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The Doll in the Garden: A Ghost Story

The eerie tale of a mischievous brother and sister who pretend their grandmother's Vermont inn is haunted and awaken the real spirits who inhabit the place...

Travis and his sister, Corey, can't resist a good trick. When they learn that their grandmother's quiet Vermont inn, where they're spending the summer, has a history of ghost sightings, they decide to do a little "haunting" of their own. Before long, their supernatural pranks have tourists flocking to the inn, and business booms.

But Travis and Corey soon find out that they aren't the only ghosts at Fox Hill Inn. Their thoughtless games have awakened something dangerous, something that should have stayed asleep. Can these siblings lay to rest the ghosts they've stirred?

The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall: A Ghost Story

The haunting tale of a mysterious doll discovered in a young girl's garden, and its owner, a girl from seventy years in the past, who wants it back...

A suspenseful story of unexpected connections between present and past. Ashley and her mother need their new apartment to work out, but everything Ashley does seems to upset the irritable and unforgiving landlady. When Ashley makes friends with the girl next door, Kristi, they uncover a wooden box containing a well-loved turn-of-the-century doll. Ashley wants to keep the doll for herself, but Kristi has other ideas. So does the doll's original owner, a girl who died decades ago, but whom Ashley meets when she follows a mysterious white cat through a hedge. Can Ashley bring peace to the girl and resolve her own present-day challenges?

The Girl in the Locked Room: A Ghost Story

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

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

A suspenseful, spine-chilling yarn of a girl imprisoned for more than a century, the terrifying events that put her there, and a friendship that crosses the boundary between past and present...

A family moves into an old, abandoned house. Jules's parents love the house, but Jules is frightened and feels a sense of foreboding. When she sees a pale face in an upstairs window, though, she can't stop wondering about the eerie presence on the top floor--in a room with a locked door. Could it be someone who lived in the house a century earlier?

Her fear replaced by fascination, Jules is determined to make contact with the mysterious figure and help unlock the door. Past and present intersect as she and her ghostly friend discover--and change--the fate of the family who lived in the house all those many years ago.

Took: A Ghost Story

Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story

Daniel doesn't believe the woods behind his new home are haunted by an evil witch and her terrifying beast. But then his little sister disappears, and it's up to him to find her...

They say that a ghost witch lives in the woods, up on the hill. They say her companion has a pig skull for a face and stands taller than a man, his skeleton gleaming in the moonlight. They say that the witch takes young girls, and no one ever sees them again.

Daniel doesn't believe the stories. He figures the kids on the bus are just trying to scare him since he's new. Still, he wishes his family had never moved here--their house is a wreck, Mom and Dad keep fighting, and his little sister, Erica, spends most of her time talking to her creepy doll.

But when Erica disappears into the woods one day, Daniel knows something is terribly wrong. Has she been "took"?

Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

A suspenseful yarn about two children who dislike their malicious younger stepsister, Heather--and tensions that escalate when Heather starts talking to a ghost named Helen...

In a chilling ghost story that is also an insightful family drama, Molly, 12, and her brother Michael, 10, are wary of their sneaky seven-year-old stepsister, Heather. Ever since they became a blended family, Heather has lied, tattled, and created tension between their parents.

Worst of all, Heather claims she has been talking to a ghost named Helen, and she warns Molly and Michael that Helen is coming for them. Molly feels certain Heather is getting herself into some kind of danger, but every time she tries to help, Heather maneuvers to get her into trouble. The whole family is at odds. It seems as if things can't get any worse. But they do--when Helen comes.

Virginia Hamilton

A beautiful ghost appears to a troubled teen and shows her the heartbreaking secrets of her family's past

Fifteen-year-old Teresa has fallen in love--with a ghost. The handsome man that she's passed on the street a few times captures her attention, and she thinks he notices her too. But when the man suddenly appears inside her home, hovering in the air and passing through solid furniture, Teresa realizes this isn't going to be a typical crush. The ghost is Brother Rush, a man tied to Teresa's past, who has come to show her the ways her life has special meaning, and that her problems at school and at home are not what they seem.

A Haunting on the Hill

Elizabeth Hand

Open the door...

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It's enormous, old, and ever-so eerie--the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.

Despite her own hesitations, Holly's girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house's peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds, disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift. All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone...

Florence and Giles

John Harding

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

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

The Travelling Grave and Other Stories

L. P. Hartley

Though best known for his classic novel of Edwardian childhood The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley was also a master of supernatural and macabre fiction, the best of which is collected in The Travelling Grave and Other Stories.

This volume demonstrates Hartley's versatility, ranging from traditional ghost stories like 'Feet Foremost' and 'The Cotillon' to the wickedly black humour of the horror masterpieces 'The Travelling Grave' and 'The Killing Bottle'. Originally published in 1948 and long out of print, this collection features twelve of Hartley's finest tales, presented in this edition with a new introduction by John Howard.

Table of Contents:

"A Visitor from Down Under"
"Podolo"
"Three, or Four, for Dinner"
"The Travelling Grave"
"Feet Foremost"
"The Cotillion"
"A Change of Ownership"
"The Thought"
"Conrad and the Dragon"
"The Island"
"Night Fears"
"The Killing Bottle"

Horrorstör

Grady Hendrix

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they'll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör comes packaged in the form of a glossy mail order catalog, complete with product illustrations, a home delivery order form, and a map of Orsk's labyrinthine showroom. It's "a treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living."--Kirkus Reviews.

The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story

Susan Hill

In the apartment of Oliver's old professor at Cambridge, there is a painting on the wall, a mysterious depiction of masked revelers at the Venice carnival. On this cold winter's night, the old professor has decided to reveal the painting's eerie secret. The dark art of the Venetian scene, instead of imitating life, has the power to entrap it. To stare into the painting is to play dangerously with the unseen demons it hides, and become the victim of its macabre beauty.

By the renowned storyteller Susan Hill--whose first ghost story, The Woman in Black, has run for eighteen years as a play in London's West End--here is a new take on a form that is fully classical and, in Hill's able hands, newly vital. The Man in the Picture is a haunting tale of loss, love, and the very basest fear of our beings.

The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder

William Hope Hodgson

Edited with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies

'I saw something terrible rising up through the middle of the 'defence'. It rose with a steady movement. I saw it pale and huge through the whirling funnel of cloud - a monstrous pallid snout rising out of that unknowable abyss. It rose higher and higher. Through a thinning of the cloud I saw one small eye... a pig's eye with a sort of vile understanding shining at the back of it. Thomas Carnacki is a ghost finder, an Edwardian psychic detective, investigating a wide range of terrifying hauntings presented in the nine stories in this complete collection of his adventures. Encountering such spine-chilling phenomena as 'The Whistling Room', the life-threatening dangers of the phantom steed in 'The Horse of the Invisible' and the demons from the outside world in 'The Hog', Carnacki is constantly challenged by spiritual forces beyond our knowledge. To complicate matters, he encounters human skullduggery also. Armed with a camera, his Electric Pentacle and various ancient tomes on magic, Carnacki faces the various dangers his supernatural investigations present with great courage. These exciting and frightening stories have long been out of print. Now readers can thrill to them again in this new Wordsworth series.

The original edition was published in 1913. The title story is also known as "The House Among the Laurels".

Scavengers

Robert Hood

Mike Crowe doesn't believe in ghosts, but it seems there's one ghost that believes in him. Can he escape the attention of a psychopath long enough to help her?

A not-exactly legal PI, Crowe is blackmailed into tracking down a serial killer known as The Scavenger. At the same time, he finds himself increasingly plagued by visions - and eventually visitations - of a young girl he failed to save from being murdered a decade before.

Are these things connected?

Crowe must scavenge through the debris of a world going to pieces around him - at first just to survive and then to find the answers to questions he'd rather hadn't been asked.

Ask for Andrea

Noelle West Ihli

James Carson has gotten away with murder three times.

The only thing that might stop him from killing again? The three women he murdered.

He hunted them online, masquerading as an eligible bachelor. Then he played the perfect gentleman, a thick layer of charm and a thousand-watt smile hiding the fact that his first dates end in shallow graves.

What James doesn't know is that his three victims have found each other. And that they're coming for him.

Brecia, Meghan, and Skye might be dead, but they're not gone. And they won't rest until they find a way to keep him from killing again.

The haunt is on.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a short story by American author Washington Irving, contained in his collection of 34 essays and short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Written while Irving was living abroad in Birmingham, England, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was first published in 1820. Along with Irving's companion piece Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

The Broken Ones

Stephen M. Irwin

The world is in chaos

Three years ago, on what's become known as Grey Wednesday, the world became haunted. Everyone suddenly acquired a personal ghost - a friend, a lost sibling, an ex-spouse, an enemy - which is unshakable as a shadow. These peering, silent phantoms have driven millions to despair, and the global economy is in freefall. Detective Oscar Mariani's ghost is a boy he doesn't recognise. When the boy appeared on Grey Wednesday in front of Oscar's car, the detective swerved, striking a young girl who now lies broken in a decrepit nursing home.

Now, Oscar heads a failing unit that investigates ghost murders - killings that perpetrators claim their ghosts drove them to commit. But the discovery of murdered teenage girls, mutilated with arcane and disturbing symbols, shakes Oscar into new action. As he uncovers clues, he loses old friends and makes new enemies. As Oscar closes in on the killer the trail leads into the highest levels of society, and his own life falls into peril. Oscar's only chance to survive rests with the dead boy that haunts him and who seems to have a deadly secret of his own to impart.

Riddance: Or: The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children

Shelley Jackson

Eleven-year-old Jane Grandison, tormented by her stutter, sits in the back seat of a car, letter in hand inviting her to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children. Founded in 1890 by Headmistress Sybil Joines, the school--at first glance--is a sanctuary for children seeking to cure their speech impediments. Inspired by her haunted and tragic childhood, the Headmistress has other ideas.

Pioneering the field of necrophysics, the Headmistress harnesses the "gift" she and her students possess. Through their stutters, together they have the ability to channel ghostly voices communicating from the land of the dead, a realm the Headmistress herself visits at will. Things change for the school and the Headmistress when a student disappears, attracting attention from parents and police alike.

Set in the overlapping worlds of the living and the dead, Shelley Jackson's Riddance is an illuminated novel told through theoretical writings in necrophysics, the Headmistress's dispatches from the land of the dead, and Jane's evolving life as Joines's new stenographer and central figure in the Vocational School's mysterious present, as well as its future.

