It is the story of a spirited young woman of eighteen who has left an unhappy, uncertain past in England and made a new life for herself as a trapeze artist in a small touring circus...But that forgotten past will stumble upon her one day, beside a stream in Hungary, where the circus has pitched its tents for a time. It will come in the form of a mysterious young man-handsome, appealing, yet curiously remote-whose appearance is the beginning of a strange, dangerous intrigue that involves deception, romance, disappearance and, in the end, the revelations of a family's darkest secrets.

    The fate of six sisters lies in the House of Scorpio, where they are brought together by forces beyond their control--written in the stars and over the human heart.Haven of Horror! Haven of Love! SCORPIO!The Sisters:ARA--the brilliant and regal tutor to the household of the handsome actor Solis finds she must act a part in a dangerous play where lives and love are at stake.VENA--the beautiful governess fights the demon warlock Chrion for the love and reputation of the dashing horseman, Ramo.CLAIRE--the dark and comely nurse's love for a famous architect leads her to a wild Saturnalia of unbridled lust and danger.CELENE--the stunning housekeeper is led into a perilous trap with the brilliant doctor Draco, where her wits and passion are her only weapons.MENI--the delicate artist tangles in a web of intrigue and suspense where the masterful ambassador Rigo and the arrogant secretary Miyan play a dangerous game for her life.CYBELE--the love Virgo is trapped in a mesh of deadly poison where everyone is a suspect--including the man she loves.

    He hires two young male caretakers, Quintus Pearch and Potter Daventry, who look after his disability. They also act as a go-between with Garnet's childhood sweetheart, now the widow Georgina Rance, delivering her messages in a desperate attempt to restart their interrupted relationship.With vivid Gothic imagery and drama, Purdy explores the varieties of love and the powerful transformations it can make in anyone's life. Readers will not soon forget Garnet, Quintus, and Daventry for the genuine human love that they share—and reject—and how they discover their way in the world.

    She had heard it was haunted. Now with her own eyes she had seen it was true. The Macabre circle of small foxes ringing the dancer in the secret garden, the mysterious robed woman with a fox’s face. Had Saranna realy seen them? Or had she dreamed it? Saranna had gone to Tiensin under protest. Her spoiled young niece, Honora, had forced her to become a governess to her stepdaughter, Damaris. Never had Saranna encountered anyone as thoroughly evil as Honora. She was beautiful, and she could pull the wool over any man’s eyes. But she could not deceive Saranna. Or Damaris, whom she was planning to cheat out of a huge inheritance. Even the handsome and trustworthy Gerrad Fowkes seemed to be taken with the deceitful young stepmother. Saranna knew now that the future held great danger for her and Damaris. She needed desperately to talk to someone. But there was no one. Except Gerrad Fowkes. Or was he too enamored of Honora to believe Saranna?

     She soon discovers that both her sister and her new husband have tragically perished in a fire which destroyed their home. Alone in the bleak Norfolk brecklands, Deborah is at first forced to accept hospitality from the handsome yet forbidding widower, Sir Randall Gaunt. Yet even when Deborah later stumbles upon the warm companionship of Lord Stannard, the charming young aristocrat wooing her with such passionate urgency, the strange events that follow cause her feelings of uneasiness to grow. And then, before long Deborah becomes inextricably involved in a nightmare of unimaginable evil…

    

    She had wild black hair and topaz-coloured eyes, and a power over men which she scarcely understood. When she left her home in Welsh mountains for the prospect of gold and a silken gown in London, one man said that she was of those who carry their fate in their eyes. Before long another saw beneath her sweetness something cold, some capacity for evil-though she was not evil herself. Yet she loved Sir Harry Falcon, and he loved her more than he did his gentle wife, and he took her home with him to Kent. But with Margred's coming to Kingsmead an evil seed was sown that would affect many generations of the Falcon family.

    Only here would Adria find haven, safety from the Puritans ready to burn her as a witch. She opened the great door to shelter and life, and looked upon death. Wyndspelle's mistress lay upon a candlelit bier, cold and still. Adria could remain here, if she consented to become the new wife of the blind man with the scarred face and soul, the master of Wyndspelle.

