophets' Paradise
• The Street Of The Four Winds
• The Street of the First Shell
• The Street of Our Lady of the Fields
• Rue Barrée

Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary's book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever--but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the "haunted and cursed" Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled--or perhaps just grimly exploited--and soon it's impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.

The year is 1633. Tensions are running high in the small German city of Klosterheim. The Thirty Years' War rages on, as the Emperor contends with invading Swedish forces, and, closer to home, the marauding robber chieftain Holkerstein and his armies threaten to destroy the town and kill every man, woman, and child in Klosterheim.

But not all the townspeople's anxieties originate from without: within the city, too, there is danger at every turn, as the usurper prince tightens his grip on the town and targets those, like the brave Count St Aldenheim, the virtuous Maximilian, and the lovely Paulina, who pose a threat to his reign. And when a mysterious, disguised figure known only as The Masque appears on the scene, apparently murdering and kidnapping Klosterheim's residents with impunity, terror runs rampant. Who can he be, and who is his next victim? The evil prince is determined to find out, and he devises an elaborate trap in the form of a masked ball, but little does he realize that The Masque is always one step ahead of him, plotting a deadly and inscrutable vengeance!

Klosterheim; or, The Masque was first published in 1832, and it reveals De Quincey's love for the Gothic novels of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, which he had read in his youth. It is also, as Ed Cameron discusses in his introduction to this edition, inextricably linked to De Quincey's theories on aesthetics and murder, as most famously expressed in his essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts."

Edited by literary historian Melissa Edmundson, Women's Weird 2 features thirteen classic Weird short stories that showcase how these authors moved beyond the traditional ghost story and into areas of Weird fiction and dark fantasy. Featuring thirteen remarkably chilling stories, Women's Weird 2 is sure to thrill new readers and delight these authors' fans.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Melissa Edmundson
• The Blue Room - (1897) - short story by Lettice Galbraith
• The Green Bowl - (1901) - short story by Sarah Orne Jewett
• A Dreamer - (1902) - short story by Barbara Baynton
• The Hall Bedroom - (1903) - short story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• The Red Bungalow - (1919) - short story by B. M. Croker
• Outside the House - (1920) - novelette by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
• Florence Flannery - (1924) - short story by Marjorie Bowen
• The House Party at Smoky Island - (1935) - short story by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• The Black Stone Statue - (1937) - short story by Mary Elizabeth Counselman
• Roaring Tower - (1937) - short story by Stella Gibbons
• A Twin-Identity - (1891) - short fiction by Edith Stewart Drewry
• The House - (1912) - short fiction by Katherine Mansfield
• Young Magic - (1925) - short fiction by Helen Simpson
• Notes - essay by Kate Macdonald

MEET THE CURE FOR THE HUMAN DISEASE

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron's doctor has died. The doctor's replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.

Mariana Enríquez's THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE (Hogarth; February 21, 2017) is an arresting collection of short stories by an exciting, new international talent. Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortázar, THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE brings modern Argentina to vibrant life as a place where shocking inequality, violence, and corruption are the law of the land, and where military dictatorship and legions of desaparecidos loom large in the collective memory. Asking vital questions of the world as we know it, this unnerving debut signals the arrival of an astonishing and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.

Throughout THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE, Enríquez introduces us to a cast of compelling characters who find themselves grappling with the social and political fabric of Argentina, imbued with surreality and classic horror tropes. In these twelve tales, we meet street kids and social workers, hikikomori and practitioners of black magic. There is a young professional who encounters a homeless woman and her son begging for change outside her building--when they suddenly stop appearing, she can't help but connect this to the story of a decapitated little boy she sees on the news. A group of teenage girls begin an innocent experiment with drugs, but their friendship turns dangerous as they dare each other to continually up the stakes. A family opens a tourist hotel on the site of a former secret police barracks, where their guests get more than they bargained for on a trip to the country. When a pop star who rose from the slums turns up dead, his obsessive fans gather to dig up his body. And in the title story, as a protest against domestic violence, women begin to set themselves on fire in public.

Darkly entertaining and brilliantly subversive, Enríquez's collection of stories delivers bold originality. Macabre, disturbing, and magnificently composed, THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE is not to be missed.

Macabre, relentless - it was a merciless haunting that spanned generations and thrived on innocent souls.. The little girl saw it, saw the evil that had been bequeathed her by the house that had bedeviled her ancestors. And there was no escaping it. It lived at the lonely mansion off the New England coast.. it followed her.. possessed her.. and it would not die.

Dr. Gaylord Carew, acquanited with such supernatural phenomena, had been called to Witch House by the child's mother in a desparate attempt to break the spell. But neither the mother nor Dr. Carew was fully prepared for the rage of the powers of darkness--or for the terrifying retribution that threatened all who dared defy the black will of Witch House.

James Lindsay has been summoned to the ancient estate of Bellac by his old flame, Françoise, to help her husband, Philippe de Montfaucon, who has inexplicably become convinced that he is about to die. His fears may not be unfounded: in old tomes in the castle's library, Lindsay learns that almost every male Montfaucon has met with a mysterious and untimely end. Now with the ancient festival of Les Treize Jours approaching and the castle filling up with strange and sinister visitors, Lindsay must unravel an intricate and horrifying web of legend and superstition to save Philippe from a terrible fate...

A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men: of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration. Combining psychological and ecological horror, each tale thrums with Evenson's award-winning literary craftsmanship, dark humor, and thrilling suspense.

Table of Contents:

• Leg - (2020) - short story
• In Dreams - short story
• Myling Kommer - (2020) - short story
• Come Up - (2017) - short story
• Palisade - (2018) - short fiction
• Curator - (2019) - short story
• To Breathe the Air - (2020) - short story
• The Barrow-Men - short story
• The Shimmering Wall - (2021) - short story
• Grauer in the Snow - (2019) - short story
• Justle - (2019) - short story
• The Devil's Hand - (2020) - short story
• Nameless Citizen - (2017) - short story
• The Coldness of His Eye - (2019) - short story
• Daylight Come - short story
• Elo Havel - (2020) - short story
• His Haunting - (2019) - short story
• Haver - (2018) - short story
• The Extrication - short story
• A Bad Patch - (2019) - short story
• Hospice - short story
• The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell - (2020) - short story

From the moment William Mertoun arrives to catalogue the library at Colonel Barr's old mansion on the desolate Northumbrian moors, he senses something is terribly wrong. Barr's brother Ian has just died, mysteriously and violently, and the Colonel himself is hidden away in a locked room, to which his sinister nurse denies all access. As strange and supernatural events begin to unfold, Mertoun learns the local legend of a ghostly Roman centurion, slain on the site sixteen centuries earlier, who is said to haunt the estate. Mertoun is sceptical at first, but after another murder, a harrowing seance, and an actual sighting of the spirit one lonely night on the moor, he realizes that he and everyone at Barr's mansion are in mortal danger. What does the ghost want, and can it be stopped?

This deliciously dark retelling of Dracula is a sensual story of obsession, desire, and the lengths we will go to protect the ones we love.

This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession...

Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things.

Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband's dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.

When honest young Caleb Williams comes to work as a secretary for Squire Falkland, he soon begins to suspect that his new master is hiding a secret. As he digs deeper into Falkland's past and finally unearths the horrible truth, the results of his curiosity prove calamitous when--even though Caleb has loyally sworn never to disclose what he has discovered--the Squire enacts a cruel revenge.

A tale of gripping suspense and psychological power, William Godwin's novel creates a searing depiction of the intolerable persecution meted out to a good man in pursuit of justice and equality. Written to expose the political oppression and corrupt hierarchies its author saw in the world around him, Caleb Williams makes a radical call to end the tyrannical misuses of power.

In this chilling Gothic tale, an orphan girl sent to live in Crutchfield Hall finds the place haunted by the ghost of her cousin Sophia, who is bent on revenge...