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson

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

Ghost Stories of Henry James

Henry James

With an Introduction and Notes by Martin Scofield, University of Kent at Canterbury

Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. His stories explore the region which lies between the supernatural or straightforwardly marvellous and the darker areas of the human psyche. This edition includes all ten of his ghost stories, and as such is the fullest collection currently available. The stories range widely in tone and type. They include 'The Jolly Corner', a compelling story of psychological doubling; 'Owen Wingrave', which is also a subtle parable of military tradition; 'The Friends of the Friends', a strange story of uncanny love; and 'The Private Life', which finds a shrewd, high comedy in its ghostly theme. The volume also includes James's great novella The Turn of the Screw , perhaps the most ambiguous and disturbing ghost story ever written.

Introduction (2001) - essay by Martin Scofield
The Romance of Certain Old Clothes - (1868) - short story
The Ghostly Rental - (1876) - novelette
Sir Edmund Orme - (1891) - novelette
The Private Life - (1892) - novelette
Owen Wingrave - (1892) - novelette
The Friends of the Friends - (1896) - novelette
The Turn of the Screw - (1898) - novella
The Real Right Thing - (1899) - short story
The Third Person - (1900) - novelette
The Jolly Corner - (1908) - novelette

The Turn of the Screw

Henry James

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

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

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

Collected Ghost Stories

M. R. James

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

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

M. R. James

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

The House on Cold Hill

Peter James

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

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

The Grip of It

Jac Jemc

Touring their prospective suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. "That's just the house settling," the real estate agent assures them with a smile. He is wrong.

The move--prompted by James's penchant for gambling and his general inability to keep his impulses in check--is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to start afresh. But this house, which sits between a lake and a forest, has its own plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to establish a sense of normalcy, the home and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The framework-- claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms--becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall--contracting, expanding--and map themselves onto Julie's body in the form of painful, grisly bruises.

Like the house that torments the troubled married couple living within its walls, The Grip of It oozes with palpable terror and skin-prickling dread. Its architect, Jac Jemc, meticulously traces Julie and James's unsettling journey through the depths of their new home as they fight to free themselves from its crushing grip.

After-Supper Ghost Stories: and Other Tales

Jerome K. Jerome

As they relax after dinner on Christmas Eve, the members of a family and their guests turn to telling ghost stories. These ghoulish accounts range from the melancholy to the macabre, and get increasingly bizarre as the ghosts leap out of the tales and make an appearance in the family's home. Fact and fiction, the real and unreal collide, until the reader is not sure who is haunting whom.

A masterful work of comic horror, Jerome K. Jerome's After-Supper Ghost Stories is a witty look at why Christmas Eve is so perfect for ghost stories and why ghosts love the Yuletide season.

A Haunting in the Arctic: A Novel

C. J. Cooke

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

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

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

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

Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead

Stephen Jones

THE RESTLESS DEAD

Life is over but the dead live on. Within the drafty rooms of an old house, a tarnished locket tumbles to the floor. The haunted souls of the dearly departed are still among us. Ghosts, phantoms, revenants, lost souls - all these troubled spirits have unfinished business on this side of the veil. Doomed to seek out mortal answers, unable to rest until in death, they accomplish what they failed to achieve in life. This hair-raising collection of haunted tales brings together both new writers and celebrated masters - Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Richard Matheson, Michael Marshall Smith and others - for the ultimate collection from beyond the grave. Their characters are spirits, without bodies but still floating in our world. Some are motivated by love, others by loss or guilt. But sometimes they are driven by much stronger emotions, menacing and diabolical motives that take us up from our reading to check the hallways, secure the locks and question how firmly anchored we ourselves are to our world.

The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones

Four American Indian men from the Blackfeet Nation, who were childhood friends, find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives, against an entity that wants to exact revenge upon them for what they did during an elk hunt ten years earlier by killing them, their families, and friends.

Depart, Depart!

Sim Kern

When an unprecedented hurricane devastates the city of Houston, Noah Mishner finds shelter in the Dallas Mavericks' basketball arena. Though he finds community among other queer refugees, Noah fears his trans and Jewish identities put him at risk with certain "capital-T" Texans. His fears take form when he starts seeing visions of his great-grandfather Abe, who fled Nazi Germany as a boy. As the climate crisis intensifies and conditions in the shelter deteriorate, Abe's ghost grows more powerful. Ultimately, Noah must decide whether he can trust his ancestor -- and whether he's willing to sacrifice his identity and community in order to survive.

Depart, Depart! grapples with intersections of social justice and climate change, asking readers to consider how they'll react when the world changes in an instant. Who will we turn to? What will we take with us, and what will we have to leave behind? In our rapidly changing world, these are questions we grapple with. Focusing on finding and supporting community after disaster, Depart, Depart! is a story for these uncertain times.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth

Cassandra Khaw

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It's the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding. A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested.

But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart. And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

The Red Tree

Caitlín R. Kiernan

Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant-a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago...

20th Century Ghosts

Joe Hill

Imogene is young, beautiful... and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945....

Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....

John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead....

Nolan knows but can never tell what really happened in the summer of '77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds....

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Christopher Golden
Scheherazade's Typewriter - shortstory
Best New Horror - (2005) - shortstory
20th Century Ghost - (2002) - shortstory
Pop Art - (2001) - novelette
You Will Hear the Locust Sing - (2004) - shortstory
Abraham's Boys - (2004) - shortstory
Better Than Home - (1999) - novelette
The Black Phone - (2004) - shortstory
In The Rundown - (2005) - shortstory
The Cape - (2005) - shortstory
Last Breath - (2005) - shortstory
Dead-Wood - (2005) - shortstory
The Widow's Breakfast - (2002) - shortstory
My Father's Mask - novelette
Voluntary Commital - (2005) - novella

Full Throttle

Joe Hill

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass,” one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.

Featuring two previously unpublished stories, and a brace of shocking chillers, Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Who's Your Daddy? - essay by Joe Hill
Throttle - novelette by Joe Hill and Stephen King
Dark Carousel
Wolverton Station
By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain
Faun
Late Returns
All I Care About Is You
Thumbprint
The Devil on the Staircase
Twittering from the Circus of the Dead
Mums
In the Tall Grass - novella by Joe Hill and Stephen King
You Are Released
Story Notes and Acknowledgments
A Little Sorrow

Heart-Shaped Box

Joe Hill

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals... a used hangman's noose... a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet.

I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder....

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts-of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more?

But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.

And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door... seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang... standing outside his window... staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting-with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand....

Bag of Bones

Here is Stephen King's most gripping and unforgettable novel -- a tale of grief and lost love's enduring bonds, of haunting secrets of the past, and of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire.

Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write, and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs, Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie.

As Mike is drawn into Mattie and Kyra's struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here -- and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

It is no secret that King is one of our most mesmerizing storytellers. In Bag of Bones, he proves to be one of our most moving as well.

Christine

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.

Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell.

But not quite what the police had expected.

Dolores Claiborne has a confession to make...

She will take her time. Won't be hurried. Will do it her way, sparing neither details nor feelings. Hers or anyone else's.

This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that takes you to the edge of darkness.

Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell and you'd better pay attention--or else.

Joyland

Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.

Later

SOMETIMES GROWING UP MEANS FACING YOUR DEMONS

The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

Night Shift

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

Nightmares & Dreamscapes

With numerous unforgettable movies based on his short stories--including Shawshank Redemption, 1408, and The Green Mile--readers will be delighted to rediscover this classic collection, also released as a television mini-series and on DVD. Featuring twenty short horror stories, a television script, an essay, and a poem, Nightmares and Dreamscapes contains unique and chilling plots including everything from dead rock star zombies to evil toys seeking murderous revenge. It will be treasured by King fans new and old.

Table of Contents:

Dolan's Cadillac
The End of the Whole Mess
Suffer the Little Children
The Night Flier
Popsy
Masques II
It Grows on You
Chattery Teeth
Dedication
The Moving Finger
Sneakers
You Know They Got a Hell of a Band
Home Delivery
Rainy Season
My Pretty Pony
Sorry, Right Number
The Ten O'Clock People
Crouch End
The House on Maple Street
The Fifth Quarter
The Doctor's Case
Umney's Last Case
Head Down
Brooklyn August
The Beggar and the Diamond

Skeleton Crew

In this brilliant collection of stories, Stephen King takes readers down paths that only he could imagine... A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction... a trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell... a woman driver finds a scary shortcut to paradise... an idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil... and a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged.

The Green Mile

Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery

Set in the 1930s at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary's death-row facility, The Green Mile is the riveting and tragic story of John Coffey, a giant, preternaturally gentle inmate condemned to death for the rape and murder of twin nine-year-old girls. It is a story narrated years later by Paul Edgecomb, the ward superintendent compelled to help every prisoner spend his last days peacefully and every man walk the green mile to execution with his humanity intact.

Edgecomb has sent seventy-eight inmates to their date with "old sparky," but he's never encountered one like Coffey -- a man who wants to die, yet has the power to heal. And in this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecomb discovers the terrible truth about Coffey's gift, a truth that challenges his most cherished beliefs -- and ours.

Audrey's Door

Sarah Langan

Built on the Upper West Side, the elegant Breviary claims a regal history. But despite 14B's astonishingly low rental price, the recent tragedy within its walls has frightened away all potential tenants . . . except for Audrey Lucas.

No stranger to tragedy at thirty-two-a survivor of a fatherless childhood and a mother's hopeless dementia- Audrey is obsessively determined to make her own way in a city that often strangles the weak. But is it something otherworldly or Audrey's own increasing instability that's to blame for the dark visions that haunt her . . . and for the voice that demands that she build a door? A door it would be true madness to open . . .

Razorhurst

Justine Larbalestier

Sydney's deadly Razorhurst neighborhood, 1932. Gloriana Nelson and Mr. Davidson, two ruthless mob bosses, have reached a fragile peace - one maintained by "razor men". Kelpie, orphaned and living on the street, is blessed and cursed with the ability to see Razorhurst's many ghosts, and she sees the cracks already forming in their truce. Then Kelpie meets Dymphna Campbell.

Dymphna is a legendary beauty and prized moll of Gloriana Nelson. She's earned the nickname "Angel of Death" for the trail of beaus who have died trying to protect her from Mr. Davidson's assassins. Unbeknownst to Kelpie, Dymphna can see ghosts, too, and as Gloriana's hold crumbles one burly henchman at a time, the girls will need one another more than ever.

As loyalties shift and betrayal threatens at every turn, Dymphna is determined to not only survive but rise to the top with Kelpie at her side.

