With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems.

    These are familiar ingredients for a Gothic novel, but something far more strange and disconcerting is taking place within the walls of Malpertuis as the relatives gather for the impending death of Uncle Cassave. The techniques of H. P. Lovecraft, when transplanted into the suffocating Catholic context of a Belgium scarred by the inquisition, produce in Jean Ray's masterpiece a story of monumental intensity from which events of startling ferocity break the surface - without ever lessening the suspense of the tale's approaching apocalyptic denouement.

    He had led migration of Bohemian Paris across the city from Montmartre to Montparnasse, he had helped formulate the principles of 'Cubism', having written one of the first books on the subject, and coined the word 'Surrealist'; and he had demonstrated in his own work those innovations we have come to associate with the most vital investigations of the avente - garde.

    Dr. Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad and cast out from society. But the truth is much more complicated—these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives, those who have lost something precious, wayward daughters, or girls born from adulterous relationships. For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is the Lenten ball—the Madwomen’s Ball—when the great and good come to gawk at the patients of the Salpetriere dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope. Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie—the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum. Because Eugenie has a secret: she sees spirits. Inspired by the scandalous, banned work that all of Paris is talking about, The Book of Spirits, Eugenie is determined to escape from the asylum—and the bonds of her gender—and seek out those who will believe in her. And for that she will need Genevieve's help . . .

    Fine line-drawings by Laszlo Kubinyi enhance the mysterious and sometimes chilling mood.The lady's maid's bell (1904)The eyes (1910)Afterward (1910)Kerfol (1916)The triumph of night (1914)Miss Mary Pask (1925)Bewitched (1925)Mr Jones (1928)Pomegranate seed (1931)The looking glass (1935)All souls' (1937)

    Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them The Death of Halpin Frayser and The Damned Thing, and such tall tales as Oil of Dog and A Cargo of Cat.

    An anarchist who has been in exile from his native Spain for more than twenty years, he lives with his daughter in Paris, but in his mind he is still fighting the Spanish Civil War. He fulminates against the daily papers; he brags about his past exploits. He has become bigoted, self-important, and obsessed; a bully to his fellow exiles and a tyrant to his daughter, Pascualita. Then a family member dies in Madrid and there is an inheritance to sort out. Pascualita wants to go to Spain, which is supposedly opening up in response to the 1960s, and Don Celestino feels he has no choice but to follow. He is full of dread and desire, foreseeing a heroic last confrontation with his enemies, but what he encounters instead is a new commercialized Spain that has no time for the past, much less for him. Or so it seems. Because the last act of Don Celestino’s dizzying personal drama will prove that though “there is nothing serious . . . , there is tragedy.” An astonishing modern take on Don Quixote, Chaos and Night untangles the ties between politics and paranoia, self-loathing and self-pity, rage and remorse. It is the darkly funny final flowering of the art of Henry de Montherlant, a solitary and scarifying modern master whose work, admired by Graham Greene and Albert Camus, is sure to appeal to contemporary readers of Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolaño.

    In this evocative poetic narrative the quest to breathe life into the stories of these individuals becomes an exploration of the author's own voice. Michon does not deny the autobiographical nature of this haunting and seminal work, which only serves to heighten and empower the writing.

    Some call it Selene, some Vampire City, but the vampires refer to it among themselves by the name of the Sepulchre... To destroy the dreaded vampire lord Otto Goetzi, writer Ann Radcliffe, Merry Bones the Irishman, and Grey Jack her faithful servant, launch an all-out attack on Selene... "We can easily see in Vampire City the ultimate literary ancestor of Buffy the Vampire-Slayer."-Brian Stableford. Paul F?val (1816-1887) was the author of numerous popular swashbuckling novels and one of the fathers of the modern crime thriller. Brian Stableford has published more than fifty novels and two hundred short stories. Vampire City was written in 1867-thirty years before Bram Stoker's Dracula-and is one of three classic vampire stories also available from Black Coat Press.

    In this collection of short stories and prose poems, Vivien manages to touch on all the themes and ideas that obsessed her throughout her short life.This is the first English translation of Vivien's short stories, with an introduction by Karla Jay. Readers of all ages will be enchanted with tales such as "Prince Charming," in which Vivien takes a fresh, incisively feminist approach to old themes and deftly destroys fairly tales. She reworks adventure stories, Biblical tales, Greek and Roman Fables to offer a radically different, explicitly feminist alternative to common lore.

    But nearby is a house where nothing has changed since 1945.Traumatised by events in 1945, Yolande hasn’t left her home since.And life has not been kinder to Bernard, her brother, who is now in the final months of a terminal illness.Realizing that he has so little time left, Bernard’s gloom suddenly lifts. With no longer anything to lose, he becomes reckless – and murderous …

    This is a story of jewellery, of love, of denial, of society that aims to have the simplicity of a fairy tale and the elegance of an eighteenth century roman-a-clef.

    Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.

    It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to "ogre" of the Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn, taking us deeper into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since The Tin Drum. Until the very last page, when Abel meets his mystic fate in the collapsing ruins of the Third Reich, it shocks us, dazzles us, and above all holds us spellbound.

    A rhinoceros suddely apears in a small town, tramping through its peaceful streets. Soon there are two, then three, until the "movement" is universal: a transformation of average citizens into beasts, as they learn to "move with the times." Finally, only one man remains. "I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way until the end. I'm not capitulating!" Rhinoceros is a commentary on the absurdity of the human condition made tolerable only by self-delusion. It shows us the struggle of the individual to maintain integrity and identity alone in a world where all others have succumbed to the "beauty" of brute force, natural energy and mindlessness.