Twelve-year-old Florence looks forward to a new life with her great uncle and aunt at Crutchfield Hall, certain it's bound to be better than the grim orphanage she has lived in since her parents' death. But Florence doesn't expect the ghost of her cousin Sophia, who haunts the cavernous rooms and dimly lit hallways of Crutchfield and concocts a plan to use Florence to help her achieve her murderous goals. Will Florence be able to convince the others in the household of the imminent danger and stop Sophia before it's too late?

A modern Gothic tale of a woman obsessed with her lover's taxidermy creatures and haunted by her past.

One stormy Christmas, Scarlett recalls the ebb and flow of a yearlong love affair with Henry, a renowned taxidermist. Obsessed with his taxidermy creatures, she pushes him to outdo his colleague and world-famous rival in a crescendo of species-blending creativity. Scarlett will not be able to avoid a reckoning with her own past as Henry's inventions creep into her own thoughts, dreams, and desires.

Drenched in the torrential rains of the Somerset moorland and the sensual pleasures of the characters, The Taxidermist's Lover lures you ever deeper into Scarlett's delightfully eerie world.

1891. In a crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence and her younger brother Giles are neglected by their guardian uncle. Banned from reading, Florence devours books in secret, and twists words and phrases into a language uniquely her own.

After the violent death of the children's first governess, a second arrives. Florence becomes convinced she is vengeful and malevolent spirit who means to do Giles harm. Against a powerful enemy, with no adult to turn for help, Florence will need all her intelligence and ingenuity to save Giles and preserve her private world.

I dream sometimes about a house I've never seen...

Opal is a lot of things--orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier--but above all, she's a determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago.

All she left behind were dark rumors--and her home. Everyone agrees that it's best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur . Almost everyone, anyway.

I should be scared, but in the dream I don't hesitate.

Opal has been obsessed with The Underland since she was a child. When she gets the change to step inside Starling House--and make some extra cash for her brother's escape fund--she can't resist. But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur's own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around.

In my dream, I'm home.

And now she'll have to fight.

Welcome to Starling House: enter, if you dare.

Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in Tregannon House, a remote asylum in England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton, then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London: "Your patient must be an imposter." Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary. Who is the woman in her uncle's house? Georgina's perilous quest to free herself takes us from a cliffside cottage on the Isle of Wight to the secret passages of Tregannon House and into a web of hidden family ties on which her survival depends.

The narrator of Tenebrae inhabits a decaying, desolate mansion in the remote and wild countryside with his younger brother and their mad old uncle, driven insane by abuse of opium and alcohol. This nameless narrator is a morbid young man who passes most of his time in a room painted all black, poring over arcane manuscripts dealing with the mysteries of death, while sipping garishly coloured liquors brewed by his uncle or cups of coffee flavoured with arsenic.

When he falls in love with a neighbour, he looks forward to marrying her and trading his life of despondency for one of joy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, she finds him rather unpleasant company and instead falls in love with his brother. Driven to murderous jealousy, he resolves upon a brutal crime. But after the consummation of his terrible act, he finds himself haunted by a huge, monstrous spider. Is it a delusion brought on by incipient madness? the reincarnated soul of his murdered victim, returned for vengeance? or does it foretell a fate even more horrifying than can be possibly imagined?

Published in 1898, at the end of a decade in which English writers explored the literary possibilities of the Gothic with such characters as Dorian Gray, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, and The Beetle, Ernest G. Henham's weird horror novel Tenebrae is reminiscent of the works of Poe. Perhaps unequalled in its extreme darkness and gloom, and yet at times grimly, though possibly unintentionally, hilarious, Tenebrae remains one of the strangest productions of this fertile literary period. This newly typeset edition includes the unabridged text of the first edition, as well as an introduction and notes by Gerald Monsman, the foremost scholar of Henham (1870-1946), who later published under the name John Trevena. Also featured is a reproduction of the cover of the incredibly scarce first edition.

Copies of this Novel also appear under the author's actual Name: Ernest G. Henham.

In the remote hamlet of Thorlund stands the manor house known as the Strath, an eerie place that exercises a mysterious hold over anyone who enters it. The site of tragedy in 1742 when its owner, Sir John Hooper, turned highwayman and met his death on the gallows, the Strath has remained vacant for over a century, a pair of hideous masks its only occupants. When the novel opens, the Strath's new owner has just arrived from America to take possession of the house, but he is soon found horribly murdered. Now the next heir, young Charles Conway, has come to the Strath, and the house begins to work its baneful influence on him and on the local residents, causing them to behave in bizarre and violent ways. What is the connection between the sinister power of the Strath and the ghastly masks that adorn the wall? And once Conway and the others are drawn within the evil place, can any of them possibly survive?

A terrifying tale of neo-Nazi occultism

When Steadman agreed to investigate the disappearance of a young Mossad agent, he had no idea he would be drawn into a malevolent conspiracy. Neo-Nazi cultists are bent on unleashing an age-old unholy power on an unsuspecting world - power rising out of a demonic relic from man's dark, primal past to threaten humanity with horror from beyond any nightmare.

One of the supreme masterpieces of Romantic fiction and Scottish literature, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is a terrifying tale of murder and amorality, and of one man's descent into madness and despair. James Hogg's sardonic novel follows a young man who, falling under the spell of a mysterious stranger who bears an uncanny likeness to himself, embarks on a career as a serial murderer. The memoirs are presented by a narrator whose attempts to explain the story only succeed in intensifying its more baffling and bizarre aspects. Is the young man the victim of a psychotic delusion, or has he been tempted by the devil to wage war against God's enemies? The authoritative and lively introduction by Ian Duncan covers the full range of historical and religious themes and contexts, offers a richer and more accurate consideration of the novel's relation to Romantic fiction than found elsewhere, and sheds new light on the novel's treatment of fanaticism. Copious notes identify the novel's historical, biblical, theological, and literary allusions.

In the wink of an eye, as quick as a flea,
The Devil he jumped from me to thee.
And only when the Devil had gone,
Did I know that he and I'd been one...

Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the farm where he grew up to help gather the sheep down from the moors for the winter. Very little changes in the Endlands, but this year, his grandfather - the Gaffer - has died and John's new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time.

Each year, the Gaffer would redraw the boundary lines of the village, with pen and paper, but also through the remembrance of tales and timeless communal rituals, which keep the sheep safe from the Devil. But as the farmers of the Endlands bury the Gaffer, and prepare to gather the sheep, they begin to wonder whether they've let the Devil in after all.

The eerie, suspenseful debut novel -- hailed as "an amazing piece of fiction" by Stephen King -- that is taking the world by storm.

When the remains of a young child are discovered during a winter storm on a stretch of the bleak Lancashire coastline known as the Loney, a man named Smith is forced to confront the terrifying and mysterious events that occurred forty years earlier when he visited the place as a boy. At that time, his devoutly Catholic mother was determined to find healing for Hanny, his disabled older brother. And so the family, along with members of their parish, embarked on an Easter pilgrimage to an ancient shrine.

But not all of the locals were pleased to see visitors in the area. And when the two brothers found their lives entangling with a glamorous couple staying at a nearby house, they became involved in more troubling rites. Smith feels he is the only one to know the truth, and he must bear the burden of his knowledge, no matter what the cost. Proclaimed a "modern classic" by the Sunday Telegraph (UK), The Loney marks the arrival of an important new voice in fiction.

This is the 1976 Popular Library paperback edition of this 1951 novel. "Hangsaman," Jackson's second novel, contains certain elements similar to the mysterious real-life December 1946 disappearance of 18-year-old Bennington College sophomore Paula Jean Welden of Stamford, Connecticut. This event, which remains unsolved to this day, took place in the wooded wilderness of the Glastenbury Mountain near Bennington in southern Vermont, where Jackson and her family were living at the time. The fictional college depicted in Hangsaman is based in part on Jackson's experiences at Bennington College.

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers-and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate haunted by a beckoning evil.

Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls.

But worse - much worse - the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.

