Search Worlds Without End

The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Russian novel--a brilliant dark fantasy with "the potential to be a modern classic" (Lev Grossman), combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.

Our life is brief...

While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin.

As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or school, she also feels it's the only place she should be. Against her mother's wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education.

As she quickly discovers, the institute's "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of... and suddenly all she could ever want.

A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and philosophy that probes the mysteries of existence, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work of speculative fiction--brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey--is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman's The Magicians, Max Barry's Lexicon, and Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale, but will transport them to a place far beyond those fantastical worlds.

Arthur Machen is perhaps best known for his shorter supernatural and horror fiction. He first achieved notoriety in the Decadent 1890s with his story 'The Great God Pan', and 'The Bowmen' was the origin of the 'Angels of Mons' myth during the First World War. Tales of Horror and the Supernatural collects together the best of Arthur Machen's short stories and novellas.

Contents:

• Introduction • essay by Philip Van Doren Stern
• The Novel of the Black Seal • (1895) • novelette
• The Novel of the White Powder • (1895) • short story
• The Great God Pan • (1894) • novella
• The White People • (1904) • novelette
• The Inmost Light • (1894) • novelette
• The Shining Pyramid • (1895) • novelette
• The Bowmen • (1914) • short story
• The Great Return • (1915) • novelette
• The Happy Children • (1920) • short story
• The Bright Boy • (1936) • novelette
• Out of the Earth • (1915) • short story
• N • (1936) • novelette
• The Children of the Pool • (1936) • short story
• The Terror • (1917) • novel

The gods are dead. About fifty years ago they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody knows why.

In an alternative world, fifty years after the death of the gods, a fifteen-year-old boy, Hark, finds the still beating heart of a terrifying deity and uses it to try to save his best friend. Hark risks everything to keep the heart out of the hands of smugglers, military scientists and secret fanatical cults, to try to use it to sustain the life of his best friend, who is gradually and eerily transforming. But how long should someone stay loyal to a friend who is himself becoming a monster?

Hugo Award-winning and Nebula, Eugie, and World Fantasy Award-nominated Short Story

This story originally appeared in Apex Magazine, Issue 105, February 2018. The story is included in the anthology The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen (2019), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Apex.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft's unique contribution to American literature was a melding of traditional supernaturalism (derived chiefly from Edgar Allan Poe) with the genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1920s. This new Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Suggestions for Further Reading - essay by S. T. Joshi
• A Note on the Text - essay by S. T. Joshi
• The Tomb - (1922) - short story
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep - (1919) - short story
• The White Ship - [Dream Cycle] - (1919) - short story
• The Temple - (1925) - short story
• The Quest of Iranon - [Dream Cycle] - (1935) - short story
• The Music of Erich Zann - [Erich Zann] - (1922) - short story
• Under the Pyramids - (1924) - novelette
• Pickman's Model - (1927) - short story
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - [Dream Cycle] - (1943) - novel
• The Dunwich Horror - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - novelette
• At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
• The Thing on the Doorstep - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1937) - novelette
• Explanatory Notes - essay by S. T. Joshi

This gripping collection begins with "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge--the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption.

Next is "Apt Pupil," the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town.

In "The Body," four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me.

Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in "The Breathing Method."

"The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is," hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.

A collection of classic works by the turn-of-the-twentieth-century horror master offers insight into his unique style and includes such pieces as, "The Shadow Out of Time," "The Colour Out of Space," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and "At the Mountains of Madness." Edited by Peter Straub.

Table of Contents:

• The Statement of Randolph Carter - [Randolph Carter] - (1920) - short story
• The Outsider - [Dream Cycle] - (1926) - short story
• The Music of Erich Zann - [Erich Zann] - (1922) - short story
• Herbert West: Reanimator - [Herbert West: Reanimator Universe] - (1922) - novelette
• The Lurking Fear - (1928) - novelette
• The Rats in the Walls - (1924) - novelette
• The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
• The Horror at Red Hook - (1927) - novelette
• He - (1926) - short story
• Cool Air - (1928) - short story
• The Call of Cthulhu - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1928) - novelette
• Pickman's Model - (1927) - short story
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - [Dream Cycle] - (1943) - novel
• The Colour Out of Space - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1927) - novelette
• The Dunwich Horror - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - novelette
• The Whisperer in Darkness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1931) - novella
• At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• The Dreams in the Witch House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
• The Thing on the Doorstep - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1937) - novelette
• The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella
• The Haunter of the Dark - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• Chronology - essay by uncredited

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction have been waiting for: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft's most horrifying visions, including Lovecraft's masterpiece, THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME--the shocking revelation of the mysterious forces that hold all mankind in their fearsome grip.

"I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." Stephen King

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Heritage of Horror - (1982) - essay by Robert Bloch
• The Rats in the Walls - (1924) - novelette
• The Picture in the House - (1919) - short story
• The Outsider - [Dream Cycle] - (1926) - short story
• Pickman's Model - (1927) - short story
• In the Vault - (1925) - short story
• The Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1929) - short story
• The Music of Erich Zann - [Erich Zann] - (1922) - short story
• The Call of Cthulhu - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1928) - novelette
• The Dunwich Horror - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - novelette
• The Whisperer in Darkness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1931) - novella
• The Colour Out of Space - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1927) - novelette
• The Haunter of the Dark - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• The Thing on the Doorstep - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1937) - novelette
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• The Dreams in the Witch-House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
• The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose. But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem a skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

Plagued by insane nightmare visions, Walter Gilman seeks help in Miskatonic University's infamous library of forbidden books, where, in the pages of Abdul Alhazred's dreaded Necronomicon, he finds terrible hints that seem to connect his own studies in advanced mathematics with the fantastic legends of elder magic. "The Dreams in the Witch House," gathered together here with more than twenty other tales of terror, exemplifies H. P. Lovecraft's primacy among twentieth-century American horror writers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Suggestions for Further Reading - essay by S. T. Joshi
• A Note on the Texts - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Polaris - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
• The Terrible Old Man - (1921) - short story
• The Tree - (1921) - short story
• The Cats of Ulthar - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
• From Beyond - [Dream Cycle] - (1934) - short story
• The Nameless City - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1921) - short story
• The Moon-Bog - (1926) - short story
• The Other Gods - [Dream Cycle] - (1933) - short story
• Hypnos - [Dream Cycle] - (1922) - short story
• The Lurking Fear - (1928) - novelette
• The Unnamable - [Randolph Carter] - (1925) - short story
• The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
• The Horror at Red Hook - (1927) - novelette
• In the Vault - (1925) - short story
• The Strange High House in the Mist - [Dream Cycle] - (1931) - short story
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - [Randolph Carter] - (1943) - novella
• The Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1929) - short story
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1934) - novelette
• The Dreams in the Witch House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
• The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella
• Explanatory Notes - essay by S. T. Joshi

Once upon a time, on the banks of the River Moth, a city sprang up like no other in or out of history. Founded on the blood of the original inhabitants, the stealthy gray caps, and steeped for centuries in the aftermath of that struggle, Ambergris has become a cruelly beautiful metropolis--a haven for artists and thieves, for composers and murderers. City includes the World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Transformation of Martin Lake.

Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, H. P. Lovecraft's astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft's harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were first released. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft's fiction, as well as attract those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.

Table of Contents:

• Map of Arkham, circa 1930 - (1970) - interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• Night-Gaunts - [Fungi from Yuggoth] - (1930) - poem
• Dagon - (1919) - short story
• The Statement of Randolph Carter - [Randolph Carter] - (1920) - short story
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
• The Cats of Ulthar - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
• The Nameless City - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1921) - short story
• Herbert West--Reanimator - [Herbert West: Reanimator Universe] - (1922) - novelette
• The Music of Erich Zann - [Erich Zann] - (1922) - short story
• The Lurking Fear - (1928) - novelette
• The Hound - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1924) - short story
• The Rats in the Walls - (1924) - novelette
• Under the Pyramids - (1924) - novelette
• The Unnamable - [Randolph Carter] - (1925) - short story
• In the Vault - (1925) - short story
• The Outsider - [Dream Cycle] - (1926) - short story
• The Horror at Red Hook - (1927) - novelette
• The Colour Out of Space - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1927) - novelette
• Pickman's Model - (1927) - short story
• The Call of Cthulhu - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1928) - novelette
• Cool Air - (1928) - short story
• The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
• The Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1929) - short story
• The Dunwich Horror - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - novelette
• The Whisperer in Darkness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1931) - novella
• The Strange High House in the Mist - [Dream Cycle] - (1931) - short story
• The Dreams in the Witch-House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
• From Beyond - [Dream Cycle] - (1934) - short story by
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1934) - novelette
• At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella
• The Haunter of the Dark - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• The Thing on the Doorstep - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1937) - novelette
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - [Dream Cycle] - (1943) - novel
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - [Randolph Carter] - (1943) - novella
• To a Dreamer - (1921) - poem
• Afterword A Gentleman of Providence - essay by Stephen Jones
• Primary Collaborations and Revisions - essay by uncredited

A definitive collection of stories from the unrivaled master of twentieth-century horror in a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition with cover art by Travis Louie.