In a Glass Darkly

Sheridan Le Fanu

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

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

Sheridan Le Fanu

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

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

The Witch and the Priest

Hilda Lewis

Samuel Fleming, an aging priest, is tormented by doubts on the case of Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Philippa, whom he helped condemn to death as witches in 1618. Were they guilty? Was justice done? Did he do all he could to save their souls? The spirit of Joan Flower appears to him and tells him that she has been rejected by both Heaven and Hell and is condemned to wander the earth. She unfolds a story of horror, telling how she and her daughters became witches, participated in orgies at the witches' sabbath with the Devil himself, cast spells to kill and torment their enemies, and eventually faced trial and execution. As Samuel listens, he tries desperately to find some way to save the witch's soul. And the stakes are high: for as the witch tells her horrifying tale, Samuel realizes that hers is not the only soul in jeopardy, and if he fails, he may be joining her in Hell!

The Unquiet House

Alison Littlewood

Mire House is dreary, dark, cold and infested with midges. But when Emma Dean inherits it from a distant relation, she immediately feels a sense of belonging. It isn't long before Charlie Mitchell, grandson of the original owner, appears claiming that he wants to seek out his family. But Emma suspects he's more interested in the house than his long-lost relations. And when she starts seeing ghostly figures, Emma begins to wonder: is Charlie trying to scare her away, or are there darker secrets lurking in the corners of Mire House?

Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

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

Her Body and Other Parties

Carmen Maria Machado

Shirley Jackson, Tiptree, Lambda, and Locus Award-nominated Collection

In her provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. Startling narratives map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited on their bodies, both in myth and in practice.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the mysterious green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague spreads across the earth. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery about a store's dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted house guest.

Bodies become inconsequential, humans become monstrous, and anger becomes erotic. A dark, shimmering slice into womanhood, Her Body and Other Parties is wicked and exquisite.

Table of Contents:

The Husband Stitch - (2014) - novelette
Inventory - (2013) - short story
Mothers - (2014) - short story
Especially Heinous - (2013) - novella
Real Women Have Bodies - novelette
Eight Bites - (2017) - short story
The Resident - novelette
Difficult at Parties - (2012) - short story

Rules For Vanishing

Kate Marshall

Once a year, a road appears in the forest. And at the end of it, the ghost of Lucy Gallows beckons. Lucy's game isn't for the faint of heart. If you win, you escape with your life. But if you lose....

Sara's sister disappeared one year ago--and only Sara knows where she is. Becca went to find the ghost of Lucy Gallows and is trapped on the road that leads to her. In the sleepy town of Briar Glen, Lucy's road is nothing more than local lore. But Sara knows it's real, and she's going to find it.

When Sara and her skeptical friends meet in the forest to search for Becca, the mysterious road unfurls before them. All they have to do is walk down it. But the path to Lucy is not of this world, and it has its own rules. Every mistake summons new horrors. Vengeful spirits and broken, angry creatures are waiting for them to slip, and no one is guaranteed safe passage. The only certainty is this: the road has a toll and it will be paid.

Sara knows that if she steps onto the road, she might not come back. But Becca needs her.

And Lucy is waiting.

Hell House

Richard Matheson

Rolf Rudolph Deutsch is going die. But when Deutsch, a wealthy magazine and newpaper publisher, starts thinking seriously about his impending death, he offers to pay a physicist and two mediums, one physical and one mental, $100,000 each to establish the facts of life after death.

Dr. Lionel Barrett, the physicist, accompanied by the mediums, travel to the Belasco House in Maine, which has been abandoned and sealed since 1949 after a decade of drug addiction, alcoholism, and debauchery. For one night, Barrett and his colleagues investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townfolks refer to it as the Hell House.

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day

Seanan McGuire

When her sister Patty died, Jenna blamed herself. When Jenna died, she blamed herself for that, too. Unfortunately Jenna died too soon. Living or dead, every soul is promised a certain amount of time, and when Jenna passed she found a heavy debt of time in her record. Unwilling to simply steal that time from the living, Jenna earns every day she leeches with volunteer work at a suicide prevention hotline.

But something has come for the ghosts of New York, something beyond reason, beyond death, beyond hope; something that can bind ghosts to mirrors and make them do its bidding. Only Jenna stands in its way.

The Blade Between

Sam J. Miller

Ronan Szepessy promised himself he'd never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill and New York City's distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge.

Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom's wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become--overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.

Hudson has a rich, proud history and, it turns out, the real-state developers aren't the only forces threatening its well-being: the spirits undergirding this once-thriving industrial town are enraged. Ronan's hijinks have overlapped with a bubbling up of hate and violence among friends and neighbors, and everything is spiraling out of control. Ronan must summon the very best of himself to shed his own demons and save the city he once loathed.

Slade House

David Mitchell

Born out of the short story David Mitchell published on Twitter in 2014 and inhabiting the same universe as his latest bestselling novel The Bone Clocks, this is the perfect book to curl up with on a dark and stormy night.

Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it occupies.

A stranger greets you by name and invites you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't.

This unnerving, taut and intricately woven tale by one of our most original and bewitching writers begins in 1979 and reaches its turbulent conclusion around Hallowe'en, 2015. Because every nine years, on the last Saturday of October, a 'guest' is summoned to Slade House. But why has that person been chosen, by whom and for what purpose? The answers lie waiting in the long attic, at the top of the stairs...

The Weird of Deadly Hollow

Bertram Mitford

Years ago, it is said, "Moordenaar's Hoek" (Afrikaans for "Deadly" or "Murderer's Hollow") witnessed a horrible tragedy. Gert Van Niekerk, a Boer farmer, murdered his brother in cold blood during a terrible storm. Hanged for his crime, Van Niekerk's ghost haunts the land in the form of a spectral leopard that can appear and disappear at will. And, according to local legend, a "blood curse" haunts the Hollow, where, on dark and stormy nights, the horrible murder is re-enacted.

Custance, a recluse with a mysterious past, takes up residence at Deadly Hollow. Troubled by his painful memories, Custance thinks he has finally found redemption and a chance at new life when he falls in love with his neighbour, the beautiful young Ida Rendlesham. But their lovers' bliss is short-lived. For on a dreary and tempestuous night, Deadly Hollow will witness the fulfilment of the blood curse: a savage murder... and a brutal revenge!

First published in 1891 and out of print for more than a century, The Weird of Deadly Hollow was one of Bertram Mitford's most popular novels. Featuring a mixture of romance and terror that builds slowly, but inevitably, towards an unthinkable climax--complete with one of the most shocking scenes of torture in all of English-language fiction--Mitford's novel remains as thrilling today as when first published. This edition includes a new introduction and notes by Gerald Monsman, as well as the complete text of two of Mitford's inspirations: Wordsworth's "Hart-Leap Well" and Thomas Hood's "The Haunted House."

Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo

Miyuki Miyabe

In old Edo, the past was never forgotten. It lived alongside the present, in dark corners, and in the shadows. In these tales, award-winning author Miyuki Miyabe explores the ghosts of Japan, and the spaces of the living world they inhabit. Written with a journalistic eye and a fantasist's heart Apparitions bring the restless dead, and those who encounter them, to life.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
A Drowsing Dream of Shinju
Cage of Shadows
The Futon Storeroom
The Plum Rains Fall
The "Oni" of the Adachi House
A Women's Head
The Oni in the Autumn Rain
Ash Kagura
The Mussel Mound
About the Author

Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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

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

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

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

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

Silver Nitrate

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all-but-invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend...

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristan might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies...

No One Gets Out Alive

Adam Nevill

Darkness lives within...

Cash-strapped, working for agencies and living in shared accommodation, Stephanie Booth feels she can fall no further. So when she takes a new room at the right price, she believes her luck has finally turned. But 82 Edgware Road is not what it appears to be.

It's not only the eerie atmosphere of the vast, neglected house, or the disturbing attitude of her new landlord, Knacker McGuire, that makes her uneasy - it's the whispers behind the fireplace, the scratching beneath floors, the footsteps in the dark, and the young women weeping in neighbouring rooms. And when Knacker's cousin Fergal arrives, the danger goes vertical.

But this is merely a beginning, a gateway to horrors beyond Stephanie's worst nightmares. And in a house where no one listens to the screams, will she ever get out alive?

Some Will Not Sleep: Selected Horrors

Adam Nevill

In ghastly harmony with the nightmarish visions of the award-winning writer's novels, these stories blend a lifelong appreciation of horror culture with the grotesque fascinations and childlike terrors that are the author's own. Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, 2017.

Adam Nevill's best early horror stories are collected here for the first time.

A bestial face appears at windows in the night.
In the big white house on the hill angels are said to appear.
A forgotten tenant in an isolated building becomes addicted to milk.
A strange goddess is worshipped by a home-invading disciple.
The least remembered gods still haunt the oldest forests.
Cannibalism occurs in high society at the end of the world.
The sainted undead follow their prophet to the Great Dead Sea.
A confused and vengeful presence occupies the home of a first-time buyer...

An English Ghost Story

Kim Newman

The Naremores, a dysfunctional British nuclear family, seek to solve their problems and start a new life away from the city in the sleepy Somerset countryside. At first their perfect new home seems to embrace them, its endless charms creating a rare peace and harmony within the family. But as they grow closer, the house begins to turn on them, and seems to know just how to hurt them the most – threatening to destroy them from the inside out.

In Ghostly Company

Amyas Northcote

Amyas Northcote's In Ghostly Company is a rare and splendid collection of strange and disturbing tales from the golden age of ghost stories. His style is akin to that of the master of the genre M.R. James: it is measured and insidiously suggestive, producing unnerving chills rather than shocks and gasps. Northcote's tales make the reader unsettled and uneasy. This is partly due to the fact that the hauntings or strange occurrences take place in natural or mundane surroundings – surroundings familiar to the reader but never before thought of as unusual or threatening. Long out of print, this book remains an enthralling and chilling read.

"Brickett Bottom" (1921)
"Mr. Kershaw and Mr. Wilcox" (1921)
"In the Woods" (1921)
"The Late Earl of D." (1921)
"Mr. Mortimer's Diary" (1921)
"The House in the Woods" (1921)
"The Steps" (1921)
"The Young Lady in Black" (1921)
"The Downs" (1921)
"The Late Mrs. Fowke" (1921)
"The Picture" (1921)
"The Governess's Story" (1921)
"Mr. Oliver Carmichael" (1921)

Okamoto Kido: Master of the Uncanny

Kido Okamoto

Kido remains popular for his elegant, low-key style, subtly introducing the "other" into the background, and raising the specter of the uncanny indirectly and often indistinctly. His fiction spans an enormous range of material, much of it dealing with the uncanny, and as a pioneer in the field his work formed the foundation for the new generation of Japanese authors emerging in post-Restoration literature.