M. R. James is probably the finest ghost-story writer England has ever produced. These tales are not only classics of their genre, but are also superb examples of beautifully-paced understatement, convincing background and chilling terror. As well as the preface, there is a fascinating tail-piece by M. R. James, Stories I Have Tried To Write , which accompanies these thirty tales. Among them are 'Casting the Runes', 'Oh, Whistle and I'll come to you, My Lad', 'The Tractate Middoth', 'The Ash Tree' and 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook'.

• Canon Alberic's Scrapbook - (1895) - short story (variant of Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book)
• Lost Hearts - (1895) - short story
• The Mezzotint - (1904) - short story
• The Ash-Tree - (1904) - short story
• Number 13 - (1904) - short story
• Count Magnus - (1904) - short story
• "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" - (1904) - novelette
• The Treasure of Abbot Thomas - (1904) - short story
• A School Story - (1911) - short story
• The Rose Garden - (1911) - short story
• The Tractate Middoth - (1911) - short story
• Casting the Runes - (1911) - novelette
• The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral - (1910) - short story
• Martin's Close - (1911) - short story
• Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance - (1911) - novelette
• The Residence at Whitminster - (1919) - novelette
• The Diary of Mr. Poynter - (1919) - short story
• n Episode of Cathedral History - (1914) - short story
• The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance - (1913) - short story
• Two Doctors - (1919) - short story
• The Haunted Dolls' House - (1923) - short story
• The Uncommon Prayer-Book - (1925) - short story
• A Neighbour's Landmark - (1924) - short story
• A View from a Hill - (1925) - short story by
• A Warning to the Curious - (1925) - short story
• n Evening's Entertainment - (1925) - short story
• here Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard - (1924) - short story
• Rats - (1929) - short story
• After Dark in the Playing Fields - (1924) - short story
• Wailing Well - (1928) - short story
• Stories I Have Tried to Write - (1929) - essay

Moving to the countryside is a big undertaking for born townies Ollie and Caro Harcourt and their 12-year-old daughter, Jade. But when they view Cold Hill House a huge, dilapidated, Georgian mansion they are filled with excitement.

Despite the financial strain of the move, Ollie has dreamed of living in the country since he was a childt. Caro is less certain, and Jade is grumpy about being removed from all her friends. But within days of moving in, it becomes apparent that they aren't the house's only residents. At first a friend of Jade, talking to her on Facetime sees a spectral woman behind her. Then there are more sightings, and two weeks after moving in, Caro, out in the garden, is startled to see faces staring out of an upstairs window from a room which does not appear to exist."

A deserted shipwreck off the coast of Iceland holds terrors and dark secrets...

The year is 1901, and Nicky is attacked, then wakes on board the Ormen, a whaling ship embarked on what could be its last voyage. With land still weeks away, it's just her, the freezing ocean, and the crew -- and they're all owed something only she can give them...

Now, over one hundred years later, the wreck of the Ormen has washed up on the forbidding, remote coast of Iceland. It's scheduled to be destroyed, but explorer Dominique feels an inexplicable pull to document its last days, even though those who have ventured onto the wreck before her have met uncanny ends.

Onboard the boat, Dominique will uncover a dark past riddled with lies, cruelty, and murder--and her discovery will change everything. Because she'll soon realize she's not alone. Something has walked the floors of the Ormen for almost a century. Something that craves revenge.

Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found--but she's still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller...

When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it's an opportunity to start over with her three daughters--Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she's frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed.

Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she's initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers--except she's still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she'll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn't realize just how much the truth will change her.

When Irene Rutledge, a brilliant and beautiful young graduate student, meets the mysterious and fascinating Frank Mattison, the two soon fall in love and marry, despite the warnings of Irene's family and friends. But after their marriage, dark secrets from Frank's past begin to emerge to threaten their happiness, secrets that will lead to murder - and a shocking and horrific conclusion ...

Craig Jones's critically acclaimed first novel, the Edgar Award-nominated Blood Secrets (1978), was a bestseller when originally published and has since been acknowledged by many critics as a masterpiece of modern Gothic fiction. This edition features a new preface by the author.

Night Shift-Stephen King's first collection of stories-is an early showcase of the depths that King's wicked imagination could plumb. In these 20 tales, we see mutated rats gone bad ("Graveyard Shift"); a cataclysmic virus that threatens humanity ("Night Surf," the basis for The Stand); a smoker who will try anything to stop ("Quitters, Inc."); a reclusive alcoholic who begins a gruesome transformation ("Gray Matter"); and many more. This is Stephen King at his horrifying best.

Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor", and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of: a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.

The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known, and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself, to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive.

What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed, and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign, and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.

Five stories, which belong to the gothic horror and mystery genres, are presented as selections from the posthumous papers of the occult detective Dr. Martin Hesselius.

1. "Green Tea" An English clergyman named Jennings confides to Hesselius that he is being followed by a demon in the form of an ethereal monkey, invisible to everyone else, which is trying to invade his mind and destroy his life.
2. "The Familiar"A revised version of The Watcher (1851). A sea captain, living in Dublin, is stalked by "The Watcher,", a strange dwarf who resembles a person from his past.
3. "Mr. Justice Harbottle" A revised version of An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street (1853). A cruel judge in the Court of Common Pleas, Elijah Harbottle, finds himself under attack by vengeful spirits, and in a disturbing dream he is condemned to death by a monstrous doppelgänger.
4. "The Room in the Dragon Volant" Not a ghost story but a notable mystery story in which a naïve young Englishman in France attempts to save a mysterious countess from her intolerable situation.
5. "Carmilla" A tale of a lesbian vampire, set in Styria, Austria. This story was to greatly influence Bram Stoker in the writing of Dracula.

In 1888 Henry James wrote 'There was the customary novel by Mr Le Fanu for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight'. Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories are tales selected from Le Fanu's stories which mostly appeared in The Dublin University Magazine and other periodicals, and their haunting, sinister qualities still have an enormous appeal for the modern reader. The great M.R. James, who collected and introduces the stories in this book, considered that Le Fanu 'stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.'

• Epilogue, Biographical and Critical (Madam Crowl's Ghost ) essay by M. R. James
• Madam Crowl's Ghost short story
• Squire Toby's Will novelette
• Dickon the Devil short story
• The Child That Went with the Fairies short story
• The White Cat of Drumgunniol short story
• An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street short story
• Introduction (Ghost Stories of Chapelizod) essay
• The Village Bully short story
• The Sexton's Adventure short story
• The Spectre Lovers short story
• Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling short story
• Sir Dominick's Bargain short story
• Ultor de Lacy novelette (variant of Ultor de Lacy: A Legend of Cappercullen 1861)
• The Vision of Tom Chuff short story
• Stories of Lough Guir short story

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is best known today as one of the Victorian period's leading exponents of supernatural fiction, and was described by M.R. James as standing absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.

The House by the Churchyard is perhaps his best novel in this genre. Set in the village of Chapelizod, near Dublin, in the 1760s the story opens with the accidental disinterment of an old skull in the churchyard, and an eerie late-night funeral. This discovery relates to murders, both recent and historical whose repercussions disrupt the complacent pace of village affairs and change the lives of many of its notable characters forever. Charm and chilling darkness abound in equal measure in one of the greatest novels of a Victorian master of mystery.

Erik, the Phantom of the Paris Opera House, is one of the great icons of horror literature. This tormented and disfigured creature has made his home in the labyrinthine cellars of this opulent building where he can indulge in his great passion for music, which is a substitute for the love and emotion denied him because of his ghastly appearance.

It is in the Opera House that he encounters Christine Daaé whom he trains in secret to become a great singer. Erik's passionate obsession with a beautiful woman beyond his reach is doomed and leads to the dramatic tragic finale.

Gaston Leroux's novel is a marvellous blend of detective story, romance and spine-tingling terror which has fascinated readers ever since the work was first published.

Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt.