"I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." -Stephen King

Frequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft's preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master's fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as "The Outsider" to the overpowering cosmic terror of "The Call of Cthulhu." More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical- and visionary-American writer.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Suggestions for Further Reading - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi
• A Note on the Text - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Dagon - (1919)
• The Statement of Randolph Carter - (1920)
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family - (1987) - (variant of The White Ape 1920)
• Celephaïs - (1922)
• Nyarlathotep - (1920)
• The Picture in the House - (1919)
• The Outsider - (1926)
• Herbert West--Reanimator - (1922)
• The Hound - (1924)
• The Rats in the Walls - (1924)
• The Festival - (1925)
• He - (1926)
• Cool Air - (1928)
• The Call of Cthulhu - (1928)
• The Colour Out of Space - (1927)
• The Whisperer in Darkness - (1931)
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth - (1936)
• The Haunter of the Dark - (1936)
• Explanatory Notes - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi

Here is a collection of the most famous stories of this unparalleled writer: The Rats in the Walls, PIckman's Model, The Colour out of Space, The Call of Cthulhu and The Haunter of the Dark, plus other tales you would be advised to read late at night if you hope for untroubled sleep....

Contains:

• The Colour out of Space
• The Music of Eric Zann
• The Outsider
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Call of Clthulhu
• Pickman's Model
• The Dunwich Horror
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Haunter of the Dark

"I have never read anything like Jagannath. Karin Tidbeck's imagination is recognizably Nordic, but otherwise unclassifiable -- quietly, intelligently, unutterably strange. And various. And ominous. And funny. And mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories."--Ursula K. Le Guin

"Restrained and vivid, poised and strange, Tidbeck, with her impossible harmonies, is a vital voice."--China Mieville

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical short stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the "Pyret" or the title story, "Jagannath," about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck's unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes "Cloudberry Jam," a story that opens with the line "I made you in a tin can"? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in the book widely praised by Michael Swanwick, Ursula K. Le Guin, China Mieville, and Karen Joy Fowler. Publishers Weekly calls it "brave... and brilliant." Locus Magazine says this is the most significant debut since the award-winning Margo Lanagan. Introduction by Elizabeth Hand, afterword by the author.

"Tidbeck has a gift for the uncanny and the unsettling. In these wonderful, subtle stories, magic arrives quietly. It comes from the forests or the earth or was always there in your own family or maybe exists in another realm entirely... leaving you slightly dazed and more than a little enchanted."--Karen Joy Fowler

"Were this collection to contain only its biomechanoid wonder of a title story, it would still be amazing. Jagannath heralds the arrival of a bold and brilliant new voice, which I see too few of these days. You must read Karin Tidbeck."--Caitlin R. Kiernan

"In Karin Tidbeck's collection Jagannath, the mundane becomes strange and the strange familiar with near-Hitchcockian subtlety. I loved Tidbeck's clean, classic prose. It creates beautifully eerie music for a twilight domain."--Karen Lord

"I can't think of when I last read a collection that blew me away the way that Jagannath has, or one that's left me somewhat at a loss to describe just how strange and beautiful and haunting these tales are."--Elizabeth Hand (from her introduction)

One of the most influential practitioners of American horror, H.P. Lovecraft inspired the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker. As he perfected his mastery of the macabre, his works developed from seminal fragments into acknowledged masterpieces of terror. This volume traces his chilling career and includes:

• Imprisoned With the Pharaohs -- Houdini seeks to reveal the demons that inhabit the Egyptian night.
• At the Mountains of Madness -- An unsuspecting expedition uncovers a city of untold terror, buried beneath an Antarctic wasteland.
• Herbert West: Reanimator -- Mad experiments yield hideous results in this, the inspiration for the cult film Re-Animator.
• Cool Air -- An icy apartment hides secrets no man dares unlock.
• The Terrible Old Man -- The intruders seek a fortune but find only death!

AND TWENTY-FOUR MORE BLOOD-CHILLING TALES!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Man Who Loved His Craft - (1996) - essay by Barbara Hambly
• Early Tales - (1996) - essay by uncredited
• The Beast in the Cave - (1918) - short story
• The Alchemist - (1916) - short story
• Poetry and the Gods - (1920) - short story by Anna Helen Crofts and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Street - (1920) - short story
• The Transition of Juan Romero - (1919) - short story
• The Book - (1938) - short fiction
• Dagon - (1919) - short story
• The Tomb - (1922) - short story
• Memory - (1923) - poem
• The White Ship - [Dream Cycle] - (1919) - short story
• Arthur Jermyn - (1935) - short story
• The Temple - (1925) - short story
• The Terrible Old Man - (1921) - short story
• The Crawling Chaos - (1921) - short story by Winifred V. Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Tree - (1921) - short story
• The Moon-Bog - (1926) - short story
• Herbert West: Reanimator - [Herbert West: Reanimator Universe] - (1922) - novelette
• The Lurking Fear - (1928) - novelette
• The Festival - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1925) - short story
• The Unnamable - [Randolph Carter] - (1925) - short story
• Imprisoned with the Pharaohs - (1924) - novelette
• The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
• He - (1926) - short story
• The Horror at Red Hook - (1927) - novelette
• Cool Air - (1928) - short story
• Nathicana - (1927) - poem
• At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
• In the Walls of Eryx - (1939) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling
• The Evil Clergyman - (1939) - short story

Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti's first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris's Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: "Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs."

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Songs of a Dead Dreamer) - (1985) - essay by Ramsey Campbell
• 3 - The Frolic - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 19 - Les Fleurs - (1981) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 28 - Alice's Last Adventure - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 49 - Dream of a Mannikin - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 66 - The Chymist - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 1] - (1981) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 79 - Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 2] - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 90 - Eye of the Lynx - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 3] - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 100 - Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story - (1985) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti
• 125 - The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise: A Tale of Possession in Old Grosse Pointe - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 135 - The Lost Art of Twilight - (1986) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 155 - The Troubles of Dr. Thoss - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 168 - Masquerade of a Dead Sword: A Tragedie - (1986) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti (variant of Masquerade of a Dead Sword)
• 191 - Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 202 - Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 213 - Dr. Locrian's Asylum - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 224 - The Sect of the Idiot - [Azathoth] - (1988) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 236 - The Greater Festival of Masks - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 244 - The Music of the Moon - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 253 - The Journal of J. P. Drapeau - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 260 - Vastarien - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti

His father saw them--and built a shrine to them with The Wandering Dark, an immersive horror experience that the whole family operates.

His practical mother has caught glimpses of terrors but refuses to believe--too focused on keeping the family from falling apart.

And his eldest sister, the dramatic and vulnerable Sydney, won't admit to seeing anything but the beckoning glow of the spotlight... until it swallows her up.

Noah Turner sees monsters. But, unlike his family, Noah chooses to let them in.

Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organization and this person wants her dead.

As Myfanwy battles to save herself, she encounters a person with four bodies, a woman who can enter her dreams, children transformed into deadly fighters, and an unimaginably vast conspiracy.

Suspenseful and hilarious, THE ROOK is an outrageously inventive debut for readers who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime.

Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder: Locke and Key. Written by Hill and featuring astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez, Locke and Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them... and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all...

Clark Ashton Smith's influential Zothique sequence of stories, the majority of which were orignally published during the 1930s, collected in a signle volume. Number 16 in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter.

