Then on her day off, she links up with two hiking companions who have inadvertently stumbledupon a scene of blood vengeance. And suddenly the life Nicola adores is in danger of coming to an abrupt, brutal, and terrifying end . .

    I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead...

    The story of two women - and a man; of Emmy and Rose, bound to each other irrevocably by ties of friendship and love, and still locked in a ceaseless struggle for the same man, Adam.

    A letter summons young Megan Kincaid to the house on Washington Square. In a startling interview the master of the house, Brandon Reid, informs her that he wishes her to devote herself to moody, unbalanced Jeremy, Mrs. Reid's son by her previous husband, Brandon's younger brother Dwight. Dwight Reid's brilliant career as New York District Attorney had been ended by a shocking and tragic accident with a gun--or so the newspapers had claimed--at the hands of this same guilt-ridden child, then aged seven. Against her better judgment, Megan accepts the challenge.From the beginning Megan feels uneasy in the house; she senses the presence of lurking evil, of mysterious emotional undercurrents, of relationships that are not what they appear to be. She does not know whom to trust--the haughty yet strangely sad beauty, Leslie Reid, or the somber, fascinating master of the house, whose warm voice belies his cold, grave manner. She finds herself irresistibly drawn toward him, and their growing mutual attraction is duly noted by interested members of the household. When Megan realizes fully the extent of her own feelings, she knows she cannot honorably remain in the Reid home. Yet she also knows that if she goes, Jeremy will be left alone in world, irretrievably lost.

    "As the train carried Martha Leigh -- heroine of Mistress of Mellyn - through the wooded hills of Devon, she could not help feeling a deep sense of foreboding." "The magnificent manor house on the Yorkshire moors, the ancestral home of the Rockwell family, was called Kirkland Revels."

    To some there was an atmosphere of evil about the place, but to innocent young bride Catherine Rockwell, the mansion seemed magnificently romantic. She did not know then of the terrible secrets imprisoned behind its massive walls. Or that at the moment she had entered her new home, she had crossed the threshold of terror . . .

    As the architect-narrator comments, “You’ve been in that kind of house; everyone has. For no reason you can explain you feel a joy at just being in it.”

    Madness, danger and death lurk everywhere in a shuddering darkness that shrouds all who enter it with a mantle of terror.Contents7 • Foreword (Lost Lake) • essay by Russell Kirk (variant of Foreword (The Surly Sullen Bell) 1962)9 • Uncle Isaiah • (1951) • short story by Russell Kirk26 • Off the Sand Road • (1952) • short story by Russell Kirk37 • Ex Tenebris • (1957) • short story by Russell Kirk52 • The Surly Sullen Bell • (1950) • short story by Russell Kirk70 • The Cellar of Little Egypt • (1962) • short story by Russell Kirk85 • Skyberia • (1952) • short story by Russell Kirk94 • Sorworth Place • [Ralph Bain] • (1952) • novelette by Russell Kirk111 • Behind the Stumps • (1950) • short story by Russell Kirk126 • What Shadows We Pursue • (1953) • short story by Russell Kirk142 • Lost Lake • (1957) • short story by Russell Kirk153 • A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale • (1962) • essay by Russell Kirk

    

    Her mother, alluring, aristocratic, and spirited, had dared to love a man without rank or title, and from their reckless desires, Belinda Lemaitre was born - a child never told of her heritage, and brought up in France.WOMAN OF PASSIONThen, in the dizzying events of chance and revelation, she discovered her past and secretly came into the employ of her now invalid mother. One moment, embittered rage ruled Belinda; the next, tenderness and mercy brought her near the mother she had never known.PAWN OF DESTINYSuddenly, as Belinda was readying to reveal her true identity, she was entrapped in a terrifying web of masquerade, lust, and murderous longing, as a beautiful imposter sought to take her place, a handsome gentleman courted her love, and a killer waited... until they were alone.

    Set in England, the story travels between the past and present, tantalizing and exciting one's curiosity.John Montrolfe comes to England to claim his inheritance and take up residence in his ancestral mansion, Montrolfe Hall. Haunted dreams take him on an unexpected journey in to the world of rogues, villains and thieves. It is in his dreams that he meets a beautiful young girl named Catherine Barton and the enigmatic and handsome Max Fabian. Thus he begins to experience the meaning and the horrors of the Montrolfe curse.Rohan O'Grady has written a rich and strange tale and tells it with skilful narrative power and poetic relish. Edward Gorey's early drawings superbly capture Ms. O'Grady's love of the melodramatic, romantic and macabre. Here is the story telling in the great tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe.(Original Title = Pippin's Journal: Or, Rosemary Is for Remembrance)