When Woodsley, a young English painter, arrives in Barbados and finds no lodging available, he thinks himself fortunate to be invited to stay at Eltonsbrody, a mansion belonging to the eccentric widow Mrs Scaife. But behind the locked doors of the house's disused rooms lurk terrible secrets, and soon strange and blood-curdling events begin to unfold. The tension builds towards a shocking and unforgettable conclusion, when the full horror of Eltonsbrody will be revealed.

He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemí. You have to save me.

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find - her cousin's husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin's new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family's youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family's past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family's once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

Few believed Professor Coldwell was in touch with an unseen world-that he could commune with spirits. But in Scotland's oldest university town something has passed from darkness into light. Now, the young are being haunted by night terrors and those who are visited disappear. This is certainly not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and burned out explorer have of surviving their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it? This chilling occult thriller is both an homage to the great age of British ghost stories and a pacy modern tale of diabolism and witchcraft.

Catherine's last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top television production company saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and now things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself - to catalogue the late M H Mason's wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she'll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting scenes from World War I. When Mason's elderly niece invites her to stay at the Red House itself, where she maintains the collection, Catherine can't believe her luck. Until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle's 'Art'. Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but M H Mason's damaged visions raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she'd hoped had finally been erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge. And some truths seem too terrible to be real.

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the twentieth century: a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at its edges, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent and a powerful curse besets the families of the elite–their daughters begin disappearing. And in the Pine Barrens that border the town, a lush and terrifying underworld opens up.

When a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince, who might just be the devil, abducts a young bride on the verge of the altar, her brother sets out against all odds to find her. His path will cross those of Princeton's most formidable people, including Grover Cleveland, fresh out of his second term in the White House, soon-to-be commander in chief Woodrow Wilson, a complex individual obsessed to the point of madness with his need to retain power, the young idealist Upton Sinclair and his charismatic comrade Jack London, and the most famous writer of the era, Mark Twain–all of whom are plagued by "accursed" visions.

1906: A large manor house, Wake's End, sits on the edge of a bleak Fen, just outside the town of Wakenhyrst. It is the home of Edmund Stearn and his family - a historian, scholar and land-owner, he's an upstanding member of the local community. But all is not well at Wake's End. Edmund dominates his family tyrannically, in particular daughter Maud. When Maud's mother dies in childbirth and she's left alone with her strict, disciplinarian father, Maud's isolation drives her to her father's study, where she happens upon his diary.

During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund spots an eye in the undergrowth. His terror is only briefly abated when he discovers its actually a painting, a 'doom', taken from the church. It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. The stench of the Fen permeates the house, even with the windows closed. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound - like claws on the wooden floor...

This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.

Table of Contents

• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" [Chevalier Dupin] (1841) novelette
• The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (non-genre) [Chevalier Dupin] (1842) novella
• "The Black Cat" (1843) short story
• The Gold-Bug (non-genre) (1843) novella
• "Ligeia" (1838) short story
• "A Descent Into the Maelström" (1841) short story
• "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) short story
• "The Purloined Letter" (non-genre) [Chevalier Dupin] (1844) novelette
• "The Assignation" (The Visionary) [Tales of the Folio Club] (1834) short story
• "MS. Found in a Bottle [Tales of the Folio Club] (1833) short story
• "William Wilson" (1839) short story
• "Berenice" (1835) short story
• "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) novelette
• "The Cask of Amontillado [Fortunato] (1846) short story
• "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) short story
• "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (1844) short story
• "The Man of the Crowd" (1840) short story
• "Morella" (1835) short story
• "Thou Art the Man" (1844) short story
• "The Oblong Box" (1844) short story
• "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" (1839) short story
• "Metzengerstein [Tales of the Folio Club] (1832) short story
• "The Masque of the Red Death" (1845) short story
• "The Premature Burial" (1844) short story
• "The Imp of the Perverse" (1845) short story
• "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845) short story
• "Hop-Frog" (1850) short story
• "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" (1845) novelette
• "The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq." (1844) short story
• "How to Write a Blackwood Article" (1838) short story
• "A Predicament" (1838) short story
• "Mystification" (1837) short story
• "Loss of Breath [Tales of the Folio Club] (1832) short story
• "The Man That Was Used Up: A Tale of the Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign" (1839) short story
• "Diddling: Considered as One of the Exact Sciences" (1843) essay
• "The Angel of the Odd: An Extravaganza" (1844) short story
• "Mellonta Tauta" (1849) short story
• "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" (1845) short story
• "X-ing a Paragrab" (1849) short story
• "The Business Man" (1840) short story
• "A Tale of Jerusalem [Tales of the Folio Club] (1832) short story
• "The Sphinx" (1846) short story
• "Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling" (1840) short story
• "Bon-Bon [Tales of the Folio Club] (1832) short story
• "The Duc de L'Omelette [Tales of the Folio Club] (1832) short story
• "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841) short story
• "The Devil in the Belfry" (1839) short story
• "Lionizing [Tales of the Folio Club] (1835) short story
• "Some Words with a Mummy" (1845) short story
• "The Spectacles" (1844) novelette
• "Four Beasts in One: The Homo-Camelopard [Tales of the Folio Club] (1836) short story
• "Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral" (1841) short story
• "The Balloon-Hoax" (1844) short story
• "Mesmeric Revelation" (1844) short story
• "Eleonora" (1841) short story
• The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1850) novella
• "King Pest: A Tale Containing an Allegory" (1835) short story
• "The Island of the Fay" (1841) short story
• "The Oval Portrait" (1845) short story
• "The Domain of Arnheim" (non-genre) (1842) short story
• "Landor's Cottage" (non-genre) (1849) short story
• "The Power of Words" (1845) short story
• "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" (1841) short story
• "Shadow—A Parable [Tales of the Folio Club] (1835) short story
• "Silence—a Fable [Tales of the Folio Club] (1838) short story
• "Von Kempelen and His Discovery" (1849) short story
• "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket [Pym 1] (1966) novel
• "Annabel Lee" (1849) poem
• "Hymn" (1835) poem
• "To My Mother" (1849) poem
• "Fairy-Land" (1845) poem
• "A Valentine" (1846) poem
• "To Helen" (non-genre) (1831) poem
• "Israfel" (1831) poem
• "The City in the Sea" (1850) poem
• "The Sleeper" (1841) poem
• "Lenore" (1843) poem
• "The Valley of Unrest" (1850) poem
• "The Coliseum" (1833) poem
• "Bridal Ballad: To —— ——" (1837) poem
• "Sonnet to Zante" (1837) poem
• "Sonnet — Silence" (1840) poem
• "Dream-Land" (1844) poem
• "Eulalie—A Song" (1845) poem
• "To F——s S. O——d" (1850) poem
• "To F——" (1835) poem
• "The Raven" (1845) poem
• "To M. L. S—" (1847) poem
• "Ulalume" (1847) poem
• "To —— ——" (Not long ago,...) (1848) poem
• "To Helen" (1852) poem
• "An Enigma" (1848) poem
• "For Annie" (non-genre) (1849) poem
• "The Bells" (1849) poem
• "Eldorado" (1849) poem
• "Stanzas" (1827) poem
• "A Dream Within a Dream" (1849) poem
• "A Dream" (1827) poem
• "The Happiest Day, the Happiest Hour" (1827) poem
• "Sonnet—To Science" (1829) poem
• "The Lake: To —" (unknown)) poem
• "Al Aaraaf" (1829) poem
• "Romance" (1845) poem
• "To the River ——" (1829) poem
• "To ——" (The bowers whereat...) (1829) poem
• "Tamerlane" (1827) poem
• "To ——" (I heed not...) (1829) poem
• "Dreams" (1827) poem
• "To __ __" (I saw thee on the bridal day...) (1827) poem
• "Spirits of the Dead" (1827) poem
• "Evening Star" (1827) poem
• "Serenade" (1833) poem
• "Elizabeth" (1911) poem
• "Imitation" (1827) poem
• "Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius" (1938) poem
• "Scenes from "Politian": An Unpublished Drama" (1835) poem
• "A Paean" (1831) poem
• "To Isadore" (1845) poem
• "Alone" (1875) poem
• "To One in Paradise" (1834) poem
• "Edgar Allan Poe—A Biographical Note" (1966) essay

This collection of Poe's best stories contains all the terrifying and bewildering tales that characterise his work. As well as the Gothic horror of such famous stories as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Premature Burial' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart', all of Poe's Auguste Dupin stories are included. These are the first modern detective stories and include 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'.