    The book is a stylistic pastiche of H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, and may be seen as an expansion of Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. While presented as a novel of the Cthulhu Mythos, it is, in fact, a collection of linked stories.Contents:IntroductionThe House of the WormYohk the NecromancerXiurhnPassing of a DreamerThe Return of ZhosphThe Three EnchantmentsHazuth-KlegThe Loot of GolthothThe Four Sealed JarsThe Maker of Gods

    It was grim necessity that made Harriette bear with a parsimonious master, a bad-tempered mistress and two spoilt children. She was also not too happy about the sinister old gentleman who lived next door - frequently the noises of footsteps and crashing furniture woke her in her attic room... But when fate - in the form of amorous advances from the young master of the house - found her without work, money or home, she discovered that 'sinister' old Mr. Hardware proved an unexpected benefactor. Suddenly, life was to become an exciting and romantic adventure for Harriette Mead...

    GoodmanThe Celery Stalks in the Basement by Saralee TerryLast Respects by Dick BaldwinThe Strange Island Of Doctor Nork by Robert BlochUnsigned Original by Parke GodwinA Predicament by Edgar Allan PoeMoon-Face by Jack LondonThe Philosophy of Sebastian Trump or The Art of Outrage by William E. Kotzwinkle & Robert ShiarellaOil of Dog by Ambrose BierceThe Demon of the Gibbet by Fitz-James O'BrienThe Pale Criminal by C. Hall ThompsonThe Day of the Lynx by Steve KnickmeyerOur Late Visitor by Joseph LavinsonNight and Silence by Maurcie LevelThe Possession Of Immanuel Wolf by Brother Theodore & Marvin Kaye

    Living in the shadow of her famous sister, Jenny tries to get attention by intruding on the life of a recluse whose growing friendship makes her aware of the cultural conflict of the local Indians.

    Here is the spellbinding tale of a lovely young woman pursued by a proud family's shameful past...from a Cornwall mansion to the fabled Crystal Palace in London to glittering Venice...and coming ever closer to the terrible menace of her Dark Inheritance.

    But as she took a short-cut through the woods, she was enveloped in a strange white fog...and when it had passed, beside her stood a coach-and-four with two liveried attendants - who forced her into the coach and made off with her! And suddenly Lee Parks found herself in Fenwick Manor, deep in the English countryside of 1773. And to her horror, she was caught up in a whirlwind of tragedy and suspense: A series of narrow escapes from violent death, in which she was mistaken for the mistress of Fenwick Manor who had mysteriously disappeared. Could Lee find the white fog and return to her own era? Or would she be stalked by macabre death intended for another?

    

    She was suddenly an heiress. To claim her legacy she would travel to Fog Island as her aunt requested.No sooner had Elaine arrived at her late uncle's castle than she sensed something ominous in the air. What she feared what true! The circumstances surrounding her Uncle Hammond's death involved murder and suicide. To complicate matters, Elaine found herself enamored of handsome Dr. Frank Waterford, only to learn that he too was involved in the terrible Tower House scandal.And before she knew it, Elaine was fighting the awesome evil that gripped Tower House--fighting for her love...her legacy...and her life...

    While staying with her grandparents in the Poconos, a young girl becomes involved in the mysterious events taking place in the nearby home of a famous movie actress.

    And in all the hostile world there was just one person to whom Jane Danver could turn for help--the beautiful, bewitching, yet fearfully mysterious creature called Jamintha...

    When Antonia inherits the famous scandal-ridden Standish brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and moves in with her 13-year-old son, they are victims of strange, nearly fatal occurrences. Also, her ex-husband comes out of the woodwork and blackmails her.

    When Bianca Wilder decides to prolong a summer job at a resort hotel on the New Jersey shore, she never imagines she will be swept back in time to a bygone era.