This selection presents a dozen of his best stories: pieces which remain in print almost a century later, and continue to enchant readers--and writers--today. Finally, English-reading audiences can enjoy his strange visions as well.

Contents:

The Kiso Traveler
The Green Frog God
Tone Crossing
The Monkey's Eyes
The Snake Spirit
The Clear-Water Well
Crabs
The One-Legged Woman
Here Lies a Flute
The Shadow-Stepping Game
The White-Haired Demon
The Man Cursed by an Eel

Hex

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Note: the English edition is a substantially rewritten version of the Dutch original.

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she's there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.

The curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break the strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.

The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions

Oliver Onions

Oliver Onions is unique in the realms of ghost story writers in that his tales are so far ranging in their background and substance that they are not easily categorised. His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, make no mistake, his ghost stories achieve the desired effect. They draw you in, enmeshing you in their unnerving and disturbing narratives.

This collection contains such masterpieces as 'The Rosewood Door', 'The Ascending Dream', 'The Painted Face' and 'The Beckoning Fair One', a story which both Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft regarded as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature. Long out of print, these classic tales are a treasure trove of nightmarish gems.

Includes:

Credo
The Beckoning Fair One
Phantas
Rooum
Benlian
The Ascending Dream
The Honey in the Wall
The Rosewood Door
The Accident
Io
The Painted Face
The Out Sister
'John Gladwin Says...'
Hic Jacet
The Rocker
Dear Dryad
The Real People
The Cigarette Case
The Rope in the Rafters
Resurrection in Bronze
The Woman in the Way
The Smile of Karen
The Ether-Hogs
The Mortal
The Master of the House
Tragic Casements

The Man Who Would Not Die: An Unusual Ghost Story

Thomas Page

In an isolated mountain clinic, doctors work frantically to treat the body of Daniel Forrester, the shattered victim of a plane crash. Desperately trying to save his life, they place him in the latest medical machine.

Strange things happen to Forrester after he is sealed into this amazingly sophisticated life support system. His heart stops. The machine brings him back to life. Each cardiac arrest seems the end ... but each time the machine brings him back. During these periods of apparent death, horrifying and unexplainable phenomena occur, and it soon becomes clear that what the machine is bringing back from the beyond is no longer Forrester...

Subtitled "An Unusual Ghost Story," Thomas Page's bestseller The Man Who Would Not Die (1981) is an inventive blend of classic horror fiction and medical science that returns to print at last to chill a new generation of readers.

The Survivor

Dennis Parry

A brilliant yet ruthless physician, James Marshall has earned renown for his efforts in fighting epidemics in every corner of the world, yet at home he is feared and despised by all, including his brother and sister, who have long been tormented by his diabolical perversity and sadistic cruelty. When he finally succumbs to the one outbreak he is unable to conquer, everyone is relieved to be rid of him. But when his niece Olive begins to exhibit strange mannerisms and behaviors reminiscent of her uncle, is it merely a peculiar way of grieving - or could the soul of the wicked dead man actually be trying to take possession of her body? As her family struggles to save her from a terrible fate, the chilling suspense builds towards a harrowing and unthinkable conclusion...

Dark Matter

Michelle Paver

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he's offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken. But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return - when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark...

Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo

Juan Preciado who travels to his recently deceased mother's hometown, Comala, to find his father, only to come across a literal ghost town populated by spectral figures.

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Ragged Alice

Gareth L. Powell

Orphaned at an early age, DCI Holly Craig grew up in the small Welsh coastal town of Pontyrhudd. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away to London and joined the police. Now, fifteen years later, she's back in her old hometown to investigate what seems at first to be a simple hit-and-run, but which soon escalates into something far deadlier and unexpectedly personal -- something that will take all of her peculiar talents to solve.

Medusa's Web

Tim Powers

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.

The Agony House

Cherie Priest

Denise Farber has just moved back to New Orleans with her mom and step-dad. They left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and have finally returned, wagering the last of their family's money on fixing up an old, rundown house and converting it to a bed and breakfast.

Nothing seems to work around the place, which doesn't seem too weird to Denise. The unexplained noises are a little more out of the ordinary, but again, nothing too unusual. But when floors collapse, deadly objects rain down, and she hears creepy voices, it's clear to Denise that something more sinister lurks hidden here.

The Toll

Cherie Priest

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

Take a road trip into a Southern gothic horror novel.

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

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

The Silent Companions

Laura Purcell

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

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

Gaston de Blondeville

Ann Radcliffe

Gaston de Blondeville; or, The Court of Henry the Third Keeping Festival in Ardenne, a Romance; St. Alban's Abby, a Metrical Tale; with some Poetical Pieces.

King Henry III is holding court at Kenilworth. Festivities abound, wine flows copiously, and spirits are high as the King and his subjects prepare to celebrate the nuptials of Sir Gaston de Blondeville. But the joyous mood is interrupted when a merchant, Hugh Woodreeve, comes distraught before the King to demand justice. His kinsman, he claims, was murdered, by the very man the King has come to honour -- Gaston de Blondeville!

Suspecting a conspiracy against Gaston, yet obliged to hold a trial to determine the truth of the allegations, Henry imprisons Woodreeve in a tower while awaiting a hearing. Meanwhile, sinister forces are at work, represented by an evil abbot, who will stop at nothing to ensure the truth behind Woodreeve's claims is never revealed.

As the trial unfolds and the danger mounts for both Woodreeve and Gaston, a mysterious figure will come from beyond the grave to elucidate the horrible mystery!

The Spring Song

Forrest Reid

Thirteen-year-old Grif Weston and his siblings, Barbara, Ann, Jim, Edward, and Edward's friend Palmer Dorset, travel to their grandfather's home in rural Ireland, where they hope to pass an eventful summer. Unexpected dangers and adventures lurk, as the children must solve the kidnapping of their beloved dog Pouncer and thwart a burglary attempt on Grandpapa's house. Yet there is another danger, far more sinister, involving Billy Tremaine, a local boy who died at age fourteen in a tragedy no one wants to talk about.

When Grif hears a mysterious figure singing an old tune called "The Spring Song," old Mr. Bradley tells him that it's Billy's ghost, trying to lure Grif into joining him in the world of the dead; shortly afterwards Grif falls ill with an inexplicable sickness. But Palmer Dorset, an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes tales, is determined to solve these mysteries, and he'll risk every danger to find the truth behind Mr. Bradley's ghastly stories and Grif's unexplainable illness....

Night Shivers: The Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell

Charlotte Riddell

Night Shivers presents a treasure trove of the stories of Mrs J. H. Riddell, one of the greatest Victorian writers of ghost stories. These tales, many of which have been out of print for years, take the reader on fearful journeys into the gloomy haunts of old neglected houses, into a world of prophetic dreams, out onto the wild terrain of Ireland to encounter a frightful banshee and even down into Hell itself.

In these fourteen short stories and one novella, The Uninhabited House, there is the distillation of the best and most effective of Riddell's spine-tingling supernatural fiction.

Table of Contents:

Nut Bush Farm
The Open Door
The Last of Squire Ennismore
A Strange Christmas Game
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
Sandy the Tinker
Forewarned, Forearmed
Hertford O'Donnell's Warning
Walnut-Tree House
Old Mrs. Jones
Why Dr. Cray Left Southam
Conn Kilrea
Diarmid Chittock's Story
A Terrible Vengeance
The Uninhabited House

Devil in the Darkness

Archie Roy

En route to their honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands, Paul and Carol Wilson lose their way in an unseasonable blizzard and are forced to take shelter in remote Ardvreck House.

But this sprawling, dilapidated Victorian mansion, with its reputation as the scene of violent unsolved mysteries, is also playing host to an eclectic and mysterious group of people who are engaged in a bizarre experiment. It soon becomes clear that even more threatening than the worsening storm outside are the dangers within: The Wilsons and the rest of the assembled company may not survive their stay, as Ardvreck House, home to a century-old evil, refuses to give up its long-buried secret - the devil in the darkness.

Renowned professor of astronomy Archie Roy was also a prominent researcher in the field of the paranormal. Drawing heavily on his own experience and investigations, Devil in the Darkness (1978) is a chilling haunted house story in the tradition of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Richard Matheson's Hell House. This new edition makes Roy's sixth novel available in America for the first time and includes a new introduction by Greg Gbur.

Hellfire

John Saul

The day that the iron doors of the old mill in Westover, Massachusetts, closed forever is a day that still haunts the sleepy town's residents. On that fateful day 100 years ago, 11 people died in a fearsome fire, and since then, no one has dared to revisit the mill or the dark secrets locked inside it.

Now, a member of the once-powerful Sturgess family has aspirations to reopen the mill. Little does Philip Sturgess know that by unlocking the padlock he is also unlocking horrible secrets from the past. There are forces at work that will do their best to see the mill doors stay tightly closed. But as Philip presses forward with his plans, the townspeople will be forced to face the terrible vengeance that waits in the darkest corners of the abandoned mill.

Rooms

Lauren Oliver

The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane--a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking, surprising, and moving ways.

Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family--bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna--have arrived for their inheritance.

But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself--in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb.

The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide--with cataclysmic results.

Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.

Thirteen Storeys

Jonathan Sims

GOING UP?

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building.

None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building's walls.

By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death has remained one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

But are you ready for their stories?

The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark

Eight spooky stories from the mistress of the unexpected.

I aim to startle as well as please," Muriel Spark has said, and in these eight marvelous ghost stories she manages to do both to the highest degree. As with all matters in the hands of Dame Muriel her spooks are entirely original.

A ghost in her pantheon can be plaintive or a bit vengeful, or perhaps may not even be aware of being a ghost at all. One in fact is the ghost of a man who isn't even dead yet. Another takes the bus home from work, believing she is still alive, though she is haunted by an odious tune stuck in her head (which her murderer had been relentlessly humming), and distressed by a "feeling of incompletion." And a reflective ghost recalls her mortal days of enjoying "the glory of the world, as if it would never pass. Spark has a flair for confiding ghosts: "I must explain that I departed this life nearly five years ago. But I did not altogether depart this world. There were those odd things still to be done which one's executors can never do properly." In her case the odd things include cheerily hailing her murderer, "Hallo George!" and driving him mad. The remarkably nonchalant stories here include some of her most wicked and famous"The Seraph and the Zambesi," "The Hanging Judge," and "The Portobello Road"and they all gleam with that special Spark sheen, the quality The Times Literary Supplement has hailed as "gloriously witty and polished."

