Search Worlds Without End

Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature's strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.

Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn't exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband's heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret "Mad Madge" Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You'll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today's vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.

Part biography, part reader's guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.

Stories by Everil Worrell, Eli Colter, Mary Elizabeth Counselman and Greye La Spina

Introduction by Melanie Anderson

Launched in 1923, the pulp magazine Weird Tales quickly became one of the most important outlets for horror and fantasy fiction and is often associated with writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Bloch, all of whose work appeared in the magazine. But often overlooked is the fact that much of Weird Tales' content was by women writers, some of whom numbered among the magazine's most popular contributors.

This volume includes thirteen fantastic tales originally published between 1925 and 1949, written by four of Weird Tales' most prolific female contributors: Greye La Spina, Everil Worrell, Mary Elizabeth Counselman and Eli Colter. Ranging from science fiction to fantasy to horror, these classic tales of mad scientists, deadly curses, ghosts, vampires, and the risen dead remain as thrilling and sensational as when first published.

Contents:

• The Remorse of Professor Panebianco by Greye La Spina (January 1925)
• Leonora by Everil Worrell (January 1927)
• The Dead Wagon by Greye La Spina (September 1927)
• The Canal by Everil Worrell (December 1927)
• The Curse of a Song by Eli Colter (March 1928)
• Vulture Crag by Everil Worrell (August 1928)
• The Rays of the Moon by Everil Worrell (September 1928)
• The Gray Killer by Everil Worrell (November 1929)
• The Black Stone Statue by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (December 1937)
• Web of Silence by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (November 1939)
• The Deadly Theory by Greye La Spina (May 1942)
• Great Pan is Here by Greye La Spina (November 1943)
• The Antimacassar by Greye La Spina (May 1949)