Contents:

• About Zothique, and Clark Ashton Smith: When the World Grows Old - essay by Lin Carter
• Map of Zothique
• Zothique (1951 poem)
• Xeethra (1934)
• Necromancy in Naat (1936)
• The Empire of the Necromancers (1932)
• The Master of the Crabs (1948)
• The Death of Ilalotha (1937)
• The Weaver in the Vault (1934)
• The Witchcraft of Ulua (1934)
• The Charnel God (1934)
• The Dark Eidolon (1935)
• Morthylla (1953)
• The Black Abbot of Puthuum (1936)
• The Tomb-Spawn (1934)
• The Last Hieroglyph (1935)
• The Isle of the Torturers (1933)
• The Garden of Adompha (1938)
• The Voyage of King Euvoran (1933)
• Epilogue: The Sequence of the Zothique Tales - essay by Lin Carter

To the long tradition of eldritch horror pioneered and refined by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti, comes Laird Barron, an author whose literary voice invokes the grotesque, the devilish, and the perverse with rare intensity and astonishing craftsmanship. Collected here for the first time are nine terrifying tales of cosmic horror, including the World Fantasy Award-nominated novella "The Imago Sequence," the International Horror Guild Award-nominated "Proboscis," and the never-before published "Procession of the Black Sloth." Together, these stories, each a masterstroke of craft and imaginative irony, form a shocking cycle of distorted evolution, encroaching chaos, and ravenous insectoid hive-minds hidden just beneath the seemingly benign surface of the Earth.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Old Virginia - (2003) - novelette
• 19 - Shiva, Open Your Eye - (2001) - short story
• 31 - Procession of the Black Sloth - novella
• 77 - Bulldozer - (2004) - novelette
• 101 - Proboscis - (2005) - novelette
• 119 - Hallucigenia - (2006) - novella
• 169 - Parallax - (2005) - short story
• 189 - The Royal Zoo Is Closed - (2006) - short story
• 199 - The Imago Sequence - (2005) - novella

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

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger and more consuming by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes...

Twelve soul-chilling stories by the master of horror will leave you shivering in your boots and afraid to go out in the night. Only H.P. Lovecraft can send your heart racing faster than it's ever gone before. And here are the stories to prove it.

Table of Contents:

• The Lurking Fear - (1923)
• The Colour Out of Space - (1927)
• The Nameless City - (1921)
• Pickman's Model - (1927)
• Arthur Jermyn - (1935) - (variant of The White Ape 1920)
• The Unnamable - (1925)
• The Call of Cthulhu - (1928)
• The Moon-Bog - (1926)
• Cool Air - (1928)
• The Hound - (1924)
• The Shunned House - (1928)

In the degenerate, unliked backwater of Dunwich, Wilbur Whately, a most unusual child, is born. Of unnatural parentage, he grows at an uncanny pace to an unsettling height, but the boy's arrival simply precedes that of a true horror: one of the Old Ones, that forces the people of the town to hole up by night.

The Dunwich Horror and Others contains the following tales:

• H. P. Lovecraft and His Work by August Derleth
• In the Vault
• Pickman's Model
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Outsider
• The Colour out of Space
• The Music of Erich Zann
• The Haunter of the Dark
• The Picture in the House
• The Call of Cthulhu
• The Dunwich Horror
• Cool Air
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• The Terrible Old Man
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth
• The Shadow Out of Time

Table of Contents:

• By Way of Introduction (Beyond the Wall of Sleep) - essay by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei
• Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity - essay by H. P. Lovecraft
• The Commonplace Book - (1938) - essay by H. P. Lovecraft (variant of Commonplace Book)
• History and Chronology of the Necronomicon - short fiction (variant of History of the Necronomicon 1938)
• Memory - (1923) - poem
• What the Moon Brings -(1922) - poem
• Nyarlathotep - (1920) - poem
• Ex Oblivione - (1921) - poem
• The Tree - (1921) - short story
• The Other Gods - (1933) - short story
• The Quest of Iranon - (1935) - short story
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath - (1920) - short story
• The White Ship - (1919) - short story
• From Beyond - (1934) - short story
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep - (1919) - short story
• The Unnamable - (1925) - short story
• The Hound - (1924) - short story
• The Moon-Bog - (1926) - short story
• The Evil Clergyman - (1939) - short story
• Herbert West--Reanimator - (1922) - novelette (variant of Herbert West: Reanimator)
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - novella
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - novel
• The Crawling Chaos - (1921) - short story by Winifred V. Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft [as by H. P. Lovecraft and Elizabeth Berkeley ]
• The Green Meadow - (1918) - short story by Winifred V. Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft [as by H. P. Lovecraft and Elizabeth Berkeley ]
• The Curse of Yig - short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop [as by Zealia Brown-Reed ]
• The Horror in the Museum - (1933) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald [as by Hazel Heald ]
• Out of the Eons - (1935) - novelette by Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Hazel Heald ]
• The Mound - novella by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop [as by Zealia Brown-Reed ]
• The Diary of Alonzo Typer - (1938) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and William Lumley [as by William Lumley ]
• The Challenge from Beyond - (1935) - short story by H. P. Lovecraft and C. L. Moore and A. Merritt and Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long [as by H. P. Lovecraft and C. L. Moore and A. Merritt and Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long, Jr. ]
• In the Walls of Eryx - (1939) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling
• Ibid - (1938) - short story
• Sweet Ermengarde - short story
• Providence - (1924) - poem
• On a Grecian Colonnade in a Park - (1920) - poem
• Old Christmas - (1918) - poem
• New England Fallen - poem
• On a New England Village Seen by Moonlight - (1915) - poem
• Astrophobos - (1918) - poem
• Sunset - (1917) - poem
• A Year Off - poem
• A Summer Sunset and Evening - (1937) - poem
• To Mistress Sophia Simple, Queen of the Cinema - (1919) - poem
• The Ancient Track - (1930) - poem
• The Eidolon - (1918) - poem
• The Nightmare Lake - (1919) - poem
• The Outpost - (1930) - poem
• The Rutted Road - (1917) - poem
• The Wood - (1929) - poem
• Hallowe'en in a Suburb - (1926) - poem
• Primavera - (1925) - poem
• October - (1920) - poem
• To a Dreamer - (1921) - poem
• Despair - (1919) - poem
• Nemesis - (1918) - poem
• Psychopompos - (1919) - poem
• The Book - (1934) - poem
• Pursuit - (1934) - poem
• The Key - (1935) - poem
• Recognition - (1936) - poem
• Homecoming - (1935) - poem
• The Lamp - (1931) - poem
• Zaman's Hill - (1934) - poem
• The Port - (1930) - poem
• The Courtyard - (1930) - poem
• The Pigeon-Flyers - poem
• The Well - (1930) - poem
• The Howler - (1932) - poem
• Hesperia - (1930) - poem
• Star-Winds - (1930) - poem
• Antarktos - (1930) - poem
• The Window - (1931) - poem
• A Memory - poem
• The Gardens of Yin - (1932) - poem
• The Bells - (1930) - poem
• Night-Gaunts - (1936) - poem
• Nyarlathotep - (1931) - poem
• Azathoth - (1931) - poem
• Mirage - (1931) - poem
• The Canal - (1932) - poem
• The Familiars - (1930) - poem
• The Elder Pharos - (1931) - poem
• Expectancy - poem
• Nostalgia - (1930) - poem
• Background - (1930) - poem
• The Dweller - (1930) - poem
• Alienation - (1931) - poem
• Harbour Whistles - (1930) - poem
• Recapture - (1930) - poem
• Evening Star - poem
• Continuity - (1936) - poem
• Yule Horror - (1926) - poem (variant of Festival 1925)
• 408 - To Mr. Finlay, Upon His Drawing for Mr. Bloch's Tale, "The Faceless God" - (1937) - poem (variant of To Virgil Finlay: Upon His Drawing for Robert Bloch's Tale, "The Faceless God")
• To Clark Ashton Smith, Esq., Upon His Phantastick Tales, Verses, Pictures, and Sculptures - (1938) - poem (variant of To Clark Ashton Smith)
• Where Once Poe Walked - (1937) - poem
• Christmas Greeting to Mrs. Phillips Gamwell--1925 - (1925) - poem
• Brick Row - (1930) - poem
• The Messenger - (1938) - poem
• The Cthulhu Mythology: A Glossary - (1942) - essay by Francis T. Laney
• An Appreciation of H. P. Lovecraft - essay by W. Paul Cook

K. kept feeling that he had lost himself, or was further away in a strange land than anyone had ever been before'

A remote village covered almost permanently in snow and dominated by a castle and its staff of dictatorial, sexually predatory bureaucrats - this is the setting for Kafka's story about a man seeking both acceptance in the village and access to the castle. Kafka breaks new ground in evoking a dense village community fraught with tensions, and recounting an often poignant, occasionally farcical love-affair. He also explores the relation between the individual and power, and asks why the villagers so readily submit to an authority which may exist only in their collective imagination.