The Ghost Hunters

Neil Spring

Welcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England. The year is 1926 and Sarah Grey has landed herself an unlikely new job - personal assistant to Harry Price, London's most infamous ghost hunter. Equal parts brilliant and charming, neurotic and manipulative, Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England's many 'false hauntings', and never has he left a case unsolved, nor a fraud unexposed.

So when Harry and Sarah are invited to Borley Rectory - a house so haunted objects frequently fly through the air unbidden, and locals avoid the grounds for fear of facing the spectral nun that walks there - they're sure that this case will be just like any other. But when night falls and still no artifice can be found, the ghost hunters are forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real and, if so, they're about to make its most intimate acquaintance.

NOTE: This has nothing to do with the SyFy paranormal show.

Uncanny Stories

May Sinclair

May Sinclair was an innovator of modern fiction, a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. In her Uncanny Stories (1923), Sinclair combines the traditional ghost story with the discoveries of Freud and Einstein. The stories shock, enthral, delight and unsettle.

Two lovers are doomed to repeat their empty affair for the rest of eternity... A female telepath is forced to face the consequences of her actions... The victim of a violent murder has the last laugh on his assailant... An amateur philosopher discovers that there is more to Heaven than meets the eye.

Specially included in this volume is The Intercessor (1911), Sinclair's powerful story of childhood and abandoned love, a tale whose intensity compares with that of the Brontës.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare

Simone St. James

A woman of limited means and even less experience must confront a vengeful spirit in this haunting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel

1920s England. Sarah Piper's lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist an obsessed ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis--rich, handsome, and scarred by World War I--has been summoned to investigate the spirit of the nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is said to haunt the barn where she committed suicide.

Maddy hated men in life, and she will not speak to them in death. But Sarah is unprepared to confront an angry ghost--real or imagined--on her own. She's even less prepared for the arrival of Alistair's associate, rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, also a veteran of the trenches, whose scars go deeper than Sarah can reach.

Soon, Sarah is caught up in a desperate struggle. For Maddy's ghost is no hoax--she's real, she's angry, and she has powers that defy all reason. Now, Sarah and Matthew must discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance--before she destroys them all....

The Sun Down Motel

Simone St. James

Something hasn't been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isn't right at the motel, something haunting and scary.

Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

Ghost Story

Peter Straub

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.

Houses Without Doors

Peter Straub

These psychic and horror fictions - seven of them short-shorts - reveals Straub at his spellbinding best. Two tales (first installments of his Blue Rose trilogy), are linked to Koko and Mystery and exactingly probe the consequences of boyhood clashes with evil.

In "Blue Rose," sadistic Harry Beevers, 10, hypnotizes and destroys his younger brother; the tale leaps ahead to the ironic verdict in Harry's court-martial for wreaking atrocities in Vietnam.

In the outstanding "The Juniper Tree," a novelist relives a harrowing, seductive summer when, at age seven, he was sexually molested in a movie house by drifter Stan, a seedy Alan Ladd lookalike.

"The Buffalo Hunter" fastidiously chronicles the fixations of a 35-year-old who numbs his fear of women by sucking his coffee and cognac from baby bottles.

In the ambitious gothic thriller/academic spoof "Mrs. God," a fatuous professor is lured to a creepy English mansion crammed with grisly secrets to research the papers of his poet ancestress; dead babies provide a subtheme.

Wry and riveting, "A Short Guide to the City" fuses and parodies two genres: the self-congratulatory tourist blurb with a news alert on the "viaduct killer."

Table of Contents:

She Saw a Young Man - (1990) - short fiction
Blue Rose - (1985) - novella
Interlude: In the Realm of Dreams - (1990) - short fiction
The Juniper Tree - (1988) - novelette
Interlude: Going Home - (1990) - short fiction
A Short Guide to the City - (1990) - short story
Interlude: The Poetry Reading - (1990) - short fiction
The Buffalo Hunter - (1990) - novella
Interlude: Bar Talk - (1990) - short fiction
Something About a Death, Something About a Fire - short story
Interlude: The Veteran - (1990) - short fiction
Mrs. God - (1990) - novella
...Then One Day - (1990) - short fiction
Author's Note - (1990) - essay

Lost Boy Lost Girl

Peter Straub

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son– fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill–vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge.

No mere empty building, the house whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain.

The Master of the Macabre

Russell Thorndike

Tayler Kent flees London in a blinding snowstorm, hoping to escape the ghosts that haunt his home. Instead, he finds things may have gone from bad to worse when he crashes his car, breaks his ankle, and is forced to take refuge at a medieval monastery now inhabited by the eccentric Charles Hogarth, known as "The Master of the Macabre." As Kent's ankle heals, Hogarth entertains him with fine food, brandy, and a series of gruesome stories connected with an odd assortment of old relics on display in a curio cabinet. But the terrors are not confined to Hogarth's tales: the monastery is haunted by the evil spirit of an apostate monk and besieged by more corporeal foes, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on one of the Master's treasures....

Best known for his series of novels featuring the smuggler Dr. Syn, Russell Thorndike (1885-1972) in The Master of the Macabre (1947) delivers an irresistible mix of horror, adventure, and black humour that is sure to please fans of classic ghost stories and supernatural fiction. This first-ever republication of the novel includes the original jacket art and a new introduction by Mark Valentine.

Disappearance at Devil's Rock

Paul Tremblay

A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale, a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts.

"A Head Full of Ghosts scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare," raved Stephen King about Paul Tremblay's previous novel. Now, Tremblay returns with another disturbing tale sure to unsettle readers.

Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park.

The search isn't yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy's disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: the local and state police have uncovered no leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were the last to see Tommy before he vanished, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil's Rock.

Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy's journal begin to mysteriously appear--entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them.

As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more haunting and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night and Tommy's disappearance at Devil's Rock.

Asian Ghost Short Stories

Uncredited

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

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

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

The Castle of Otranto: A Story - Translated by William Marshal, Gent.

Horace Walpole

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

All Souls' Night

Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) was one of the most popular and prolific English authors of his time, best known for his historical fiction and novels for boys. But it was in the field of the macabre and supernatural that Walpole was at his best, and this collection of sixteen tales contains many of his finest, including the classic werewolf story 'Tarnhelm'; the oft-anthologized 'The Little Ghost'; 'The Snow', a chilling story of vengeance from beyond the grave; and perhaps the highlight of the collection, 'The Silver Mask', which one critic has called 'a masterpiece, a classic example of how a tale can be truly terrible and ghostly with no ghost and only the wispiest hint of the supernatural.'

This new edition, which reprints the unabridged text of the 1933 first edition and includes a new introduction by John Howard, will allow a new generation of readers to discover an unjustly forgotten master of the eerie and macabre.

Contents:

Introduction (All Souls' Night) - essay by John Howard
A Carnation for an Old Man - (1929) - short story
Lilac - (1933) - short story
Mr. Oddy - (1933) - short story
Mrs. Lunt - (1926) - short story
Portrait In Shadow - (1933) - short story
Seashore Macabre - (1933) - short story
Sentimental But True - (1933) - short story
Spanish Dusk - (1933) - short story
Tarnhelm - (1929) - short story
The Little Ghost - (1922) - short story (variant of A Little Ghost)
The Oldest Talland - (1933) - short story
The Ruby Glass - (1933) - short story
The Silver Mask - (1932) - short story
The Snow - (1929) - short story
The Staircase - (1933) - short story
The Whistle - (1933) - short story

Antique Dust

Robert Westall

'Dealers are undertakers of a sort. When a man dies, the undertaker comes for the body, and the dealer comes for the rest. I deal in dead men's clocks, pipes and swords. Passing through my hands, they give off joy, loneliness, fear... I have known more evil in a set of false teeth than in any so-called haunted house in England.'

So speaks Geoff Ashden, a regular guy trying to make an honest living as an antique dealer, but who has an uncanny knack for finding cursed objects and haunted places: a sinister Georgian clock carved with obscene and Satanic designs, a hideous doll with deadly powers, a pair of old spectacles that let their wearer see a little too clearly, an ugly house with a terrifying secret, a church full of graffiti scrawled in decomposing human flesh.

Contents:

The Devil and Clocky Watson - (1989) - novelette by Robert Westall
The Doll - (1989) - novelette by Robert Westall
The Last Day of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux - (1989) - novelette by Robert Westall
The Dumbledore - (1989) - short story by Robert Westall
The Woolworth Spectacles - (1989) - short story by Robert Westall
Portland Bill - (1989) - short story by Robert Westall
The Ugly House - (1989) - novelette by Robert Westall

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

Traumatised by ghost stories in her youth, Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton (1862 -1937) channelled her fear and obsession into creating a series of spine-tingling tales filled with spirits beyond the grave and other supernatural phenomena. While claiming not to believe in ghosts, paradoxically she did confess that she was frightened of them. Wharton imbues this potent irrational and imaginative fear into her ghostly fiction to great effect.

In this unique collection of finely wrought tales Wharton demonstrates her mastery of the ghost story genre. Amongst the many supernatural treats within these pages you will encounter a married farmer bewitched by a dead girl; a ghostly bell which saves a woman's reputation; the weird spectral eyes which terrorise the midnight hours of an elderly aesthete; the haunted man who receives letters from his dead wife; and the frightening power of a doppelganger which foreshadows a terrible tragedy.

Compelling, rich and strange, the ghost stories of Edith Wharton, like vintage wine, have matured and grown more potent with the passing years.

Stories include:

The Lady's Maid's Bell
The Eyes
Afterward
Kerfol
The Triumph of Night
The Duchess at Prayer
Miss Mary Pask
Bewitched
The Fulness of Life
Mr Jones
Pomegranate Seed
The Looking Glass
A Journey
All Souls'
A Bottle of Perrier

The Canterville Ghost

Oscar Wilde

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

Where the Dead Wait

Ally Wilkes

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

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

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

Abandonment. Betrayal. Cannibalism.

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

Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories

Jeanette Winterson

In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own encounters with the supernatural alongside hair-raising fictions. Lifting the veil between the living and the dead, Winterson spirits us away to a haunted estate that ensnares a nomadic young couple in its own dark past, a staged immersive ghost tour gone awry, a West Village séance that threatens the bounds between AI and reality, and a vacation home in the metaverse where a widow visits an improved version of her deceased husband. Gloriously gothic and unnervingly contemporary, Winterson examines grief, revenge, and the myriad ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death.

The Ghost Sequences

A. C. Wise

A lush and elegant collection of tales--many having appeared in various "Best Of" anthologies--teeming with frightful and tragic events, yet profoundly and intimately human. These chilling tales will engross and enthrall.