Table of Contents:

• Ms. Found in a Bottle
• Berenice
• Morella
• Some Passages in the Life of a Lion (Lionizing)
• The Assignation
• Bon-Bon
• King Pest
• Metzengerstein
• Silence
• A Descent into the Maelstrom
• Ligeia
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• William Wilson
• The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
• The Man of the Crowd
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• The Mystery of Marie Rogèt
• The Colloquy of Monos and Una
• The Masque of the Red Death
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The Gold Bug
• The Black Cat
• The Spectacles
• The Premature Burial
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
• The Oblong Box
• The Cask of Amontillado
• Landor's Cottage

John Polidori's classic tale "The Vampyre"(1819), was a product of the same ghost-story competition that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The present volume selects thirteen other tales of mystery and the macabre, including the works of James Hogg, J.S. LeFanu, Letitia Landon, Edward Bulwer, and William Carelton. The introduction surveys the genesis and influence of "The Vampyre" and its central themes and techniques, while the Appendices contain material closely associated with its composition and publication, including Lord Byron's prose fragment "Augustus Darvell."

From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense, dark, and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre.

Take a road trip into a Southern gothic horror novel.

Titus and Melanie Bell are on their honeymoon and have reservations in the Okefenokee Swamp cabins for a canoeing trip. But shortly before they reach their destination, the road narrows into a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car.

Much later, Titus wakes up lying in the middle of the road, no bridge in sight. Melanie is missing. When he calls the police, they tell him there is no such bridge on Route 177...

Philip and Margaret Waverton and their friend Roger Penderel are driving through the mountains of Wales when a torrential downpour washes away the road and forces them to seek shelter for the night. They take refuge in an ancient, crumbling mansion inhabited by the strange and sinister Femm family and their brutish servant Morgan. Determined to make the best of the circumstances, the benighted travellers drink, talk, and play games to pass the time while the storm rages outside. But as the night progresses and tensions rise, dangerous and unexpected secrets emerge. On the house's top floor are two locked doors; behind one of them lies the mysterious, unseen Sir Roderick Femm, and behind the other lurks an unspeakable terror. Which is more deadly: the apocalyptic storm outside the house or the unknown horrors that await within? And will any of them survive the night?

A thrilling Victorian gothic horror story about a young seamstress who claims her needle and thread have the power to kill

Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy, and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor, and awaiting trial for murder.

When Dorothea's charitable work brings her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted by the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets one of the prisoners, the teenaged seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another strange idea: that it is possible to kill with a needle and thread--because Ruth attributes her crimes to a supernatural power inherent in her stitches.

The story Ruth has to tell of her deadly creations--of bitterness and betrayal, of death and dresses--will shake Dorothea's belief in rationality, and the power of redemption. Can Ruth be trusted? Is she mad, or a murderer? For fans of Shirley Jackson, The Poison Thread is a spine-tingling, sinister read about the evil that lurks behind the facade of innocence.

Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge.

With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure - a Silent Companion - that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...

Ann Radcliffe, author of The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho, is the high priestess of the gothic novel. In The Italian, first published in 1797, she creates a chilling, atmospheric concoction of thwarted lovers, ruined abbeys, imprisonment and dark passages, with an undercurrent of seething sexuality and presents us with a cunning villain in the sinister monk Schedoni.

A contemporary review commented on, 'Radcliffe's uncommon talent for exhibiting, with picturesque touches of genius, the vague and horrid shapes which imagination bodies forth...'

Radcliffe's work was hugely influential and H.P. Lovecraft, early twentieth century master of the uncanny, was impressed by the, 'eerie touch of setting and action contributing artistically to the impression of illimitable frightfulness which she wished to convey.'

The novel remains a fascinating, engrossing and unnerving masterpiece of gothic fiction.

The beautiful, yet icy Musidora Sinclair hides a deadly secret. Once radiant and exuberant, her manner has become unnaturally cold and reserved. Even when wooed by King Henry VIII, who proposes to make her Queen of England, she responds only with seeming indifference. What is the explanation for her unusual behaviour?

And then there is another mystery, much more terrible. On the Isle of Wight stands the ruined Castle of Danvers, whose forbidding walls conceal unspeakable horrors. In its Chamber of Mysteries, the names of five women are emblazoned in letters of fire-five women all seduced to a horrible fate by members of the Danvers family. What is the connection among these women? And what is Musidora's role in this diabolical affair?

Julie awoke with a sob from the terrifying nightmare. Would she never have peace? She was about to attempt sleep again when she saw the flicker of movement in the corner of the room. As she stared into the darkness, a cold chill ran down her spine.

She tried to call out but her words were frozen on her lips. Fear had taken full control of her. She continued to stare into the shadows with fascinated eyes as the thing gradually began to emerge and take form. It moved very, very slowly, and as it drew near the foot of her bed she saw that it was the phantom of her dreams. The ghost of Zachariah Robbins in top hat and cape.

Then the phantom's hands gripped her throat. Not until she felt the pressure of those cold, powerful hands on her throat was the hypnotic spell broken...

It's 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband home to Buffalo where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from an aggressive and debilitating malady. But it's becoming clearer that his condition isn't exactly a disease, but a phase of existence that seeks to transform and ultimately possess him.

Brandon Castle is full of mysteries and terrors!

Lonely candles give feeble light to the eerie chill of the castle's endless hallways. Winding staircases descend into damp crypts of discarded skeletons while rat-infested secret passages lead to satanic altars. Towering over the castle's dank moat is the mysterious Grey Turret. Filled with legends of shadowy ghosts and terrifying demons, its only door has been locked for centuries.

Until now.

Someone has discovered the key and wants the terrifying power locked away in the Grey Turret.

Who dares to defy the legend of the Grey Turret?

Agatha? Hungry for power, nothing can stand in her way!
Eldred? Her nervous brother, the perfect foil for a murderous plan?
Sir Rupert? The brave knight suffering from a heartbreaking loss?
Nemoni? The mysterious wild-man of the woods?
The Black Monk? Aided by Satan's black magic, can he be stopped?

Serialized in British newspapers throughout 1844, The Black Monk is an excellent example of the Victorian penny dreadful. Each week, eager readers would await the next penny's installment and The Black Monk delivered so many thrills and terrors that it became the mid-century's publishing phenomenon.

This edition includes the unabridged text of the 1844 edition along with all 54 original illustrations and features a new introduction by Curt Herr, Ph.D.

"Slowly, and not without a certain inexplicable feeling of foreboding, I limped up the weed-grown gravel path to the door of Cliff House..." John Montrolfe, malformed and malevolent, the latest inheritor of the family curse, has come to England to claim his ancestral inheritance. He is grudgingly admitted to the Gothic mansion by a toothless old crone, and night after night his dreams are haunted by the phantom image of a beautiful young maiden. When he reaches out to touch the girl, the spectre's head falls grotesquely to one side and she vanishes as he awakes in horror.

Montrolfe happens upon a secret drawer containing an old journal, written by the girl whose ghost has haunted him. In its pages a strange and horrible story unfolds, a tale of murder and buried treasure, a story that will finally reveal young Pippin's terrible fate and the origin of the Curse of the Montrolfes...

Long ago Miren O'Malley's family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer: safety for their ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and have fallen into decline. Miren's grandmother is determined to restore their glory, even at the price of Miren's freedom.

A spellbinding tale of dark family secrets, magic and witches, and creatures of myth and the sea; of strong women and the men who seek to control them.