Published only after Kafka's death, The Castle appeared in the same decade as modernist masterpieces by Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Mann and Proust, and is among the central works of modern literature.

One of the great works of the twentieth century, Kafka's The Trial has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure. One of the iconic figures of modern world literature, Kafka writes about universal problems of guilt, responsibility, and freedom. He offers no solutions, but provokes his readers to arrive at meanings of their own.

He is not to open the door which leads to the strange time and place, nor to invite Him Who lurks at the threshold..." went the warning in the old family manuscript that Ambrose Dewart discovered when he returned to his ancestral home in the deep woods of rural Massachusetts. Dewart's investigations into his family's sinister past eventually lead to the unspeakable revelations of The Great Old Ones who wait on the boundaries of space and time for someone to summon them to earth.

Acclaimed cult horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's notes and outlines for this tale of uncanny terror were completed by August Derleth, his friend and future publisher. Of the many Lovecraft-Derleth "posthumous collaborations," The Lurker at the Threshold remains the most popular, having sold 50,000 copies in its previous edition alone.

Note: According to S. T. Joshi, of the novel's 50,000 words, only 1,200 were written by Lovecraft.

Contents:

• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - interior artwork by James McBryde
• vii - Preface (Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary) - essay
• 1 - Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book - shortstory (variant of Canon Alberic's Scrapbook 1895) [as by Montague Rhodes James, Litt.D. ]
• 29 - Lost Hearts - shortstory
• 53 - The Mezzotint - shortstory
• 81 - The Ash-Tree - shortstory
• 113 - Number 13 - shortstory [as by Montague Rhodes James, Litt.D. ]
• 149 - Count Magnus - shortstory
• 181 - 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' - novelette (variant of "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad")
• 227 - The Treasure of Abbot Thomas - shortstory

Contents:

• Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Outsider - essay by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei
• 3 - Dagon - (1919) - shortstory
• 7 - Polaris - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - shortstory
• 10 - Celephais - [Dream Cycle] - (1922) - shortstory (variant of Celephaïs)
• 14 - Hypnos - [Dream Cycle] - (1922) - shortstory
• 19 - The Cats of Ulthar - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - shortstory
• 22 - The Strange High House in the Mist - [Dream Cycle] - (1931) - shortstory
• 28 - The Statement of Randolph Carter - [Randolph Carter] - (1920) - shortstory
• 32 - The Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1929) - shortstory
• 40 - Through the Gates of the Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1934) - novelette and E. Hoffmann Price [as ]
• 63 - The Outsider - [Dream Cycle] - (1926) - shortstory
• 67 - The Music of Erich Zann - (1922) - shortstory
• 73 - The Rats in the Walls - (1924) - novelette
• 86 - Cool Air - (1928) - shortstory
• 92 - He - (1926) - shortstory
• 99 - The Horror at Red Hook - (1927) - novelette
• 113 - The Temple - (1925) - shortstory
• 121 - Arthur Jermyn - (1935) - shortstory (variant of The White Ape 1920)
• 127 - The Picture in the House - (1919) - shortstory
• 132 - The Festival - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1925) - shortstory
• 138 - The Terrible Old Man - (1921) - shortstory
• 140 - The Tomb - (1922) - shortstory
• 147 - The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
• 164 - In the Vault - (1925) - shortstory
• 170 - Pickman's Model - (1927) - shortstory
• 179 - The Haunter of the Dark - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• 194 - The Dreams in the Witch-House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
• 217 - The Thing on the Doorstep - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1937) - novelette
• 234 - The Nameless City - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1921) - shortstory
• 242 - The Lurking Fear - (1923) - shortstory
• 255 - The Call of Cthulhu - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1928) - novelette
• 274 - The Colour Out of Space - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1927) - novelette
• 292 - The Dunwich Horror - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - novelette
• 319 - The Whisperer in Darkness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1931) - novella
• 359 - The Shadow Over Innsmouth - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette
• 400 - The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella
• 442 - At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
• 507 - Supernatural Horror in Literature - [Supernatural Horror in Literature] - (1927) - essay

A complete short novel, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is a tale of terror unilke any other. The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless--or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures... and the carved stones tens of millions of years old... and, finally, the mind-blasting terror of the City of the Old Ones. Three additional strange tales, written as only H.P. Lovecraft can write, are also included in this macabre collection of the strange and the weird.

Table of Contents:

• At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
• The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
• The Dreams in the Witch-House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
• The Statement of Randolph Carter - [Randolph Carter] - (1920) - short story

"The dead don't talk. I don't know why." But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Meet Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz's dazzling New York Times bestseller, a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours.

Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it's different. A stranger comes to Pico Mundo, accompanied by a horde of hyena-like shades who herald an imminent catastrophe. Aided by his soul mate, Stormy Llewellyn, and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Odd will race against time to thwart the gathering evil. His account of these shattering hours, in which past and present, fate and destiny, converge, is a testament by which to live—an unforgettable fable for our time destined to rank among Dean Koontz's most enduring works.

Ebora was once a glorious city, defended by legendary warriors and celebrated in song. Now refugees from every corner of Sarn seek shelter within its crumbling walls, and the enemy that has poisoned their land won't lie dormant for long.

The deep-rooted connection that Tormalin, Noon and the scholar Vintage share with their Eboran war-beasts has kept them alive so far. But with Tor distracted, and his sister Hestillion hell-bent on bringing ruthless order to the next Jure'lia attack, the people of Sarn need all the help they can get.

Noon is no stranger to playing with fire and knows just where to recruit a new - and powerful - army. But even she underestimates the epic quest that is to come. It is a journey wrought with pain and sacrifice - a reckoning that will change the face of Sarn forever.

A caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she'd be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck--enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother--meant she'd get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre's body with drugs or withholding critical information to "ensure the smooth operation" of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre's falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash--and a lash. And Em has secrets, too...

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies--missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em's motivations--drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive--she must confront the ghosts in her own head.

But how come she can't shake the feeling she's being followed?

Fan favourite David Wong takes readers to a whole new level with this blistering sequel to the cult sensation John Dies at the End, now a movie starring Paul Giamatti. As the sequel opens, we find our heroes, David and John, again embroiled in a series of horrifying yet mind-bogglingly ridiculous events caused primarily by their own gross incompetence. The guys find that books and movies about zombies may have triggered a zombie apocalypse, despite a complete lack of zombies in the world. As they race against the clock to protect humanity from its own paranoia, they must ask themselves, who are the real monsters? Actually, that would be the shape-shifting horrors secretly taking over the world behind the scenes that, in the end, make John and Dave kind of wish it had been zombies after all. Hilarious, terrifying, engaging and wrenching, This Book Is Full of Spiders, the next thrilling installment, takes us for a wild ride with two slackers from the midwest who really have better things to do with their time than prevent the apocalypse.

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...

In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers.

Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

IF YOUR SHADOW DOESN'T MOVE WHEN YOU DO, THEN YOU'RE IN SHADOWLAND.

In a private school in New England, a friendship is forged between two boys that will change their lives for ever. As Del Nightingale and Tom Flanagan battle to survive the oppressive regime of bullying and terror overseen by the sadistic headmaster, Del introduces Tom to his world of magic tricks. But when they escape to spend the summer holiday together at Shadowland - the lakeside estate of Del's uncle - their hobby suddenly takes on much more sinister tones. After a summer exploring the mysteries and terrors of Shadowland nothing will be the same.

After attacking Devil's Reef in 1928, the U.S. government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to the desert, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, and they emerged without a past or a future.

The government that stole Aphra's life now needs her help. FBI agent Ron Spector believes that Communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets from Miskatonic University, secrets that could turn the Cold War hot in an instant, and hasten the end of the human race.

Aphra must return to the ruins of her home, gather scraps of her stolen history, and assemble a new family to face the darkness of human nature.

Includes bonus Aphra Marsh novelette "The Litany of Earth".