Table of Contents:

11 - How the Trick Is Done
35 - The Stories We Tell About Ghosts
59 - The Last Sailing of the Henry Charles Morgan in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw
67 - Harvest Song, Gathering Song
91 - The Secret of Flight
113 - Crossing
135 - How to Host a Haunted House Murder Mystery Party
149 - In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same
161 - Exhalation #10
189 - Excerpts from a Film
219 - Lesser Creek: A Love Story, a Ghost Story
235 - I Dress My Lover in Yellow
251 - The Nag Bride
297 - Tekeli-li, They Cry
311 - The Men from Narrow Houses
325 - The Ghost Sequences

Scarecrow

Alyssa Wong

A horrific tale of tragic love and corvid loss.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Coffin County

Gary A. Braunbeck

Horror specialist Braunbeck has published so exclusively within the field that his books have largely eluded general review media. The novel and two stories in Coffin County show what those media, at least, have been missing. Set in and near Cedar Hill, Ohio, a midwestern version of Arkham, the capital of H. P. Lovecraft's personal Massachusetts, the novel is a pell-mell gore fest, whose supernatural perps leak from an alternate reality that interfaces with Cedar Hill. The hero is a cop still mourning his pregnant wife's death three years ago, and the villain may be, ultimately, either Judas Iscariot or the narrator, who's not naming names; we "may have figured it out" by the end, he says. Also set in Cedar Hill, one story presents a musical duel between fallen angels over the fate of humanity; the other, how deeply factory work can get into, if not a man's blood, then his bloodline. Piquantly exuding rust-belt angst, this is tasty stuff for those who like blood and guts seasoned with smarts.

In Silent Graves

Gary A. Braunbeck

After a devastating tragedy claims the lives of his wife and baby daughter, newscaster Robert Londrigan must enter a nightmarish realm of madness, truth, and terror when his daughter's body is stolen from the morgue by a mysterious disfigured man.

Ghost Monster

Simon Clark

Pel Minton is opening graves in a cemetery for an archaeological dig, but this particular cemetery contains a disturbing portrait which is known by local children as 'The Ghost Monster.' For centuries this grim image has imprisoned the spirit of Justice Murrain and his vicious gang of misfits, but soon these sadists will enjoy the darkest of pleasures...A chef carves human flesh with a pizza cutter. A laughing thug films his own death-dive from a cliff. People binge on mayhem, fighting until streets run with blood. These are the Possessed. Death will not stop them…

A Stir of Echoes

Richard Matheson

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now, he's hearing the private thoughts of the people around him - and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom's existence becomes a waking nightmare, even greater jolts are in store, as he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave.

Nathaniel

John Saul

From the blood of the past, evil rises to seek undying vengeance... Prairie Bend.

Brilliant summers amid golden fields. Killing winters of razorlike cold. A peaceful, neighborly village, darkened by legends of death? Who is Nathaniel? For 100 years, the people of Prairie Bend have whispered the name in wonder and fear. Some say he is simply a folk tale - a legend created to frighten children on cold winter nights. Some swear he is a terrifying spirit returned to avenge the past. And soon... very soon... some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives still - darkly, horrifyingly real. Nathaniel.

For young Michael Hall, newly arrived in isolated Prairie Bend after having lost his father to a sudden tragic accident, Nathaniel is the voice that calls him across the prairie night...the voice that draws him into the shadowy depths of the old, crumbling barn where he has been forbidden to go... the voice - chanting, compelling - he will follow faithfully beyond the edge of terror... Nathaniel.

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. THE LOVELY BONES is such a book -- a #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its artistry, for its luminous clarity of emotion, and for its astonishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of readers around the world.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, THE LOVELY BONES succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

Another

Another: Book 1

Yukito Ayatsuji

In the spring of 1998, Koichi Sakakibara transfers to Yomiyama North Middle School. In class, he develops a sense of unease as he notices that the people around him act like they're walking on eggshells, and students and teachers alike seem frightened. As a chain of horrific deaths begin to unfold around him, he comes to discover that he has been placed in the cursed Class 3 in which the student body head count is always one more than expected. Class 3 is haunted by a vengeful spirit responsible for gruesome deaths in an effort to satisfy its spite. To stop the vicious cycle gripping his new school, Koichi decides to get to the bottom of the curse, but is he prepared for the horror that lies ahead...?

Another Episode S/O

Another: Book 2

Yukito Ayatsuji

Summer, 1998. Mei Misaki, age fifteen, has gone with her family to their seaside vacation home. There she meets the ghost of Teruya Sakaki, her classmate from Yomiyama North Middle School Class 3-3 who, like Mei, witnessed the mysterious events that had transpired at the school. There begins an adventure of memory and mystery as they search for the ghost's body and his memories alike.

Another 2001

Another: Book 3

Yukito Ayatsuji

IT HAS BEEN THREE YEARS since the "calamity" of 1998 that claimed the lives of many students in Yomiyama North Middle's Class 3. After Sou Hiratsuka, an acquaintance of 1998 survivor Mei Misaki, discovers that he's being placed into the cursed class, he and his peers develop a series of countermeasures to avert a new tragedy. But when Sou's classmates and their family members begin dying in a series of horrific "accidents," he and Mei realize that the calamity has taken hold of their town once again. To stem the tides of death, the pair will be forced to reckon with Yomiyama's deepest mysteries...

Bliss House

Bliss House: Book 1

Laura Benedict

Death never did come quietly for Bliss House... and now a mother and daughter have become entwined in the secrets hidden within its walls.

Amidst the lush farmland and orchards in Old Gate, Virginia, stands the magnificent Bliss House. Built in 1878 as a country retreat, Bliss House is impressive, historic, and inexplicably mysterious. Decades of strange occurrences, disappearances and deaths have plagued the house, yet it remains vibrant. And very much alive.

Rainey Bliss Adams desperately needed a new start when she and her daughter Ariel relocated from St. Louis to Old Gate and settled into the house where the Bliss family had lived for over a century. Rainey's husband had been killed in a freak explosion that left her 14 year-old daughter Ariel scarred and disfigured.

At the grand housewarming party, Bliss House begins to reveal itself again. Ariel sees haunting visions: the ghost of her father, and the ghost of a woman being pushed to her death off of an upper floor balcony, beneath an exquisite dome of painted stars. And then there is a death the night of the party. Who is the murderer in the midst of this small town? And who killed the woman in Ariel's visions? But Bliss House is loath to reveal its secrets, as are the good folks of Old Gate.

Charlotte's Story

Bliss House: Book 2

Laura Benedict

Step back into Bliss House, the yellow-brick Virginia mansion with a disreputable, dangerous past, that even the sheen of 1950's domesticity cannot hide...

The fall of 1957 in southern Virginia was a seemingly idyllic, even prosperous time. A young housewife, Charlotte Bliss, lives with her husband, Hasbrouck Preston "Press" Bliss, and their two young children, Eva Grace and Michael, in the gorgeous Bliss family home. On the surface, theirs seems a calm, picturesque life, but soon tragedy befalls them: four tragic deaths, with apparently simple explanations.
But nothing is simple if Bliss House is involved. How far will Charlotte go to discover the truth? And how far will she get without knowing who her real enemy is? Though Bliss House may promise to give its inhabitants what they want, it never gives them exactly what they expect.

The Abandoned Heart

Bliss House: Book 3

Laura Benedict

Three women. A cursed house. Generations of lives at stake. The third novel in the acclaimed Bliss House series reveals the secret that started it all.

There is no bliss to be found in Bliss House.

In Old Gate, Virginia, stands a grand house built by Randolph Bliss, a charming New York carpetbagger who, in 1878, shook off dire warnings to build his home elsewhere. For the ground beneath Bliss House is tainted with the kind of tragedy that curses generations, seeping through the foundation and sowing madness in its wake. His first and second wives, and his young Japanese mistress, Kiku, bear witness to Randolph's growing insanity with stories of his cruel manipulations and their desperate struggles to find happiness for themselves and their children.

Their desire to live and love and even take revenge also fills the house, triumphing even over death. Spanning half a century, The Abandoned Heart is the prequel to Charlotte's Story and Bliss House, forming a trilogy of southern Gothic novels in which one haunted house begets haunted lives that echo over centuries. A haunting so powerful that even Bliss House's destruction cannot kill it.

The Necronomicon: The Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab

Call of Cthulhu: Book 16

Robert M. Price

Contents:

