The way she tackles this task leads to her being thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets Nicholas Sabine - a man about to die.He asks her a cryptic riddle, the mystery of which echoes through all that befalls her in the months that follow...She is brought to England and tries to make a new life with the Gresham family, but she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the bitter feud between the Greshams and a neighbouring family.There is danger, romance and heartache for Lucy as strange events build to a point where she begins to doubt her own senses.How could she see a man, long dead, walking in the misty darkness of the valley? And who carried her, unconscious, into the labyrinth of Chiselhurst Caves and left her to die?It is not until she returns to China that Lucy finds, amid high adventure, the answer to all that has baffled her.

    a midnight caller keeping his promise ... forests where Nature is deliberate and malefic ... enchanted houses ... these are the beings and ideas that flood through this collection of ghost stories by Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). Altogether 13 stories, gathered from the entire corpus of Blackwood's work, are included; stories of such sheer power and imagination that it is easy to see why he has been considered the foremost British supernaturalist of the twentieth century.Blackwood's ability to create an atmosphere of unrelieved horror and sustain it to the end of the story is almost unsurpassed. “The Willows” — which has been called by H.P. Lovecraft the finest supernatural story — is a typical example of Blackwood's art: slowly and surely Blackwood draws the reader into a world of shadows, nuances and unearthly terror.Blackwood was also a master at evoking feelings of mysticism and cosmic experience; dealing with such ideas as interpenetrating levels of existence and pantheistic elemental powers, he expanded the content of supernatural literature enormously. But even the more traditional elements of horror stories such as ghosts and haunted houses are handled with such energy and feeling that they rise far above their predecessors.Drawing on serious Oriental thought, modern psychology and philosophy, Algernon Blackwood introduced a sophistication to the horror story that — with a few exceptions — it was devoid of before. The results are stories that are not only guaranteed to chill, but stories that have something to say to the intelligent reader.Contents:- The Willows (1907)- Secret Worship (1908)- Ancient Sorceries (1908)- The Glamour of the Snow (1911)- The Wendigo (1910)- The Other Wing (1915)- The Transfer (1911)- Ancient Lights (1914)- The Listener (1907)- The Empty House (1906)- Accessory before the Fact (1914)- Keeping His Promise (1906)- Max Hensig (1945)

    It is the story of Kate, despised by her mother, bound to her father by ties stronger and darker than blood. It is the story of her attempted escapes−in detached sexual encounters, at a Southern college populated by spoiled and perverse beauties, and in a doomed marriage to a man who cannot understand what she is running from. Witty, erotic, searing acute, STATE OF GRACE bears the inimitable stamp of one of our fines and most provocative writers.

    The quiet, peaceful place was straight out of a bygone era, with well-cared-for Colonial houses, a white-steepled church fronting a broad Common. Ned and Beth Constantine chanced upon the hamlet and immediately fell in love with it. This was exactly the haven they dream of. Or so they thought.For Ned and his family, Cornwall Coombe was to become a place of ultimate horror.

    For Ellen March, buying the secluded old house nestled in the pine woods marked the start of a new life. Now she could put her failed marriage behind her, enjoy the quiet solitude of small town life, and get to know her worldly new neighbor, handsome Norman McKay... But strange visions began to cloud her mind - the shadowy figure of a woman, a ghostly white cat - and Ellen's safe haven slowly became her prison. Had she buried the past? Or had a dark legend come back to haunt her...?

    New Stories of Horror and the Haunting Dark:A Family WelcomeA Penny for a PoundCome to Me My FlowerCrowning GloryDon't Go Up Them StairsNo One Lived TherePussy Cat - Pussy CatThe Death of MeThe DeviletThe GatecrasherThe Head of the FirmThe HouseThe PlaymateThe Treasure HuntTomorrow is Judgement DayWhy Don't You Wash? Said the Girl with £100,000 and no Relatives

    

    

    Cohen challenges the modern view that the transi image was a mere memento mori for the living. Drawing upon 200 examples of tombs with, as well as without transi images, and upon poetry, church hymns, prayers, sermons, ceremonial texts, and wills, she demonstrates that in the course of the 15th & 16th centuries the meaning of the transi evolved, reflecting changes in religious, social and intellectual life during this period.

    Her ghost still inhabits the place and takes over the wife's body, goes to Hollywood, and tries to re-enter films. The couple meets a film buff, living in Vilma Banky's old home, and he has prints of all the lost films including the complete Greed.