"If a ghost is seen, what is it interests me less than than what sees it?" Thus Algernon Blackwood describes his fascination with human beings' ability to sense invisible powers and stirrings in the universe, a fascination he developed most famously in his stories about mystical, ineffable encounters with nature. This collection, selected by renowned scholar of the supernatural, E. F. Bleiler, is an excellent sample of Blackwood's work, including 12 of his best ghost stories and a crime story as well. Blackwood is acknowledged today as the author who made the ghost story into a respectable literary form.

Contents:

• v - Introduction (The Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood) - (1973) - essay by Everett F. Bleiler [as by E. F. Bleiler]
• xii - Introduction (The Tales of Algernon Blackwood) - (1938) - essay by Algernon Blackwood
• 1 - The Willows - (1907) - novella by Algernon Blackwood
• 53 - Secret Worship - [John Silence] - (1908) - novelette by Algernon Blackwood
• 88 - Ancient Sorceries - [John Silence] - (1908) - novelette by Algernon Blackwood
• 137 - The Glamour of the Snow - (1911) - novelette by Algernon Blackwood
• 158 - The Wendigo - (1910) - novella by Algernon Blackwood
• 208 - The Other Wing - (1915) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• 228 - The Transfer - (1911) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• 240 - Ancient Lights - (1914) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• 247 - The Listener - (1907) - novelette by Algernon Blackwood
• 276 - The Empty House - [Jim Shorthouse] - (1906) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• 293 - Accessory Before the Fact - (1914) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• 300 - Keeping His Promise - (1906) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• 316 - Max Hensig - (1945) - shortfiction by Algernon Blackwood (variant of Max Hensig -- Bacteriologist and Murderer 1907)

This extraordinary collection features 13 spine-tingling tales of delicious terror by the unquestioned master of the horror genre, as well as portions of stories he never fully completed. Discover how the mind of H.P. Lovecraft worked, and how much his early and late stories tell about this intriguing writer.

Table of Contents:
• The Tomb • (1922) • short story
• The Festival • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1925) • short story
• Imprisoned with the Pharaohs • (1924) • novelette
• He • (1926) • short story
• The Horror at Red Hook • (1927) • novelette
• The Strange High House in the Mist • [Dream Cycle] • (1931) • short story
• In the Walls of Eryx • (1939) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling
• The Evil Clergyman • (1939) • short story
• The Beast in the Cave • (1918) • short story
• The Alchemist • (1916) • short story
• Poetry and the Gods • (1920) • short story by Anna Helen Crofts and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Street • (1920) • short story
• The Transition of Juan Romero • (1919) • short story
• Azathoth • [Dream Cycle] • (1922) • short story
• The Descendant • (1926) • short story
• The Book • (1938) • short fiction
• The Thing in the Moonlight • [Dream Cycle] • (1941) • short story
• Complete Chronology • (1937) • essay by H. P. Lovecraft

Walker Easterling is a retired actor turned successful screenwriter living in the Vienna of strong coffee, fascinating friends, and mysterious cafes. When he falls in love with Maris York, a beautiful artist who creates cities, his life becomes alive in fantastic and unsettling ways. As Walker's love for Maris grows, his life gets more and more bizarre-he discovers he can see things happening just before they happen, and at the same time feels an incredibly strong tug from his past-so a friend steers him to Venasque, an odd little man reputed to be a powerful shaman. Venasque helps Walker discover and unravel his many interconnected past lives, and it is soon clear that an unresolved conflict from these past lives has resurfaced, and now threatens to undo Walker and Maris's love.

A nameless terror surges through centuries to engulf the soul of Charles Dexter Ward, a brilliant New England antiquarian. Evil spirits, malefic gods whose memory lives on in whispered legends and fear-stricken superstitions, still lurk in vile catacombs beneath the surface of a blighted land. Ward is driven to unleash these loathsome horrors upon a defenceless world, possessed by the demonic shade of his ancestor Joseph Curwen, a warlock steeped in the blackest arts of magic. Now Ward too must master these obscene rituals, and pay the price in blood. Human blood.

The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward remains the only full-length work of fiction by HP Lovecraft, the master of 20th century horror. It has inspired such classic horror films as Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace and Lucio Fulci's The Beyond.

Gwynn and Raule are rebels on the run, with little in common except being on the losing side of a hard-fought war. Gwynn is a gunslinger from the north, a loner, a survivor... a killer. Raule is a wandering surgeon, a healer who still believes in just - and lost - causes. Bound by a desire to escape the ghosts of the past, together they flee to the teeming city of Ashamoil, where Raule plies her trade among the desperate and destitute, and Gwynn becomes bodyguard and assassin for the household of a corrupt magnate. There, in the saving and taking of lives, they find themselves immersed in a world where art infects life, dream and waking fuse, and splendid and frightening miracles begin to bloom...

The nightmare metropolis called the Well-Built City exists because the satanic genius and Master, Drachton Below, wished it so. And few within its confines hold the power of Physiognomist First Class Cley. With scalpels, calipers, and the other instruments of his science, Cley can divine good and evil, determine character and intelligence, uncover dark secrets and foretell a person's destiny, through the careful study of facial and bodily features.

But now the Master has ordered the great physiognomist out of the City on a seemingly trivial assignment into the rural hinterlands. but there, removed from Below's omnipresent scrutiny, even the most loyal servant of logic and order can fall prey to seductions of the flesh and spirit. And in this strange and unfamiliar place possessing terrors uniquely its own, there are stark truths awaiting the eminent Cley -- and inescapable revelations that could shatter his perceptions of himself, his profession, and his world.

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.

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from mythology as a wild beast, now considered extinct. Mikael takes the troll, whom he has named Pessi, back to his apartment. But Mikael does not discover that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for the ultra-hip Stalker jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the art director of the advertising agency, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden feelings.

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when -- or if -- it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

In his debut novel, literary alchemist Jeff VanderMeer takes us on an unforgettable journey, a triumph of the imagination that reveals the magical and mysterious city of Veniss through three intertwined voices. First, Nicholas, a would-be Living Artist, seeks to escape his demons in the shadowy underground–but in doing so makes a deal with the devil himself. In her fevered search for him, his twin sister, Nicola, spins her own unusual and hypnotic tale as she discovers the hidden secrets of the city. And finally, haunted by Nicola's sudden, mysterious disappearance and gripped by despair, Shadrach, Nicola's lover, embarks on a mythic journey to the nightmarish levels deep beneath the surface of the city to bring his love back to light. There he will find wonders beyond imagining…and horrors greater than the heart can bear.

By turns beautiful, horrifying, delicate, and powerful, Veniss Underground explores the limits of love, memory, and obsession in a landscape that defies the boundaries of the imagination. This special edition includes the short stories "The Sea, Mendeho, and Moonlight"; "Detectives and Cadavers"; and "A Heart for Lucretia" and the novella Balzac's War, offering a complete tour of the fantastic world of Veniss.

Exploring questions of guilt and responsibility, the second book in Thomas M. Disch's Supernatural Minnesota series, The M.D., is a satisfying mix of dark humor, biting social commentary, and terrifying horror. Given the power to heal or to harm by the Roman god Mercury through a magical staff, the caduceus, young Billy Michaels embarks on a lifelong journey of inflicting good and evil on those who cross his path. Wielding the caduceus, Billy, and later the grown-up, greedy physician William, can only cure in proportion to the amount of suffering he inflicts. From paralyzing his brother and mutilating schoolmates to wreaking a nationwide plague and running for-profit concentration camps for the sick, Michaels's powers spin quickly out of control.

Narrated with flamboyant intensity by one-time society figure Janice Shriek, and presenting a vivid gallery of strange characters and even stranger events, this is an account of the adventures of her brother Duncan, a historian obsessed with a doomed love affair and a dark secret that may kill or transform him. It involves, too, a war between rival publishing houses which threatens to change Ambergris forever, and rivalry with a marginalised race known as the "grey caps" who, armed with advanced fungal technologies, wait underground for their chance to recover the city that was once theirs. This story of the family Shriek is an exotic and colourful novel of love, life and death which brings to fruition the author's genius for capturing the truly weird.

Collection of early Lovecraft stories inspired by Lord Dunsany.

Table of Contents:

• About The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and H. P. Lovecraft: Through the Gates of Deeper Slumber - essay by Lin Carter
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - (1943) - novella
• Celephais - (1922) - shortstory
• The Silver Key - (1929) - shortstory
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key - (1934) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price
• The White Ship - (1919) - shortstory
• The Strange High House in the Mist - (1931) - shortstory
• Postscript About The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and H. P. Lovecraft - (1966) - poem by Lin Carter

The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George--publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide--and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite--heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus's ancestors--they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn--led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb--which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his--and the whole Turner clan's--destruction.