Asher Todd comes to live with the mysterious Morwood family as a governess to their children. Asher knows little about being a governess but she is skilled in botany and herbcraft, and perhaps more than that. And she has secrets of her own, dark and terrible -- and Morwood is a house that eats secrets.

With a monstrous revenge in mind, Asher plans to make it choke. However, she becomes fond of her charges, of the people of the Tarn, and she begins to wonder if she will be able to execute her plan -- and who will suffer most if she does. But as the ghosts of her past become harder to control, Asher realises she has no choice.

There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley.

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of a near-future South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence.

Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her ghost-haunted father. Holt, Jace's father, is missing and hunted by a brutish crowd, and an old man witnesses the wrong thing in the depths of night. In only a matter of days, all of their lives will collide, and be altered, in the maelstrom of the changing world.

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.

Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man?one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.

Bubbling potions can be bad for your health!Just ask Dr. Jekyll.By day, he's a kind doctor.But by night, he's the merciless kill Mr. Hyde.And all because of a magic formula.Will anybody find out the horrible secret of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

In life, not every sin goes unpunished.

For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.

Peter Straub's classic bestseller is a work of "superb horror" (The Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time -- and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.

The year is 1738; the place, Paris. A baby is born under a fish-monger's bloody table in a marketplace, and abandoned. Orphaned, passed over to the monks as a charity case, already there is something in the aura of the tiny infant that is unsettling. No one will look after him; he is somehow too demanding, and, even more disturbing, something is missing: as his wet nurse tries to explain, he doesn't smell the way a baby should smell; indeed, he has no scent at all.

Slowly, as we watch Jean-Baptiste Grenouille cling stubbornly to life, we begin to realize that a monster is growing before our eyes. With mounting unease, yet hypnotized, we see him explore his powers and their effect on the world around him. For this dark and sinister boy who has no smell himself possesses an absolute sense of smell, and with it he can read the world to discover the hidden truths that elude ordinary men. He can smell the very composition of objects, and their history, and where they have been, he has no need of the light, and darkness is not dark to him, because nothing can mask the odors of the universe.

As he leaves childhood behind and comes to understand his terrible uniqueness, his obsession becomes the quest to identify, and then to isolate, the most perfect scent of all, the scent of life itself.

At first, he hones his powers, learning the ancient arts of perfume-making until the exquisite fragrances he creates are the rage of Paris, and indeed Europe. Then, secure in his mastery of these means to an end, he withdraws into a strange and agonized solitude, waiting, dreaming, until the morning when he wakes, ready to embark on his monstrous quest: to find and extract from the most perfect living creatures-the most beautiful young virgins in the land- that ultimate perfume which alone can make him, too, fully human. As his trail leads him, at an ever-quickening pace, from his savage exile to the heart of the country and then back to Paris, we are caught up in a rising storm of terror and mortal sensual conquest until the frenzy of his final triumph explodes in all its horrifying consequences.

Told with dazzling narrative brilliance and the haunting power of a grown-up fairy tale, Perfume is one of the most remarkable novels of the last fifty years.

Geoffrey Pellerin travels to a remote English mansion, Bezill Tower, to serve as tutor to the boy of the house, young Herbert. The previous tutor departed under mysterious circumstances, but that is far from the only strangeness at Bezill. Herbert's mother, Mrs Shakeshaft, is passionately fond of blood sports, and her odd companion, Mr Gayfere, has a curious interest in flagellation. Then there's the locked tower room, said to contain the belongings of Herbert's aunt, who now resides screaming in a mental asylum. But perhaps strangest of all is Herbert himself, and as Pellerin settles into his new life among the mysteries and secrets of Bezill Tower, he may soon find that he has taken on more than he bargained for.

A new collection of stories from submissions and classic literature offering the best and most incredible ghost stories from East, South and Southeast Asia, combining new and classic authors across the region.

Another deluxe edition of new writing and neglected perspectives. Asian ghosts and supernatural beings -- from India to Sri Lanka, China to Korea, Japan to the Philippines -- can be both terrifying and comforting. Underpinned by strong cultural beliefs in the cycles of life and ancestor worship, the nature of Asian spirits differs from that of their counterparts in other areas of the world. The possibility is more instinctually accepted that ghosts remain with us, as part of the world, whether we can see them or not.

Featured here are all kinds of stories from across East, South and Southeast Asia: classic weird tales by the likes of Pu Songling, Rabindranath Tagore, S Mukerji, Im Bang and Yi Ruk, Lafcadio Hearn and Yei Theodora Ozaki, are complemented by stories by Asian writers of today. An egui (the Chinese version of a 'hungry ghost') is exorcised, a vicious jiangshi (Chinese zombie-like revenant) is encountered in the night, a Bengali shakchunni (the ghost of an unsatisfied bride) poignantly seeks love with devastating effect, a family is haunted by vengeful Korean gwishin, and the iconic Japanese tragedies of Oiwa and O-Kiku are revisited.

Samantha Montgomery pulls into the driveway of her family home to find a massive black vulture perched on the mailbox, staring at the house.

Inside, everything has changed. Gone is the eclectic warmth Sam expects; instead the walls are a sterile white. Now, it's very important to say grace before dinner, and her mother won't hear a word against Sam's long-dead and little-missed grandmother, who was the first to put down roots in this small southern town.

The longer Sam stays, the stranger things get. And every day, more vultures circle overhead...

Step into the dark and eerie world of "The House of the Vampire" by George Sylvester Viereck, a spine-chilling classic that will have you on the edge of your seat! This hauntingly beautiful tale takes you on a journey through the mysterious and labyrinthine halls of an old mansion where secrets, shadows, and creatures of the night lurk around every corner.

You'll follow the story of a young man who becomes enamored with the allure of the supernatural, as he encounters a charismatic and enigmatic vampire who captivates his imagination and draws him into a web of danger and desire. Will he succumb to the temptation of immortality and become a creature of the night, or will he resist the call of the undead and escape the clutches of the vampire's seductive power?

With vivid descriptions that bring the eerie setting to life and heart-pumping action that will keep you on the edge of your seat, "The House of the Vampire" is a must-read for lovers of horror, suspense, and Gothic literature.

The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner is a sawmill gothic that begins with June Vogel's return to Storm Break, her family's estate. Things in the great house aren't what they used to be. Doors slam in the night. Faucets turn on, untouched. Something is always watching, whatever June does. And when her brother returns with his new bride, deceit and betrayal threaten to destroy everything she loves.

A haunted castle and a ruined bloodline Manfred, wicked lord of Otranto Castle, is horrified when his son is crushed to death on his wedding day. But rather than witness the end of his line, as foretold in a curse, he resolves to send his own wife to a convent and marry the intended bride himself. However, Manfred's lustful greed will be disturbed by the terrifying omens that now haunt his castle: bleeding statues, skeletal ghouls and a giant sword - as well as the arrival of the rightful prince of Otranto.

This is the story of a murderer. A stolen child. Revenge. This is the story of Ted, who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia in an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet some of them are lies.

You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. But you're wrong. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, something lies buried. But it's not what you think...

This is Oscar Wilde's tale of the American family moved into a British mansion, Canterville Chase, much to the annoyance its tired ghost. The family -- which refuses to believe in him -- is in Wilde's way a commentary on the British nobility of the day -- and on the Americans, too. The tale, like many of Wilde's, is rich with allusion, but ends as sentimental romance...

An eerie, atmospheric Polar Gothic following a Victorian explorer in search of his lost shipmate and his own redemption...

William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition, in which his remaining men only survived by eating their dead comrades, he returned in disgrace.

Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same frozen waters. Perhaps this is Day's chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens--the man who's haunted his whole life--back home. But when the rescue mission becomes an uncanny journey into his past, Day must face up to the things he's done.

Abandonment. Betrayal. Cannibalism.