    He played with his relatives as a cat would play with a mouse before devouring it. And then again, he had no answer to the question: Just who was Elizabeth Gifford? Because there were two of them…Beware the Evil ForcesI remembered the warning Conal Stanford had given me yesterday: Death was waiting for me in Greytowers. And now that I had met its people, I could well understand why.If I were the true granddaughter, and I were to die, Roland would inherit these many acres and the great wealth of Sir Richard. My rival -- the other Elizabeth -- would want me out of the way for the same reason -- reason enough to kill.What were the worlds Conal had used? Evil forces. Yes, there were evil forces at large in that huge house, and they were all directed at me…

    

    

    Outside a violent storm was raging through the Balkan mountains. Urging Sophia to leave her husband and live with him in the castle, the count demonstrated his powers over bats, birds, and the raging storm. Then he persuaded Sophia to try her own powers, summoning up demonic spirits to assist her. Thrilled with her new-found ability to dominate the elements, Sophia accepted the potion offered her. Soon she found herself stripped of all inhibitions, alone in the tower with a strong-willed, fiercely passionate man...

    John Osborne's brilliant and concise dramatization highlights the relevance of this tale in the modern to world, where, as Osborne says, "It is obligatory be slim, trim, careless.

    Handsome Miles Tredynnick, however, seemed most anxious to hire her as governess to his nine-year-old Griselda, his late wife's daughter, a somewhat unusual child whom everyone shunned. Determined to begin a new life, Ann accepted the position-and found herself pitted against a terrifying evil that threatened the sanity she had fought so hard to regain. The possession of a child's soul was the prize. Death was the weapon...

    It seemed only natural that Kay should possess the family fortunethat Kay should be the queen and Martha her lady-in-waiting, that Kay should be married to the man whom Martha secretly loved.Kay Spaulding's name was in the headlines for the last time. Beautiful and rich, her marriages and her reckless exploits had kept her in the news. Now she had been found dead in a shabby stolen car, mugged and robbed with an ice pick plunged into her back, and the police were calling it premeditated murder. They suspect her half-sister Martha -- who they believe was in love with Kay's husband -- even after someone attempts to poison her.Now there was nothing to stand between Martha and fabulous wealth, between Martha and the man she adored... between Martha and the unknown killer who now stalked her. Only when she is trapped on a mountainside does Martha learn the truth about a monstrous gamble that nearly paid off -- that may yet pay off, depending on who reaches her first.

    Philip claimed that Neil had set the blaze that killed Neil's young wife after he discovered her in Philip's arms. Neil maintained that Philip had started the fire and that he feared Philip's pyromania still put all their lives in danger. Jennifer didn't know which of the brothers to believe, but when the villa she was staying in burned to the ground, she knew that she had become the next victim of a murderer obsessed by fire.

    But in strait-laced New Orleans early in the 19th century, there were few means for a respectable young woman to make her own way in the world--which is why Margaret comes as governess to the forbidding Villars mansion.Given into her charge is a child seemingly possessed by satanic evil. Invading her dreams is the darkly handsome, fierce-tempered man who employs her. And closing in on her are hate and fear and mystery, as the dark abyss of a sinister past opens to receive her.

    Jody Parrish laughed at the legend until she heard the eerie music and knew...

    With the infant in her arms, Kate went to the Ledstonborough estate to confront the father and force him to recognize his heir.But the father was not there. Instead, the dark ancestral house of Ledstonborough was filled with malevolent, grasping people, each intent on securing the lordly title for himself. Kate began to fear for the child's life -- especially with the appearance of the "veiled Lady," a spectral figure who walked the halls only when an heir to the title was soon to die!

    She had come to face the ordeal of hearing her beloved father's will read.Now, after many lonely years, suddenly Leonie was heiress to a fortune and mistress of the mist-shrouded mansion where her cold, beautiful mother and her hateful "Uncle" Sean still lived. Almost at once she was aware of the terrible secret that motivated evil in the lives of everyone at Inverness.What were the mysterious circumstances surrounding a strange woman and her father's sudden death? And what was the danger that lurked behind her growing attraction to the darkly handsome Peter Montego...?

    She had promised she wouldn’t go inside. She hadn’t known then that she would follow a familiar, frightening path to it. She hadn’t know then that she wouldn’t need a key at all. She hadn’t known then that she would find the front door standing open wide -- as if, inside, someone was waiting.

    

    But suspicions begin to crowd her mind when she recalls that Julie always had a deathly fear of water. Ignoring the advice of her fiance, Frances decides to pursue a secret investigation of her cousin's death by taking a position at Maxton Hall, the mental hospital where Julie worked and the setting for her suicide. There she meets Jeremy York, a resident physician of the hospital, with whom she soon falls in love. But when Frances, finally convinced that Julie was murdered, is plunged into the midst of a vicious conspiracy which claims her as its next victim, she no longer knows whether she can trust Jeremy..

    

    After being bitten by a poisonous snake she found herself rushed to The Cedars, where lived a woman who could cure snakebites -- and where also lived a man named Mark Kellogg.