A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism--the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.

Something weird is happening to the Los Angeles freeways--phantom cars, lanes from nowhere, and sometimes unmarked offramps that give glimpses of a desolate desert highway--and Sebastian Vickery, disgraced ex-Secret Service agent, is a driver for a covert supernatural-evasion car service. But another government agency is using and perhaps causing the freeway anomalies, and their chief is determined to have Vickery killed because of something he learned years ago at a halted Presidential motorcade.

Reluctantly aided by Ingrid Castine, a member of that agency, and a homeless Mexican boy, and a woman who makes her living costumed as Supergirl on the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater, Vickery learns what legendary hell it is that the desert highway leads to--and when Castine deliberately drives into it to save him from capture, he must enter it himself to get her out.

Alternate Routes is a fast-paced supernatural adventure story that sweeps from the sun-blinded streets and labyrinthine freeways of Los Angeles to a horrifying other world out of Greek mythology, and Vickery and Castine must learn to abandon old loyalties and learn loyalty to each other in order to survive as the world goes mad around them.

In a world just parallel to ours exists a mystical realm known only as the Gardens. It's a place where feasts never end, games of croquet have devastating consequences, and teenagers are punished for growing up. For a select group of Masters, it's a decadent paradise where time stands still. But for those who serve them, it's a slow torture where their lives can be ended in a blink.

In a bid to escape before their youth betrays them, Dora and Thistle – best friends and confidants – set out on a remarkable journey through time and space. Traveling between their world and ours, they hunt for the one person who can grant them freedom. Along the way, they encounter a mysterious traveler who trades in favors and never forgets debts, a crossroads at the center of the universe, our own world on the brink of war, and a traveling troupe of actors with the ability to unlock the fabric of reality.

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.

In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success--but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in obscurity.

Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western--she's tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band.

Kris hits the road, hoping to reunite with the rest of her bandmates and confront the man who ruined her life. It's a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a celebrity rehab center to a music festival from hell. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul... where only a lone girl with a guitar can save us all.

From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, comes a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.

In the wake of their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline's return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted "House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills" that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us...

Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly eighty years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret of The Croning.

Kelly Link has been called "the most impressive writer of her generation" by Peter Straub and "a national treasure" by Neil Gaiman. Publications from Time to the Village Voice, from Locus to Salon, have lauded her as wildly talented and widely influential. In 2001, Link caused the literary world to catch its breath with Stranger Things Happen, one of the first great single-author collections of the new century. When it debuted, the book broke new ground in fantastic literature, and still reads as fresh, provocative, and dazzlingly original.

These stories are strange, quirky, smart -- and like no others. In "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose," a dead man sends letters to his living wife. In "The Specialist"s Hat," the rhymes and games of two children and their babysitter come to define, but not explain, a uniquely haunted house. In "The Girl Detective," the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers means a trip to the underworld. Among the eleven stories gathered here, readers will find dictators and extraterrestrials, an apocalyptic beauty pageant and two women named Louise.

Stories from Stranger Things Happen won Nebula, World Fantasy, and Tiptree Awards, and the volume garnered widespread acclaim. Link continues to earn accolades and find new readers with each story she publishes.

Table of Contents:

• Stranger Things Happen - interior artwork by Kathleen Jennings
• Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose - (1998) - shortstory
• Water Off a Black Dog's Back - (1995) - shortstory
• The Specialist's Hat - (1998) - shortstory
• Flying Lessons - (1996) - novelette
• Travels with the Snow Queen - (1996) - novelette
• Vanishing Act - (1996) - shortfiction
• Survivor's Ball, or, The Donner Party - (1998) - shortfiction (variant of Survivor's Ball, or The Donner Party)
• Shoe and Marriage - (2000) - shortfiction
• Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water - (2001) - shortstory
• Louise's Ghost - (2001) - novelette
• The Girl Detective - (1999) - novelette

Weber Gregston and Philip Strayhorn are best friends. They were at college together; they struggle as nobodies in Hollywood together. Weber soon becomes the most acclaimed director of his generation. Phil is unrecognised for years, and then makes a series of notorious horror films. He has everything; love, fame, money.

Then he takes a gun and blows his head off. Why? Weber hopes the answer is on the video tapes that Phil has left him. But when he plays them, he finds messages from beyond the grave. Step by step, Weber learns that the evil Phil portrayed in his last film is not just slasher gore. He has created something which threatens his friends' lives. And if Weber doesn't put it right, and fast, that evil will extend far beyond a handful of people in Hollywood.

Exploring love and cruelty, creation and ambition, A Child Across the Sky is a brilliant tale of wonder and fear. It is also one of the most important novels of fantastic fiction in recent years.

Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Miéville returns with his hugely anticipated Del Rey hardcover debut. With a fresh and fantastical band of characters, he carries us back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon-this time, decades later.

It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places.

In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope.

In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon's most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the iron council....

The bold originality that broke Miéville out as a new force of the genre is here once more in Iron Council: the voluminous, lyrical novel that is destined to seal his reputation as perhaps the edgiest mythmaker of the day.

Sturgeon and Hugo Award nominated novella.

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

As the novel opens, Titus, lord of Castle Gormenghast, has abdicated his throne. Born and brought to the edge of manhood in the huge, rotting castle, Titus rebels against the age-old ritual of which he is both lord and prisoner and rushes headlong into the world. From that moment forward, he is thrust into a stormy land of a dark imagination, where figures and landscapes loom up with force and vividness of a dream--or a nightmare.

This final installment in the Gormenghast trilogy is a fantastic triumph--a conquest awash in imagination, terror, and charm.

In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.

Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

North America 5000 Years after the Death. Part two of Hiero's Journey scatters Hiero and his band of compatriots across the face of the continent. Hiero will face capture by the unclean, death by dehydration in the deserts of death, vicious attacks by murderous, mutated animals, and the most devastating terror of all... Hiero's loss of his unparalleled mental powers. He and his allies will be tested to the very limits of their abilities. They are bolstered only by a fierce determination to defeat the Unclean. It is that determination upon which their survival depends, and which must bring victory in their ultimate confrontation with the unclean if the remnants of civilization are to survive.

Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got six.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

Abalone, Arizona, is a sleepy southwestern town whose chief concerns are boredom and surviving the Great Depression--that is, until the circus of Dr. Lao arrives and immensely and irrevocably changes the lives of everyone drawn to its tents.

Expecting a sideshow spectacle, the citizens of Abalone instead confront and learn profound lessons from the mythical made real--a chimera, a Medusa, a talking sphinx, a sea serpent, witches, the Hound of the Hedges, a werewolf, a mermaid, an ancient god, and the elusive, ever-changing Dr. Lao himself. The circus unfolds, spinning magical, dark strands that ensnare the town's populace: the sea serpent's tale shatters love's illusions; the fortune-teller's shocking pronouncements toll the tedium and secret dread of every person's life; sensual undercurrents pour forth for men and women alike; and the dead walk again.

Dazzling and macabre, literary and philosophical, The Circus of Dr. Lao has been acclaimed as a masterpiece of speculative fiction and influenced such writers as Ray Bradbury.

Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and France's Grand Prize for Fantasy

From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi--a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café--collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he's created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive--first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path.

The state took Aphra away from Innsmouth. They took her history, her home, her family, her god. They tried to take the sea. Now, years later, when she is just beginning to rebuild a life, an agent of that government intrudes on her life again, with an offer she wishes she could refuse. "The Litany of Earth" is a dark fantasy story inspired by the Lovecraft mythos.

This short story can also be found in the anthologies New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird (2015), edited by Paula Guran, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com, or listen to a podcast of this story at Drabblecast.

Vaudeville: mad, mercenary, dreamy, and absurd, a world of clashing cultures and ferocious showmanship and wickedly delightful deceptions.

But sixteen-year-old pianist George Carole has joined vaudeville for one reason only: to find the man he suspects to be his father, the great Heironomo Silenus. Yet as he chases down his father's troupe, he begins to understand that their performances are strange even for vaudeville: for wherever they happen to tour, the very nature of the world seems to change.

Because there is a secret within Silenus's show so ancient and dangerous that it has won him many powerful enemies. And it's not until after he joins them that George realizes the troupe is not simply touring: they are running for their lives.