Aboard ship, Day must also contend with unwanted passengers: a reporter obsessively digging up the truth about the first expedition, as well as Stevens's wife, a spirit-medium whose séances both fascinate and frighten. Following a trail of cryptic messages, gaunt bodies, and old bones, their search becomes more and more unnerving, as it becomes clear that the restless dead are never far behind. Something is coming through.

Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.

Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil. But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell...

In a masterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace, John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerous power of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.

For aeons, the forces of darkness had tampered from afar with the earth and its inhabitants, until, in the ominously near future, Theron Ware, Doctor of Theology and Black Sorcerer of fiendish powers, conjures the fallen angels into the world of the flesh to deal more directly with those who would enlist the aid of the Evil One.

Retained by shadowy megalomaniac industrialist Baines to assassinate the Governor of California, Theron finds the means to unleash the demons of the underworld for one night of apocalyptic horror - to reign unopposed over heaven and earth, or to fall before the magic of the Monk of Monte Albano.

1918. A First World War battlefield becomes the cosmic battleground for two vampires, as Karl von Wultendorf struggles to free himself from his domineering maker, Kristian.

1923. Charlotte Neville watches as her father, a Cambridge professor, fills Parkland Hall with guests for her sister Madeleine's 18th birthday party. Among them is his handsome new research assistant Karl - the man Madeleine has instantly decided will be her husband. Charlotte, shy and retiring, is happy to devote her life to her father and her dull fiance Henry - until she sees Karl...

For Charlotte, it is the beginning of a deadly obsession that sunders her from her sisters, her father and even her dearest friend. As their feverish passion grows, Karl faces the dilemma he fears the most. Only by deserting Charlotte can his passion for her blood be conquered. Only by betraying her can he protect her from the terrifying attentions of Kristian - for Kristian has decided to teach Karl a lesson in power, by devouring Charlotte.

Cass Neary made her name in the seventies as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and the hangers-on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, earned her a brief moment of fame.

Thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out when an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Down East, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and she finds one final shot at redemption.

Patricia Highsmith meets Patti Smith in this mesmerizing literary thriller.

Since 1978, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has produced about two dozen novels and numerous short stories detailing the life of a character first introduced to the reading world as Le Comte de Saint-Germain. We first meet him in Paris during the reign of Louis XV when he is, apparently, a wealthy, worldly, charismatic aristocrat, envied and desired by many but fully known to none. In fact, he is a vampire, born in the Carpathian Mountains in 2119 BC, turned in his late-thirties in 2080 BC and destined to roam the world forever, watching and participating in history and, through the author, giving us an amazing perspective on the time-tapestry of human civilization. In Hôtel Transylvania Saint-Germain makes his first appearance in a story that blends history and fiction as Saint-Germain is pitted against Satanists to preserve Madelaine de Montalia from ruin.

Set in the rural wilderness of western Massachusetts, "The Dunwich Horror" follows one Wilbur Whateley, the bastard offspring of a family devoted to worshipping to "Great Old Ones" and to studying the Necronomicon, Lovecraft's fictional grimoire full of forsaken lore and magic. Whateley is ultimately defeated by Professor Warren Rice and Dr. Francis Morgan, two representatives of Lovecraft's many scholarly protagonists. "The Dunwich Horror" is notable not only for its use of anachronistic Yankee dialects, but also its numerous references to the fictional Miskatonic University and the superstition surrounding whip-poor-wills.

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales in 1929. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Fraser and Herbert A. Wise, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft and The Dunwich Horror and Others.

The Dunwich Horror is the basis for several films of the same name.

The April 1929 issue of Weird Tales containing "The Dunwich Horror" is available free on Internet Archives.

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon after wards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.

In "Dracula", Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

"...although Mary and these poets experienced a lifetime before they were thirty, here I was at 28, having never left my homeland. I needed to flee -- go forth and find sublimity. What better guide than Frankenstein."

Six years ago, Selena Chambers turned her first major trip abroad into a literary scavenger hunt of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Visiting Geneva, Switzerland, Ingolstadt, Germany, and Chamonix, France over a series of several days, she found within the nooks and crannies of these modern European towns the residual Romanticism that inspired the teenage Mary Shelley and shaped her most famous novel.

This special limited edition chapbook collects this Best of the Net-nominated travelogue to commemorate the bicentennial of Frankenstein's conception during the week of June 16, 1816. Written in the epistolary vein as Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, these letters portray Chambers' visits to three of the most important sites within literature and take us all on a journey through the sublime.

Table of Contents:

• Dedication
• Letter 1
• Letter 2
• Letter 3
• Endnotes
• Afterword
• About the Author

This novel picks up where Mary Shelley's classic tale left off, continuing the narrative from the monster's point of view. Through flashbacks in the monster's journal, Saberhagen also rescrambles the original story in such a way that the monster is absolved of the murders of Victor Frankenstein's brother William and fiancee Elizabeth. The monster sets off on a quest for his own identity that takes him from the Arctic and his first sexual experience with an "Esquimeaux" to a meeting in Paris with Ben Franklin, whose experiments with electricity led Frankenstein to attempt the monster's initial animation. Throughout, the irrationality of the monster's sheer existence is set against the values and science of Enlightenment Europe. In the tour-de-force ending, rationality triumphs by means of a neat science-fiction twist.

The new 'James Asher' vampire novel from the best-selling author - It's 1911. War is coming, and according to one of the vampires of St. Petersburg, the Kaiser is trying to recruit vampires. James Asher, Oxford don and formerly on His Majesty's Secret Service, is forced to team up again with his vampire partner Don Simon Ysidro for a journey to the subarctic Russian capital. Are they on the trail of a rogue vampire with a plan to achieve the power to walk in daylight? Asher wonders. Or is Ysidro's real agenda to seek the woman he once loved?

Manfroné; or, The One-Handed Monk (1809) opens with an unforgettable Gothic scene: a lascivious monk enters the lovely Rosalina's bedroom at midnight through a secret panel, planning to rape her--but suffers the gruesome loss of his hand when he is caught in the act!

But the one-handed monk is not the only danger facing Rosalina. Her father, the haughty Duca di Rodolpho, is determined to marry her to the cruel Prince di Manfroné and has imprisoned her true love, Montalto, in the castle dungeon. And then there is the mysterious Grimaldi. What are his inscrutable plans, and is he trying to help Rosalina or destroy her?

"No longer to be regarded as a footnote to the literary history of Jane Austen's Northanger septet, Eliza Parsons's Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) now secures its proper place as both a work of historical importance and a highly readable Gothic novel in its own right with this fine edition. Diane Long Hoeveler's thoughtful introduction opens new perspectives on Parsons's achievement in the field of what might be called "international" Gothic in her creation of an "ideologically bifurcated female Gothic, part liberal and part conservative" in its political outlook. This new edition both supplants earlier editions of this pivotal Gothic and tells us much about how the Gothic novel evolved in the late 1790s as an historical reflector of the fears, beliefs, and prejudices of a revolutionary, yet reactionary, era." -- Frederick S. Frank, Professor Emeritus of English, Allegheny College, and author of The First Gothics.

Matilda Weimar flees her lecherous and incestuous uncle and seeks refuge in the ancient Castle of Wolfenbach. Among the castle's abandoned chambers, Matilda will discover the horrifying mystery of the missing Countess of Wolfenbach. But when her uncle tracks her down, can she escape his despicable intentions?

One of the seven "horrid novels" named in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Castle of Wolfenbach is perhaps the most important of the early Gothic novels, predating both The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk.

This edition reprints the complete text of the 1793 edition and includes a new introduction by Diane Long Hoeveler, one of the foremost modern scholars of Gothic literature and feminism.

Clermont is the story of Madeline, a porcelain doll of a Gothic heroine, who lives in seclusion from society with her father, Clermont, whose past is shrouded in mystery. One stormy night, their solitude is interrupted by a benighted traveller, a Countess who turns out to be a friend from Clermont's past.