    A servant at Mallion Castle. But proud and headstrong, all the same. Benedict Trevallion, the enigmatic master of Mallion, owed her father a debt of gratitude. Which is why he brought her to the castle. At least that is what he said.But why did he marry her? A chit of a girl - companion to his mother. Why, he had never even kissed her! Now suddenly she was his wife. But in name only. Benedict lived in solitary secrecy in other rooms of the castle.Something was going on. Something terrible and terrifying.Joanna was afraid. What kind of man was Benedict? And most of all, what were his plans for her?

    In every house are people who have been terrified by the most brutal murder ever to occur in the area. Not only has this murder of well-known young woman shocked and repulsed them; it has also raised their deepest suspicions and fears for the safety of their own lives. For the murder had been the handiwork of more than one person, in fact of a group. A group of witches.Tansy Tremayne, coming to live with her aunt's family on their estate, arrived at the dreadful moment of the murder itself--indeed, witnessed a part of the ritual. Witnessed and was witnessed--by one of the participants.He was wrapped in witch's robe, the thin, diabolical music of the flute playing around him.He was someone Tansy would recognize...

    Gary Mistral's quick action saved them both from a fiery death, and Nadine felt her heart stirring with more than gratitude to the handsome young author.She had come to the island for a pleasant visit with her old college friend Diane Colbert, the owner of Glencoe. But the once-vivacious Diane had become a frightened prisoner in her castle home. The victim of many near-fatal accidents, Diane was too petrified with terror to escape the island. And when Nadine tried to help her, she also became a quarry of the evil which possessed Diane's ancestral home. Gary had rescued her once, but could even he keep Nadine safe from the doom which threatened to claim her...?

    That was why Nicole Fanchon had come to Emerald Hill - to care for her. On Nicole's first night in the house, Cara had crept close to her bed, holding a pair of scissors like a dagger. She hadn't struck . . . not then.But Nicole knew she was in danger. Could her real enemy be Cara, who claimed her dead mother visited her, spoke to her, warned her against Nicole? Was it the hostile housekeeper, who also claimed to see the dead woman? Or Cara's father, to whom Nicole was so quickly drawn? Or was the killer the ghost of the former mistress of Emerald Hill?

    He had wanted to explore it before his lawyers arrived.And he had done so.Everything seemed in order - until he came to the last bedroom. A guest bedroom. A light was burning. And the guest, whoever she was, was still lying in bed with the sheet drawn up to her chin. It took him a few moments to realize she was dead. And a few more to realize that she had been murdered.

    Over and over, the accident haunted me. The bridge - wet, slippery, so narrow. And then the fog - thick, condensing, coming from behind, then covering the windshield. Smothering me, blinding me. Oh, God, where's the railing? Then blackness... and icy water lapping, lapping. The hunters who found me on the shore were puzzled. How had I escaped? My car was still under water, locked. I knew no answers, only that I must go on to the dark house I would use as a hunting lodge, to welcome the strong young men who would come as hunters and might stay as lovers.

    She only knew that at Brackenroyd Hall she was a plaything of powers beyond her understand or control. Her body and soul had become part of a pattern of violence and vengeance woven over the centuries, which was now about to make itself finally and fearfully clear...

    Then years ago the handsome Philippe had been willing to give up everything for Margaret Walters, and she had humiliated him by running off with another man.Now destiny had drawn them together again, drawn them to a dank, brooding castle on the English coast to work in the household of a callous army Colonel and his two strange daughters; a castle bordered by a treacherous beach of deadly sands. The ex-lovers had no choice but to bear each other's presence -- until fate swept them into a nightmare of madness and terror that joined them with the most sinister passion of all...

    Six years ago she had been a baronet's daughter, and this had been her home. Now, sixteen and fatherless, she was an actress begging her aunt, Lady Sefton, to take her back. — But her aunt drove her away with the bitter words that Sarah was not a Sefton, and worse, that her true father was unknown.Cruelly hurt, Sarah vowed there would come a day of reckoning - when Lady Sefton would be humbled and Sarah would again rule her ancestral mansion.

    Lady Margarita is struck with amnesia.