And soon... he is as well.

"[Lovecraft's] dream fantasy works are as terrifying and haunting as his tales of horror and the macabre. A master craftsman, Lovecraft brings compelling visions of nightmarish fear, invisible worlds and the demons of the unconscious. If one author truly represents the very best in American literary horror, it is H. P. Lovecraft."
--John Carpenter, Director of At the Mouth of Madness, Halloween, and Christine

This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H. P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including some of his most fantastic tales:

• THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH--Hate, genocide, and a deadly curse consume the land of Mnar.
• THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER--"You fool, Warren is DEAD!"
• THE NAMELESS CITY--Death lies beneath the shifting sands, in a story linking the Dream Cycle with the legendary Cthulhu Mythos.
• THE CATS OF ULTHAR--In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat... and woe unto any who tries.
• THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH--The epic nightmare adventure with tendrils stretching throughout the entire Dream Cycle.
• AND TWENTY MORE TALES OF SURREAL TERROR

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Concerning Dreams and Nightmares- (1995)- essay by Neil Gaiman
• Azathoth- [Dream Cycle]- (1922)- short story
• The Descendant- (1926)- short story
• The Thing in the Moonlight- [Dream Cycle]- (1941)- short story
• Polaris- [Dream Cycle]- (1920)- short story
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep- (1919)- short story
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath- [Dream Cycle]- (1920)- short story
• The Statement of Randolph Carter- [Randolph Carter]- (1920)- short story
• The Cats of Ulthar- [Dream Cycle]- (1920)- short story
• Celephais- [Dream Cycle]- (1922)- short story
• From Beyond- [Dream Cycle]- (1934)- short story
• Nyarlathotep- [Dream Cycle]- (1920)- short fiction
• The Nameless City- [Cthulhu Mythos]- (1921)- short story
• The Other Gods- [Dream Cycle]- (1933)- short story
• Ex Oblivione- [Dream Cycle]- (1921)- poem
• The Quest of Iranon- [Dream Cycle]- (1935)- short story
• The Hound- [Cthulhu Mythos]- (1924)- short story
• Hypnos- [Dream Cycle]- (1922)- short story
• What the Moon Brings- [Dream Cycle]- (1922)- poem
• Pickman's Model- (1927)- short story
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath- [Randolph Carter]- (1943)- novella
• The Silver Key- [Randolph Carter]- (1929)- short story
• The Strange High House in the Mist- [Dream Cycle]- (1931)- short story
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward- [Dream Cycle]- (1943)- novel
• The Dreams in the Witch-House- [Cthulhu Mythos]- (1933)- novelette
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key- [Randolph Carter]- (1934)- novelette

Arthur Machen (1863-1947), popular Welsh writer of the bizarre and fantastic, created some of the finest horror stories ever written. On the surface, everything appears normal and cheerful in this bustling suburb of neatly laid out homes and well-trimmed hedges. But nothing is really as it seems. For in this world of impostors, conspiracies combine with dark forces to veil a once-ordinary London neighborhood in a cloud of mystery and fear.

A masterpiece of Gothic horror and suspense that inspired such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, The Three Impostors is Machen's famous collection of "weird tales" — a string of shocking short stories woven together with a fine narrative thread. Rich with terror, adventure, satire, deception, and dreamlike fantasy, it is a classic of occult literature written by a stylistic master.

Every great city has a soul. A human avatar that embodies their city's heart and wields its magic. New York? She's got six.

But all is not well in the city that never sleeps. Though Brooklyn, Manny, Bronca, Venezia, Padmini, and Neek have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading--and destroying the entire universe in the process--the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.

Her city is under siege.

The zombies are coming back.

And all Nona wants is a birthday party.

In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona's not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger's body, and she's afraid she might have to give it back.

The whole city is falling to pieces. A monstrous blue sphere hangs on the horizon, ready to tear the planet apart. Blood of Eden forces have surrounded the last Cohort facility and wait for the Emperor Undying to come calling. Their leaders want Nona to be the weapon that will save them from the Nine Houses. Nona would prefer to live an ordinary life with the people she loves, with Pyrrha and Camilla and Palamedes, but she also knows that nothing lasts forever.

And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face...

As the November winds wail in ivied chimneys we are drawn into a Victorian Gothic atmosphere of menacing, sombre gloom and ebony shadows. Sheridan Le Fanu leaves us in no doubt that we are in for a feast of exciting drama, luring us into the intensely claustrophobic world of the nineteenth century sensational novel. Le Fanu is amongst the top-notch exponents of the creepy, the criminal and the oppressive. In this tale of the orphaned teenage heiress Maud Ruthyn, fearing for her life at the hands of her sinister uncle, he has created a rattling good plot with the depth of a social novel and the power of high romance.

The Night Land is a classic horror novel by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. As a work of fantasy it belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre. H. P. Lovecraft's described the novel as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written". According to critical consensus, in this work, despite his often laboured and clumsy language, Hodgson achieves a deep power of expression, which focuses on a sense not only of terror but of the ubiquity of potential terror, of the thinness of the invisible bound between the world of normality and an underlying reality for which humans are not suited.

In the distant future, the sun has burned out, plunging the world into perpetual twilight. All of the remaining humanity has dwindled to a single, eight-mile-high pyramid called The Last Redoubt. Horrific creatures have evolved that lurk in the darkness. After a second dying Lesser Redoubt is discovered, one man is determined to rescue its last surviving inhabitant, but that means traversing the unknown and terrifying Night Land.

HOPE HAS A PRICE

Nick Prasad has always enjoyed a quiet life in the shadow of his best friend, child prodigy and technological genius Joanna 'Johnny' Chambers. But all that is about to end.

When Johnny invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity.

From the oldest library in the world to the ruins of Nineveh, hunted at every turn, they will need to trust each other completely to survive...

STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.

A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona. Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation, but which haunts the Signalman.

In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible -- the Children of the Next Level -- and offers them something to believe in and a chance for transcendence. The future is coming and they will help to usher it in.

A day after the events at the ranch house which disturbed the Signalman so deeply that he and his government sought out help from 'other' sources, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory abruptly loses contact with NASA's interplanetary probe New Horizons. Something out beyond the orbit of Pluto has made contact.

And a woman floating outside of time looks to the future and the past for answers to what can save humanity.

The fierce, proud, and relentless commander of warriors, standing tall above her enemies and simmering with rage, Jirel bids farewell to the world of treacherous men and walks through a forbidden door into Hell itself in pursuit of freedom, justice, and revenge.

Table of Contents:

• Jirel Meets Magic (1935) - novelette
• Black God's Kiss (1934) - novelette
• Black God's Shadow (1934) - novelette
• The Dark Land (1936) - novelette
• Hellsgarde (1939) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• Dread - novelette by Clive Barker
• Hell's Event - novelette by Clive Barker
• Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament - novelette by Clive Barker
• The Skins of the Fathers - novelette by Clive Barker
• New Murders in the Rue Morgue - novelette by Clive Barker

From the creators of the wildly popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle to find ourselves...no matter where we live.

"Hypnotic and darkly funny.... Belongs to a particular strain of American gothic that encompasses The Twilight Zone, Stephen King and Twin Peaks, with a bit of Tremors thrown in."--The Guardian

Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.

Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "KING CITY" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.

Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.

Diane's search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: "KING CITY". It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures...if they can ever find it.

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old. Lost in the woods.

Trisha has only veered a little way off the path. But in her panic to get back to her family, she takes a turning that leads into the tangled undergrowth, deeper into the woods.

At first it's just the bugs, midges and mosquitoes. Then comes the hunger. For comfort she tunes her Walkman into broadcasts of the Red Sox baseball games and the performances of her hero Tom Gordon.

As darkness begins to fall and Trisha struggles for survival and a way out, she realises that she is not alone. There's something else in the woods--watching. Waiting...

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

Verity Fassbinder has her feet in two worlds.

The daughter of one human and one Weyrd parent, she has very little power herself, but does claim unusual strength - and the ability to walk between us and the other - as a couple of her talents. As such a rarity, she is charged with keeping the peace between both races, and ensuring the Weyrd remain hidden from us.

But now Sirens are dying, illegal wine made from the tears of human children is for sale - and in the hands of those Weyrd who hold with the old ways - and someone has released an unknown and terrifyingly destructive force on the streets of Brisbane.