Madeline goes to live with the Countess to receive her education, but her new idyllic life soon turns into a shocking nightmare. Ruffians attack the gentle Countess, and Madeline is assaulted in a gloomy crypt. And to make matters worse, a sinister stranger appears, threatening to reveal the bloody truth of Clermont's past unless Madeline marries him. Can she avoid the snares of her wily pursuers, solve the mystery of her father's past, and win the love of her dear De Sevignie?

This edition of Clermont includes the unabridged text of the novel, based on the first edition of 1798, as well as a new introduction and other supplementary materials.

The good old Count Renaud is dead, and his will makes the degenerate Rhodophil his heir, disinheriting his other son Ferdinand, who has married against his father's wishes. Rhodophil promises to share his new riches with his younger brother and his wife Claudina, but Ferdinand hears a mysterious voice from beyond the grave, warning him to flee his brother and his wife to save himself from sin and death!

Ferdinand obeys the supernatural warning and sets out to find fortune and adventure. In the course of his quest he will encounter a recluse in a ruined castle with a horrible secret, find himself captured and imprisoned by the Turkish army, and encounter one of Gothic literature's most depraved female characters, the monstrous Fatima. And if he survives all these dangers, Ferdinand must return to Renaud Castle to solve the mystery of the ghostly voice and uncover the terrible truth about his wife and his brother!

This edition includes the unabridged text of the four volume 1796 edition, with a new introduction and notes by Karen Morton, and reproductions of illustrations from the 1796 and 1824 editions.

"The hurricane was howling, the hailstones beating against windows, the hoarse croaking of the raven bidding adieu to autumn, and the weather-cock's dismal creaking joined with the mournful dirge of the solitary owl..."

The Necromancer consists of a series of interconnected stories, all centering on the enigmatic figure of Volkert the Necromancer. Filled with murder, ghosts, and dark magic, and featuring a delirious and dizzying plot that almost defies comprehension, The Necromancer is one of the strangest horror novels ever written.

One of the earliest Gothic bestsellers, The Necromancer was first published in 1794, and after more than two centuries still retains the power to thrill and fascinate readers. This edition includes a new preface which reveals for the first time ever the true identity of The Necromancer's author, as well as an original critical essay by Jeffrey Cass, analysing the novel from a modern queer theory standpoint. The complete text of three contemporary reviews and helpful annotations are also included to further enhance this edition.

Young Alphonsus Cohenburg enters his mother's bedroom and finds her covered in blood. She tells him his uncle has murdered his father, and orders him to flee Cohenburg castle forever to save his own life!

A disconsolate exile, Alphonsus wanders the earth seeking the means of survival, first as a soldier, then a miner, and finally as sacristan of a church, where he meets the beautiful Lauretta. They wed and establish a home together, and everything seems to promise them a happy future. But their domestic tranquillity is shattered, when a band of ruffians kidnaps the unfortunate Lauretta! Alphonsus must solve the mystery of Lauretta's disappearance and the riddle of his mother's strange conduct. And when he hears that ghosts inhabit Cohenburg castle, tolling the great bell each night at midnight, the mystery only deepens....

One of the greatest of all Gothic novels, The Midnight Bell (1798) features a blend of fast-paced action and spine-tingling suspense, pervaded throughout by a tone of profound melancholy. This edition, the first in forty years, features a new introduction by David Punter, one of the world's foremost experts on Gothic literature.

Seduced and betrayed by a rake, Julie de Rubine lives in seclusion with her infant son, Enrîco. One day, their calm retirement is interrupted by the Marchese de Montferrat, who promises to provide for Julie and her son if she agrees to care for an unfortunate orphan, Laurette, whose origin is shrouded in mystery. Under the assumed name of Madame Chamont, Julie raises the two children, whose youthful friendship eventually blossoms into love.

As Laurette matures, she resolves to learn the identity of her real parents. Her only clues are a painted miniature of a beautiful lady and the whisperings of a sinister monk, who warns her to avoid the Marchese de Montferrat. But when Julie is kidnapped by banditti and Laurette is taken to the gloomy castle of the lascivious Marchese, will she be able to uncover the truth and marry her beloved Enrîco, or will she fall victim to the lustful Montferrat?

The rarest of the seven "horrid novels," Eleanor Sleath's The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) is indebted to Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1796) but possesses a charm and fascination all its own. This new edition, the first in 50 years, includes a new introduction by Ellen Moody.

A bizarre work whose labyrinthine plot defies summary, Horrid Mysteries (1796) recounts the experiences of Don Carlos and his friend, the Marquis of G******, who become entangled in the web of a secret society bent on world domination. As the heroes flee from place to place across Europe, the agents of this dark confederacy, seemingly possessed of supernatural powers, are always at their heels--and death lies around every corner!

Unavailable for nearly 50 years, this unabashedly lurid Gothic novel written by an enigmatic German who styled himself the "Marquis of Grosse" and "Marquis of Pharnusia" returns to print at last as the seventh and final reissue in Valancourt's series of the rare Gothic novels mentioned in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. This edition includes a new introduction by Prof. Allen W. Grove.

Table of Contents:

• Bug House - (1980) - shortstory
• Dollburger - (1973) - shortstory
• Community Property - (1980) - shortstory
• Flying to Byzantium - (1985) - novelette
• Treading the Maze - (1981) - shortstory
• The Horse Lord - (1977) - shortstory
• The Other Mother - (1980) - novelette
• Need - (1981) - shortstory
• The Memory of Wood - (1982) - shortstory
• A Friend in Need - (1981) - shortstory
• Stranger in the House - (1972) - shortstory
• Sun City - (1980) - shortstory
• The Nest - (1983) - novelette

Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. First published in 1871 as a serial narrative in The Dark Blue, it tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla. Carmilla predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by 26 years, and has been adapted many times for cinema.

The tradition of supernatural horror fiction runs deep in Anglo-American literature. From the Gothic novels of the eighteenth century to such contemporary authors as Stephen King and Anne Rice, writers have employed horror fiction to unearth many disquieting truths about the human condition, ranging from mistreatment of women and minorities to the ever-present dangers of modern city life.

In Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic Horror, James Goho analyzes many significant writers and trends in American and British horror fiction. Beginning with Charles Brockden Brown's disturbing novels of terror and madness, Goho proceeds to discuss the influence of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" on H. P. Lovecraft, who is treated in several penetrating essays. Lovecraft was a uniquely philosophical writer, and Goho approaches his work through the lens of existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, while also probing Lovecraft's racism as exhibited in several tales about Native Americans. Goho also discusses the Welsh writer Arthur Machen's tortured tales of suffering and evil and Algernon Blackwood's numerous stories set in the wilds of the Canadian backwoods. The book concludes with a centuries-spanning essay on the witchcraft theme in the American Gothic tradition and a comprehensive essay on Fritz Leiber's invention of the urban Gothic.

In this wide-ranging study, James Goho examines the varied ways in which supernatural fiction can address the deepest moral, social, and political concerns of the human experience. Journeys into Darkness will be of interest to readers and scholars of horror fiction and to students of literary history and culture in general.

A gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for nearly ninety years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me... and the one who cursed me.

So starts the diary of Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a doctor with a most unusual speciality: monster hunting. In the short time he has lived with the doctor, will has grown accustomed to his late callers and dangerous business. But when one visitor comes with the body of a young girl and the monster that was eating her, Will's world is about to change forever. The doctor has discovered a baby Anthropophagi. Now, will and the doctor must face the horror threatenning to overtake and consume our world before it is too late.

A classic ghost story: the chilling tale of a menacing specter haunting a small English town. Arthur Kipps is an up-and-coming London solicitor who is sent to Crythin Gifford--a faraway town in the windswept salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway--to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of a client, Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. Mrs. Drablow's house stands at the end of the causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but Kipps is unaware of the tragic secrets that lie hidden behind its sheltered windows. The routine business trip he anticipated quickly takes a horrifying turn when he finds himself haunted by a series of mysterious sounds and images--a rocking chair in a deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and, most terrifying of all, a ghostly woman dressed all in black.