The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab - (1996) - interior artwork by Earl Geier
The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab: Second Edition, Expanded and Corrected - (2002) - interior artwork by Andy Hopp
ix - The Figure in the Flying Carpet - (1996) - essay by Robert M. Price
4 - The Terrible Parchment - (1937) - shortstory by Manly Wade Wellman
12 - Dr. Xander's Cottage - (1941) - shortstory by Martin D. Brown
16 - The Mantle of Graag - (1941) - shortstory by Robert A. W. Lowndes and Henry Dockweiller and Frederik Pohl [as by Robert A. W. Lowndes and Henry Dockweiller and Frederick Pohl ]
25 - Settler's Wall - (1968) - novelette by Robert A. W. Lowndes (variant of The Long Wall 1942)
54 - The Howler in the Dark - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1984) - novelette by Richard L. Tierney
90 - Demons of Cthulhu - (1959) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
106 - The Castle in the Window - (1968) - shortstory by Steffan B. Aletti
119 - Concerning the Forthcoming Inexpensive Paperback Translation of the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred - (1992) - novelette by John Brunner
155 - The Adder - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1989) - shortstory by Fred Chappell
185 - Preface to the Al-Azif - (1996) - shortstory by L. Sprague de Camp (variant of Preface (Al Azif) 1973)
192 - John Dee's Necronomicon: A Fragment - (1996) - shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
197 - Introitus (The Necronomicon: The Dee Translation) - [The Necronomicon: The Dee Translation] - (1989) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
197 - The Doom of Yakthoob - [The Book of Episodes - 1] - (1971) - shortstory by Lin Carter
200 - The Thing Under Memphis - [The Book of Episodes - 2] - (1984) - shortstory by Lin Carter
204 - In the City of Pillars - [The Book of Episodes - 3] - (1974) - shortstory by Lin Carter (variant of The City of Pillars)
209 - The Vault Beneath the Mosque - [The Book of Episodes - 5] - (1985) - shortstory by Lin Carter
213 - Mnomquah - [The Book of Episodes - 6] - (1985) - shortstory by Lin Carter
221 - The Madness Out of Time - [The Book of Episodes - 7] - (1986) - shortstory by Lin Carter
229 - Dreams of the Black Lotus - [The Book of Episodes - 8] - (1987) - shortstory by Lin Carter
236 - The Shadow from the Stars - [The Book of Episodes - 9] - (1988) - shortstory by Lin Carter
242 - The Transition of Abdul Alhazred - [The Book of Episodes - 10] - shortstory by Lin Carter
248 - Of the Powers of the Sorcerer - [The Book of Preparations - 1] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
249 - Of that Which Is Needful to Sorcery - [The Book of Preparations - 2] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
250 - Of the Old Ones and the Favors They Bestow - [The Book of Preparations - 3] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
252 - Of the Times and Seasons to Be Observed - [The Book of Preparations - 4] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
254 - Of the Powers of the Moon - [The Book of Preparations - 5] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
255 - Concerning Them from Outside - [The Book of Preparations - 6] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
257 - The Punishment of the Old Ones - [The Book of Preparations - 7] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
259 - Of that Which Is Foretold of Their Return - [The Book of Preparations - 8] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
260 - The Liers-in-Wait - [The Book of Preparations - 9] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
261 - Of the Worlds Beyond this World, and the Modes of Travel - [The Book of the Gates - 1] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
263 - Of Foul Necromancy - [The Book of the Gates - 2] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
265 - The Peril that Lurketh Beyond Time - [The Book of the Gates - 3] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
266 - Those that Aid the Unnamable Devourers - [The Book of the Gates - 4] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
267 - Of Tindalos, and the Hounds Thereof - [The Book of the Gates - 5] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
269 - If Thou Wouldst Raise the Dead - [The Book of the Gates - 6] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
270 - To Send Back Down that Which Thou Hast Called Up - [The Book of the Gates - 7] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
271 - Of the Signs of Hnaa - [The Book of the Gates - 8] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
273 - Of the Dream-Gates - [The Book of the Gates - 9] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
274 - Of Koth, and the Sign of Koth - [The Book of the Gates - 10] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
275 - The Ritual of the Silver Key - [The Book of the Gates - 11] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
277 - 'Umr At-Tawil - [The Book of the Gates - 12] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
279 - Of Opening the Door to Yog-Sothoth - [The Book of the Gates - 13] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
281 - Of Them from Outside and Their Spawn - [The Book of the Gates - 15] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
281 - The Ninth Verse that Summoneth Yog-Sothoth - [The Book of the Gates - 14] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
283 - Somewhat of the Gates that Open to Beyond - [The Book of the Gates - 16] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
285 - Of Leng and the Mysteries Thereof - [The Book of the Gates - 17] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
286 - Of the Coming-Hence of the Old Ones - [The Book of the Gates - 18] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
289 - The Openers of the Way - [The Book of the Gates - 19] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
290 - Of Calling Up that Which Thou Canst Not Put Down - [The Book of Dismissals - 1] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
292 - Of the Several Modes to Enforce the Dismissal - [The Book of Dismissals - 2] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
294 - Of Ib, and the Vengeance Thereof - [The Book of Dismissals - 3] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
297 - Of the Five-Pointed Star Carven of Grey Stone - [The Book of Dismissals - 4] - (1990) - shortfiction by Lin Carter
301 - The Sussex Manuscript - (1989) - novelette by Fred L. Pelton
351 - Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad - (1950) - shortstory by D. R. Smith
361 - History of the Necronomicon (An Outline) - (1938) - shortfiction by H. P. Lovecraft (variant of History of the Necronomicon)
367 - Necronomicon - shortstory by Robert C. Culp
383 - The Saga of Abdul Alhazred - novelette by Stephen T. Larkin
416 - The Life of the Master - (1996) - interior artwork by David T. Pudelwitts [as by David Pudelwitts ]
416 - The Life of the Master (A Biography of Abdul Alhazred by His Student, El-Rashi) - (1984) - shortstory by David T. St. Albans
434 - A Critical Commentary on the Necronomicon - (1988) - novella by Robert M. Price

Cold Bath Street

Cold Bath Street: Book 1

A. J. Hartley

Preston Oldcorn is in a desolate void between life and death. In order to save his soul he must brave his greatest fear - Cold Bath Street.

Preston Oldcorn lay quite still, eyes tight shut, trying to shrug off the cold grip of the nightmare. It was 9:22 p.m. It was always 9:22 p.m. A cold hand had plunged into Preston's chest and tightened its icy grip around his heart. In an instant, Preston was dead. Preston finds himself in a desolate void, trapped in the chasm between life and death. Soon discovering that he is not alone, Preston must stay one-step ahead of his enemies and discover the mysteries held by this new world as he tries to save his soul. But doing so means braving the darkest and most feared part of town: Cold Bath Street.

Written Stone Lane

Cold Bath Street: Book 2

A. J. Hartley

RAUFFE RADCLIFFE LAID THIS STONE TO LYE FOREVER: AD1655... so said the mysterious monument lying in Written Stone Lane. What it meant and why it was first carved, no one seemed to remember, which is perhaps why - eventually - someone moved it. Things came out. Bad things. And now the only one that can save the world from murder and destruction is Preston Oldcorn, a 15-year-old Lancashire boy and Tracey, the girl with clever eyes.

Written Stone Lane is a gripping and atmospheric thriller that will set your heart racing and your mind questioning until the very end.

The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories

Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Stories: Book 2

Michael Sims

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula's Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity's oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising, often legendary cast, from Charles Dickens and Margaret Oliphant to Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W.F. Harvey. Amelia Edwards' chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell, ("The Old Nurse's Story") and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey's Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Michael Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Recall Night

Eli Carver: Book 2

Alan Baxter

Back from self-imposed exile in Canada where he fled to avoid the law following the blood-stained events in Manifest Recall-the first installment of award-winning author Alan Baxter's latest supernatural thriller series-Eli Carver returns to the states with thoughts of starting over. But an accidental encounter on a train with a mysterious woman, one he soon learns has her own dangerous past, threatens to unravel his well-intended plans.

Upon their arrival in New York, the duo quickly find themselves entangled in an ongoing war between two rival crime syndicates. And with the ghosts of his own past continuing to torment him, Eli finds himself taking the darkest of turns as he's drawn down a perilous path into a world of ancient religion and deadly occult rituals.

The Devil You Know

Felix Castor: Book 1

Mike Carey

Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle--but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London--just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off...

Strange Ink

Harry Hendrick: Book 1

Gary Kemble

When washed-up journalist Harry Hendrick wakes with a hangover and a mysterious tattoo on his neck, he shrugs it off as a bad night out.

When more tattoos appear accompanied by visions of war-torn Afghanistan, bikies, boat people, murder, bar fights and a mysterious woman he begins to dig a little deeper.

Harry's search leads him to Jess McGrath. She's successful, married; they are drawn to each other, though they have nothing in common but unwanted tattoos and high definition nightmares. Together, they edge closer to unearthing the truth behind the sinister disappearance of an SAS hero and his girlfriend Kyla.

There's a federal election looming, with pundits tipping a landslide win for opposition leader Andrew Cardinal. Harry knows there's a link between these disturbing visions and Cardinal's shadowy past, and he is compelled to right wrongs, one way or another.

Nocturnes

Nocturnes: Book 1

John Connolly

Bestselling author John Connolly's first collection of short fiction, Nocturnes, now features five additional stories -- never-before published for an American audience -- in a dark, daring, utterly haunting anthology of lost lovers and missing children, predatory demons, and vengeful ghosts. In "The New Daughter," a father comes to suspect that a burial mound on his land hides something very ancient, and very much alive; in "The Underbury Witches," two London detectives find themselves battling a particularly female evil in a town culled of its menfolk. And finally, private detective Charlie Parker returns in the long novella "The Reflecting Eye," in which the photograph of an unknown girl turns up in the mailbox of an abandoned house once occupied by an infamous killer. This discovery forces Parker to confront the possibility that the house is not as empty as it appears, and that something has been waiting in the darkness for its chance to kill again.

Contents:

1 - The Cancer Cowboy Rides - novella
75 - Mr Pettinger's Dæmon - shortstory
91 - The Erkling - shortstory
103 - The New Daughter - shortstory
119 - The Ritual of the Bones - shortstory
135 - The Furnace Room - shortstory
149 - The Underbury Witches - novella
191 - The Inkpot Monkey - shortstory
205 - The Shifting of the Sands - shortstory
221 - Some Children Wander by Mistake - shortstory
233 - Deep Dark Green - shortstory
245 - Miss Froom, Vampire - shortstory
259 - Nocturne - shortstory
273 - The Wakeford Abyss - shortstory
289 - The Reflecting Eye: A Charlie Parker Novella - novella

The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest

Northanger Horrid: Book 4

Ludwig Flammenberg

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

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

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

The Midnight Bell: A German Story, Founded on Incidents in Real Life

Northanger Horrid: Book 5

Francis Lathom

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

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

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

Odd Thomas

Odd Thomas: Book 1

"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.

Forever Odd

Odd Thomas: Book 2

I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it. Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death. But when a childhood friend disappears, Odd discovers something worse than a dead body and embarks on a heart-stopping battle of will and wits with an enemy of exceptional cunning. In the hours to come there can be no innocent bystanders, and every sacrifice can tip the balance between despair and hope.

You're invited on an unforgettable journey through a world of terror and transcendence to wonders beyond imagining. And you can have no better guide than Odd Thomas.

Brother Odd

Odd Thomas: Book 3

Loop me in, odd one. The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn, his lost love. In the haunted halls of the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature.

As he steadfastly journeys toward his mysterious destiny, Odd Thomas has established himself as one of the most beloved and unique fictional heroes of our time. Now, wielding all the power and magic of a master storyteller at the pinnacle of his craft, Dean Koontz follows Odd into a singular new world where he hopes to make a fresh beginning—but where he will meet an adversary as old and inexorable as time itself.

Odd Hours

Odd Thomas: Book 4

Only a handful of fictional characters are recognized by first name alone. Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas is one such literary hero, who has come alive in readers’ imaginations as he explores the greatest mysteries of this world and the next with his inimitable wit, heart, and quiet gallantry. Now Koontz follows Odd as he is drawn onward, to a destiny he cannot imagine. Haunted by dreams of an all-encompassing red tide, Odd is pulled inexorably to the sea, to a small California coastal town where nothing is as it seems.

Odd Apocalypse

Odd Thomas: Book 5

Once presided over by a flamboyant Hollywood mogul during the Roaring ’20s, the magnificent West Coast property known as Roseland is now home to a reclusive billionaire financier and his faithful servants. And, at least for the moment, it’s also a port in the storm for Odd Thomas and his traveling companion, the inscrutably charming Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell. In the wake of Odd’s most recent clash with lethal adversaries, the opulent manor’s comforts should be welcome. But there’s far more to Roseland than meets even the extraordinary eye of Odd, who soon suspects it may be more hell than haven.

