And it was Lettice who was the mother of the Queen's beloved Earl of Essex. That young earl would one day break the Queen's heart.It was always Lettice, the constant spoiler in the triangle of love surrounding Elizabeth...

    Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Soon, though, they come to realize that more is wrong than their diminished privacy. Surely the house can't be "haunted," yet something about it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart.

    A French girl's brush with death while trying to secure a cherished doll from a ledge surrounding the top of a bell tower leads to the revelation of an evil spell on the doll and the identity of its victims.

    Because it contains its own mythology and its own set of rules, it has also proved a psychologically attractive genre for many writers from its Romantic inception to the present day.

    She felt at home there right from the start, for everyone seemed so kind and welcoming. Everyone except Mrs. Pendennis, the eccentric housekeeper who advised Carla to leave at once to deter a tragic and inevitable fate. But Carla could not leave—for the invisible bonds of an ancestral curse were just beginning to take hold...

    He intends to choose an heir to the family fortune, and he makes it quite clear that everyone- including multimillionaire Bostonian Bertrand Demaury with his wife and family, calculating Phillippe and his countess from Paris and the disarming young German Otto von Wuppertal, whose father has recently killed himself because of financial reverse- will be on trial before his decision is made. One by one, they are summoned while he probes their ambitions with knifelike precision as suspicion and hatred thicken among them.Meg, an impoverished cousin of the Demaurys who lives by their grace and favor as companion to the spoiled Esmeralda Demaury, arrives from England. Ignored by the family, she is captive to the romantic overtures of Lord Peter Chalmers, fiance of Esmeralda.One of the guests dies; the first murder has occurred. Prince Lorenzo Giolitti-Crispi, the titled and handsome but penniless chief of police arrives on the scene. Meg becomes his prime suspect.Against the glittering background of the Venetian Carnival and the elegant Boat Races, the mystery deepens culminating with Gile's announcement of the inheritor to his vast fortune. The shock is electrifying.

    When her father's company is playing in New York, Laure ambushes him in his dressing room, to tell him that she's an adult and wants to live on her own. To defuse the situation, Jules takes Laure with him on holiday to New Orleans. There she gets to know her Creole grandmother and spends a great deal of time visiting with her in the old French Quarter. In the gracious southern home of her father's friends, Laure meets Cole Drummond."

    It was here that lovely young Moira Bannion came on a visit to her father - only to discover that handsome Stephen Dread and not Paddy Bannion was the true master of Dread House.And from the moment of her arrival at the mansion, Moira became a helpless pawn in a terrifying game she didn't understand. Yet there was no one she could turn to for help. Not her father, who had lied to her from the start. Not Stephen, who seemed to forget he had a wife whenever Moira was near. Not Mrs. Dread, who appeared to be almost too well-informed about the shipwrecks along the coast. Some dark evil was casting its shadow over all of them, and Moira knew she must escape this place at once. But her heart betrayed her into staying until it was far, far too late...

    You owe me that, Karen..." David Hallam had written those words in his last letter to his wife from a small village in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains. Ten days later he was dead. Now Karen Hallam had to find out why. Her search would take her deep into the misty, haunted mountains where her husband was born, and where he spent the last few weeks of his life. It would lead her into a tangled web of disputed fortune, family jealousy, conspiracy, adultery and murder. And it would bring her face to face again, with Trevor Andrews, David's half brother-the first man she had ever loved. But Trevor was married now, distant, unreachable-and before long Karen would learn that Trevor Andrews had his own good reasons for wanting David dead. And in that moment she would also know that her passion for the truth might drive her to betray the deepest instincts of her heart.

    She's come to stay for a while, with hopes to meet some of her relatives, and work on an illustrated book of wild flowers. But soon after she arrives in Norway unusual things begin to happen. Her hotel room is no longer available, someone had sent a note to cancel it. She hires a driver to take her to Tordendal, and along the way he shoves her over a cliff in an attempt to kill her. When that fails, the cottage where she is supposed to spend her time in Tordendal burns to the ground ... and then she meets again the mysterious man from the Mjosa Steamer ... only to find he is Paul Ringstad, widower of her late cousin, Gina, and father to the very somber little girl called Juliana. Beth struggles to determine why someone would want to kill her ... what secrets does Tordendal hide that someone would do anything to protect?

    In these sixteen tales the shadowy hues of the Gothic are blended with the vivid shades of the fantastic to produce effects as uncanny and eerie as any in the realm of letters. whether the reader is transported into the selfcontained worlds of wonder, sent back into the darkest reaches of time, or faced with nightmare horror amid the chillingly familiar landscape of the contemporary scene, one element is constant: Each of these sixteen masterpieces offers an experience as inescapable and unforgettable as a dream of terror come hauntingly true.Contents include; Lila the Werewolf by Petrer Beagle / The Crowd by Ray Bradbury / The Troll by T. H. White / The Haunter of the Dark by H. P. Lovecraft / The Dance of Death by Algernon Blackwood / Smith and the Pharaohs by H. Rider Haggard / The Habitants of Middle Islet by William H. Hodgson / The Brown Hand by Arthur Conan Doyle / Darkness Box by Ursula K. Le Guin / from "Three Hearts and Three Lions" by Poul Anderson / The Unholy Grail by Fritz Leiber / The Enchantress of Sylaire by C. A. Smith / Werewoman by C. L. Moore / The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune by Roberrt E. Howard / The Woman of the Wood by A. Merritt / Cross Purposes by George MacDonald.

    By Gypsy law, he was her betrothed. He was handsome, powerful, and women desired him - but not Perrine. She knew his cruelty; and when the gypsy camp was raided and her father killed as the result of a murder Razko had committed, Perrine ran away.To Paris, to the country of her mother's people. To New York and then to California, seeking the fame and fortune her beauty and wit could secure for her. But everywhere she went, Razko followed...

    THE CURSEWhat was the secret shame that had driven India's proud father from England -- and made him so fanatically determined to shield his daughter from all knowledge of the world?What inner torment had turned India's Aunt Maude from a legendary young beauty into a hideously obese aging woman living out her days in bitterness and self-hate?What demonic danger now threatened India herself, as she discovered that she was torn between two handsome, iron-willed suitors -- each warning her of the other, and each demanding that she surrender herself body and soul to him alone?Somehow, the answer lay in the depths of the glowing black pearl necklace that held India in its hypnotic spell...

    

    

    One moment she was Bernadette Tyson, a beautiful eighteen-year-old orphan raised by the nuns of St. Brigid's Convent. The next moment handsome young lawyer Robert Douglas was telling her she might be Bernadette MacDonald, the granddaughter of a wealthy Canadian mine owner. Before long, Bernadette found herself at her grandfather's home meeting her new family. But evil fortune seemed to pursue Bernadette at the isolated mansion. First there was the open hostility with which her newfound cousins greeted her. Then there was the eerie night visitor, beckoning Bernadette to some unknown destiny. And when a bizarre series of "accidents" nearly claimed her life, Bernadette realized that her new happiness could end in a tragedy from which neither Robert nor her grandfather might be able to protect her...