And Verity must investigate - or risk ancient forces carving our world apart.

In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

A rundown apartment in Koreatown. A Los Angeles winter. A strung out, worn out, wrecked and used government agent is scraped up off the pavement, cleaned up, and reluctantly sent out into battle one last time.

Ellison Nicodemo has seen and done terrible things. She thought her only remaining quest was for oblivion. Then the Signalman comes calling. He wants to learn if she can stop the latest apocalypse. Ellison, once a unique and valuable asset, can barely remember why she ever fought the good fight.

Still, you don't say no to the Signalman, and the time has come to face her fears and the nightmare forces that almost destroyed her. Only Ellison can unleash the hound of Tindalos.

A dark and electrifying novel about addiction, fanaticism, and what might exist on the other side of life.

In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs--including Jamie's mother and beloved sister, Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.

Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age of thirteen, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from his family's horrific loss. In his mid-thirties--addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate--Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.

This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written. It's a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.

This novel is a revised edition of A Glass of Darkness (1956). It originally appeared in Satellite Science Fiction, December 1956. It was included in Ace Double D-249 (1957).

Yielding to a compulsion he can't explain, Ted Barton interrupts his vacation in order to visit the town of his birth, Millgate, Virginia. But upon entering the sleepy, isolated little hamlet, Ted is distraught to find that the place bears no resemblance to the one he left behind-and never did. He also discovers that in this Millgate Ted Barton died of scarlet fever when he was nine years old. Perhaps even more troubling is the fact that it is literally impossible to escape. Unable to leave, Ted struggles to find the reason for such disturbing incongruities, but before long, he finds himself in the midst of a struggle between good and evil that stretches far beyond the confines of the valley.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

TAINARON: Mail From Another City is the first American publication by the internationally acclaimed Finnish author, Leena Krohn. TAINARON consists of a series of letters sent beyond the sea from a city of insects. TAINARON is a book of changes. It speaks of metamorphoses that test all of nature from a flea to a star, from stone and grass to a human. The same irresistible force that gives us birth, also kills us. Nominated for the prestigious Finlandia prize, this is the perfect introduction to the work of a modern fabulist.

Christine was eating into his mind, burrowing into his unconscious.

Christine, blood-red, fat, and finned, was twenty. Her promise lay all in her past. Greedy and big, she was Arnie's obsession, a '58 Plymouth Fury. Broken down but not finished.

There was still power in her - a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting. A malign power that corroded the mind and turned ownership into possession.

After attending a séance, Maskull, a restless and rootless man, finds himself embarking on a journey to the planet Tormance, which orbits Arcturus. Alone, he wanders the startling landscape, open to a bewildering range of experiences from love to ritual murder, encountering new monsters at every turn, metamorphosing, constantly seeking the truth about the divinity known as Shaping, Surtur and Crystalman.

A Voyage to Arcturus is David Lindsay's masterpiece, an extraordinary imaginative tour de force.

Just as the Signalman stood and faced the void in Agents of Dreamland, so it falls to Ptolema, a chess piece in her agency's world-spanning game, to unravel what has become tangled and unknowable.

Something strange is happening on the shores of New England. Something stranger still is happening to the world itself, chaos unleashed, rational explanation slipped loose from the moorings of the known. Two rival agencies stare across the Void at one another. Two sisters, the deadly, sickened products of experiments going back decades, desperately evade their hunters.

An invisible war rages at the fringes of our world, with unimaginable consequences and Lovecraftian horrors that ripple centuries into the future.

This edition of Caitlín R. Kiernan's Black Helicopters is an expanded and completed version of the World Fantasy Award-nominated novella of the same name.

He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god.

But "he" is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years.

But Sylvia won't live forever, any more than any human does. And he's trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he's got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.

Award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier delivers a spellbinding, supernatural tale of love, memories, and human connection. All residents of the City have recently died, and they will remain in the City only as long as someone still living on Earth remembers them. On Earth, however, the population has been devastated by a terrible pandemic. Laura Byrd, isolated at an Antarctic research station, may be the only person to have survived the pandemic. But she's running out of time and supplies, and her memories are fading.

Hugo Award nominated novella.

In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a traumatic event. He tries - and fails - to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape.

When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over.

But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether?

Filled with beauty, terror and strangeness, This Census-Taker is a poignant and riveting exploration of memory and identity.

Nature abhors a straight line. The natural world is a place of curves and softened edges, of gentle mists and welcoming spirals. Nature remembers deviation; nature does not forgive.

For Harlowe Upton-Jones, life has never been a straight line. Shipped off to live with her paternal grandparents after a mysterious cult killed her mother and father, she has grown up chasing the question behind the curve, becoming part of a tight-knit teen detective agency. But "teen" is a limited time offer, and when her friends start looking for adult professions, it's up to Harlowe to find them one last case so that they can go out in a blaze of glory.

Welcome to Spindrift House.

The stories and legends surrounding the decrepit property are countless and contradictory, but one thing is clear: there are people willing to pay a great deal to determine the legal ownership of the house. When Harlowe and her friends agree to investigate the mystery behind the manor, they do so on the assumption that they'll be going down in history as the ones who determined who built Spindrift House--and why. The house has secrets. They have the skills. They have a plan. They have everything they need to solve the mystery.

Everything they need except for time. Because Spindrift House keeps its secrets for a reason, and it has no intention of letting them go.

Nature abhors a straight line.

Here's where the story bends.

The peaceful life of a village in Wiltshire is suddenly shattered by a disaster which strikes without reason or explanation, leaving behind it a trail of misery and horror. A yawning, bottomless crack spreads through the earth, out of which creeps a fog that resembles no other. Whatever it is, it must be controlled; for wherever it goes it leaves behind a trail of disaster as hideous as the tragedy that marked its entry into the world. The fog, quite simple, drives people insane.

Jennifer Mazden is the survivor of a wrecked marriage and she worries about the usual things in life - work, companionship and her future. But then strange things starts happenening to her and she becomes pregnant - from a dream. At that moment she struggles to take charge of her life.

It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

It's 2017 and angels and demons walk the earth. Once they were human; now they are unkin, transformed by the ancient machine-code language of reality itself. They seek The Book of All Hours, the mythical tome within which the blueprint for all reality is transcribed, which has been lost somewhere in the Vellum - the vast realm of eternity upon which our world is a mere scratch.

The Vellum, where the unkin are gathering for war.

The Vellum, where a fallen angel and a renegade devil are about to settle an age-old feud.

The Vellum, where the past, present, and future will collide with ancient worlds and myths.

And the Vellum will burn....

A thriller of war that never was--of survival in an impossible city--of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.

"Beauty will be convulsive...."

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer--and occult disciple--Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.

1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts--and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.

But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties--to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.

In a terraced city at the heart of the world, humans are mere underlings of the arrogant Rat-Lords. Men and women are confined to certain districts of the city, while the Rats are restricted to others by their own masters, the Decans. Incarnate in living rock, the thirty-six Lords of Heaven and Hell impose their divine will over Rats and humans alike through gargoyle acolytes, who in their hundreds of thousands wait to swoop down and devour any who oppose the god-daemons.

And opposition is growing.... For generations uncounted, human slaves were forced to build the mountainous Fane, but now the long-held dream of raising their own lost Temple has spurred the builders to revolt. Forbidden the knowledge to build for themselves, they plot to uncover the Masonic wisdom that has been lost for millennia - secrets that will free them from their rulers once and for all. But they need access to parts of the city denied them, and so they strike a deal with the Rat-Priest Plessiez, who has a grand scheme of his own.

Into this conspiracy step Prince Lucas of Candover, a student at the University of Crime, and no man's slave; Zari, a young Kadayan woman who is destined to become the living Memory of all that follows; and the White Crow, a woman whose powers are far greater than anyone suspects.

When a black hole materializes in the storage room down the hall from his apartment, poet and video store clerk Nicholas allows his curiosity to lead him into the depths of terror.

A young wife's new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page-turning first novel

In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings--the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.

As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder--luminous and new.

Professor James Lowry didn't believe in spirits, or witches, or demons. Not until a gentle spring evening when his hat disappeared, and suddenly he couldn't remember the last four hours of his life. Now, the quiet university town of Atworthy is changing - slightly at first, then faster and more frighteningly each time he tries to remember. Lowry is pursued by a dark, secret evil that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: If you find your hat you'll find your four hours. If you find your four hours then you will die...