A harrowing taste of Roseland’s terrors convinces Odd that it’s time to hit the road again. Still, the prescient Annamaria insists that they’ve been led there for a reason, and he’s promised to do his best for the ghost on horseback. Just how deep and dreadful are the mysteries Roseland and her masters have kept for nearly a century? And what consequences await whoever is brave, or mad, enough to confront the most profound breed of evil? Odd only knows. Like his acclaimed creator, the irresistible Odd Thomas is in top-notch form-as he takes on what may well be the most terrifying challenge yet in his curious career.

Deeply Odd

Odd Thomas: Book 6

Queer Fear II: Gay Horror Fiction, Vol. 2

How do you make sure a crime that hasn't happened yet, never does? That's the critical question facing Odd Thomas, the young man with a unique ability to commune with restless spirits and help them find justice and peace. But this time, it's the living who desperately need Odd on their side. Three helpless innocents will be brutally executed unless Odd can intervene in time. Who the potential victims are and where they can be found remain a mystery. The only thing Odd knows for sure is who the killer will be: the homicidal stranger who tried to shoot him dead in a small-town parking lot.

With the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock riding shotgun and a network of unlikely allies providing help along the way, Odd embarks on an interstate game of cat and mouse with his sinister quarry. He will soon learn that his adversary possesses abilities that may surpass his own and operates in service to infinitely more formidable foes, with murder a mere prelude to much deeper designs. Traveling across a landscape haunted by portents of impending catastrophe, Odd will do what he must and go where his path leads him, drawing ever closer to the dark heart of his long journey-and, perhaps, to the bright light beyond.

The Girl from the Well

Okiku: Book 1

Rin Chupeco

I am where dead children go.

Okiku is a lonely soul. She has wandered the world for centuries, freeing the spirits of the murdered-dead. Once a victim herself, she now takes the lives of killers with the vengeance they're due. But releasing innocent ghosts from their ethereal tethers does not bring Okiku peace. Still she drifts on.

Such is her existence, until she meets Tark. Evil writhes beneath the moody teen's skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos. While his neighbors fear him, Okiku knows the boy is not a monster. Tark needs to be freed from the malevolence that clings to him. There's just one problem: if the demon dies, so does its host.

The Suffering

Okiku: Book 2

Rin Chupeco

The darkness will find you.

Seventeen-year-old Tark knows what it is to be powerless. But Okiku changed that. A restless spirit who ended life as a victim and started death as an avenger, she's groomed Tark to destroy the wicked. But when darkness pulls them deep into Aokigahara, known as Japan's suicide forest, Okiku's justice becomes blurred, and Tark is the one who will pay the price...

Breathtaking and haunting, Rin Chupeco's second novel is a chilling companion to her debut, The Girl from the Well.

Queer Fear: Book 2

Michael Rowe

Queer Fear II builds on the successes of its predecessor, Queer Fear, the groundbreaking gay-themed horror anthology that Gothic.net called "the best horror anthology of [the year]," which won the Queer Horror Award, and was a finalist for a Spectrum Award and two Lambda Literary Awards.

This second volume includes among its stories new work by some stars of the previous volume--International Horror Guild Award winners Gemma Files and Michael Marano, Bram Stoker Award winners David Nickle and Edo van Belkom, and screenwriter Ron Oliver. Science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, winner of the Aurora and Nebula Awards, crosses genres to appear alongside newer writers like Bram Stoker Award winner Brett Savory, novelist Sephera Giron, and classic British ghost story author Steve Duffy.

And if that's not enough, Queer Fear II will also feature a new, unpublished story by internationally acclaimed horror writer Poppy Z. Brite.

The dark pleasures and anxieties of the Queer Fear books have their roots in the nightmarish, viral machinations of AIDS and homophobia, as well as the ghoulish, old-fashioned thrills of confronting things that go bump in the night. Queer Fear II will keep you up long past the witching hour.

Contents:

Acknowledgments (Queer Fear II) - (2002) - essay by uncredited
Introduction: In Further Praise of Queer Fear - (2002) - essay by Michael Rowe
Bugcrush - (2002) - shortstory by Scott Treleaven
Polyphemus' Cave - (2002) - novelette by David Nickle
Dead in the Water - (2002) - shortstory by C. Mark Umland
Delicious Monster - (2002) - shortstory by Nalo Hopkinson
Gaytown - (2002) - novelette by Robert Boyczuk
Digging Up Graves - (1997) - shortstory by William J. Mann
artGod - (2002) - shortstory by Joseph O'Brien
Black Shapes in a Darkened Room - (2002) - shortstory by Marshall Moore
Night of the Werepuss - (2002) - shortstory by Michael Thomas Ford
On Being a Fetish - (2002) - shortstory by David Coffey
I Stand Alone - (2002) - shortstory by Sèphera Girón
Numbers - (2002) - shortstory by Steve Duffy
Want - (2002) - shortstory by Ron Oliver
Oh Yes, My Eyes - (2002) - shortfiction by David Quinn
One of the Boys - (2002) - shortstory by Edo van Belkom
Till Human Voices Wake Us - (2002) - shortstory by Stephen Dedman
Slice - (2002) - shortstory by Warren Dunford
Veggie Mountain - (2002) - shortstory by Thomas S. Roche
Exit Wound - (2002) - shortstory by Michael Marano
Freshets - (2002) - shortstory by Brett Alexander Savory
Bayou de la Mère - (2002) - shortstory by Poppy Z. Brite
The Narrow World - (2001) - novella by Gemma Files
Contributors (Queer Fear II) - (2002) - essay by uncredited

The Crying Girl

Roaming New England Mysteries: Book 1

Glen Ebisch

When Hazel Wilmot calls Amanda Vickers, her former student and the editor of Roaming New England Magazine, with a story idea about a haunted New Hampshire inn, Amanda is intrigued, but intrigue soon turns to shock. Before Amanda can travel to New Hampshire in time, Hazel dies suspiciously in a fall while exploring the abandoned inn. Amanda quickly decides to investigate her death. Was it accidental or due to something more sinister?

Accompanied by Marcie Ducasse, her young associate editor, Amanda travels to Shadsborough, New Hampshire, a quaint New England town hidden away in the White Mountains. Though its view of the mountains is picturesque, Shadsborough is a small town gripped by fear. And it seems to be catching as Marcie and Amanda discover that neither Hazel's death nor the stories of the ghostly crying girl at the inn are exactly what they seem.

A Winter Haunting

Seasons of Horror: Book 4

Dan Simmons

Dale Stewart's life has become a shadow of what it once was. A respected college professor and successful novelist, he sabotaged his career and his marriage with an obsessive love affair that ended badly.

With darkness closing in on him, Dale decides to return to his boyhood home in Illinois. Drawn by a recurring nightmare that has plagued him since his youth -- and a troubling certainty that something is waiting for him there -- he hopes to exorcise his demons.

In the last hours of Halloween, he reaches the outskirts of the dying town of Elm Haven. There, he moves into the abandoned farmhouse that was once the home of his closest boyhood friend, the strange and brilliant Duane McBride, who lost his young life in a grisly "accident" back in the terrible summer of 1960. Hoping to find peace in isolation, he settles in for the long, harsh winter.

But Dale is not alone. Soon after he arrives, cryptic messages begin appearing mysteriously on his computer screen while he struggles to work on his novel. He sees black dogs roaming the grounds. And an old enemy has reemerged, a bully who seems as determined to persecute Dale as he was in childhood.

Dead Voices

Small Spaces: Book 2

Katherine Arden

Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire.

Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening. Coco is convinced she has seen a ghost, and Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls pleading for help. Then Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, arrives in the midst of the storm to investigate the hauntings at Hemlock Lodge. Ollie, Coco, and Brian want to trust him, but Ollie's watch, which once saved them from the smiling man, has a new cautionary message: BEWARE.

With Mr. Voland's help, Ollie, Coco, and Brian reach out to the dead voices at Mount Hemlock. Maybe the ghosts need their help--or maybe not all ghosts can or should be trusted.

Dead Voices is a terrifying follow-up to Small Spaces with thrills and chills galore and the captive foreboding of a classic ghost story.

Nevermore

Supernatural: Book 1

Keith R. A. DeCandido

Twenty-two years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious and demonic supernatural force. In the years after, their father, John, taught them about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America...and he taught them how to kill it.

Sam and Dean have hit New York City to check out a local rocker's haunted house. But before they can figure out why a lovesick banshee in an '80s heavy-metal T-shirt is wailing in the bedroom, a far more macabre crime catches their attention. Not far from the house, two university students were beaten to death by a strange assailant. A murder that's bizarre even by New York City standards, it's the latest in a line of killings that the brothers soon suspect are based on the creepy stories of legendary writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Their investigation leads them to the center of one of Poe's horror classics, face-to-face with their most terrifying foe yet. And if Sam and Dean don't rewrite the ending of this chilling tale, a grisly serial killer will end their lives forevermore.

Witch's Canyon

Supernatural: Book 2

Jeff Mariotte

Sam and Dean have set out on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, but this is no vacation for the brothers. On a stretch of deserted ranchland just beyond the canyon's stunning vistas, mysterious murder sprees have occurred every forty years. The area's inhabitants have been few and far between in years past, but a nearby mega-mall is about to celebrate its grand opening--and attract thousands of fresh victims.

The Winchester boys are determined to protect locals and shoppers alike, but they never anticipated they'd be fighting a group of killers this vicious, this vindictive, this... dead. A deadly horde of animal spirits and human ghosts has arisen to terrorize this tiny corner of the Arizona desert. If Sam and Dean can't figure out why, the wide-open spaces of the West will once again become a desolate frontier... and the witch's canyon will be the brothers' final resting place.

Bone Key

Supernatural: Book 3

Keith R. A. DeCandido

Sam and Dean are headed for Key West, Florida, home to Hemingway, hurricanes, and a whole lot of demons. The tropical town has so many ghouls on the loose that one of its main moneymakers has long been a series of ghost tours. But the tours are no more, not since one of the guides was found dead of an apparent heart attack... his face frozen in mid-scream. No one knows what horrors he saw, but the Winchester brothers are about to find out.

Soon they'll be face-to-face with the ghosts of the island's most infamous residents, demons with a hidden agenda, and a mysterious ancient power looking for revenge. It's up to Sam and Dean to save the citizens of Key West... before the beautiful island is reduced to nothing more than a pile of bones.

Ring

The Ring: Book 1

Koji Suzuki

A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.

Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.

The Shining

The Shining: Book 1