In San Francisco, Emily Blake and her husband David, a dermatologist, by an old Victorian in Pacific Heights and hope to start a family. Emily's happy plans are threatened when David begins an affair with a beautiful patient named Jennie. A visit to a mysterious young boy in the Mission District named Lupe starts a chain of events in motion that result in Jennie's death -- by spontaneous combustion -- a murder trial, a media circus, and demon possession.

    Four days later, his mother is dead, and a strange cult of religious wanderers have been brutally murdered by the terrified local farmers. In 1995, a gnarled sycamore tree planted over their graves is uprooted by bulldozers--and evil arises.

    One killer has left several horribly mangled corpses; the other murderer kills his victims seemingly without touching them. The investigators have only a single set of fingerprints to link the two series of crimes. — Journalist Peter Jacobs is dragged into the investigation when he receives an anonymous call from someone who knows more than he should about the murders. They agree to meet at a specific place and time, but the caller never shows up -- …and the killings continue.When Julie Moore, a graduate student researching Near Death Experiences, falls in love with Peter, she has no way of knowing that she has placed herself in the deadly sights of the Cold One. The Cold One needs Peter to complete its mysterious designs -- but it does not hate Julie for interfering. It feels nothing -- no hate, no fear, no love -- and Its mere existence threatens all living things.Until recently, Jerry Washington belonged to a violent street gang. Trying to go straight, Jerry meets Susan Darly, an upper-crust high school sweetheart, and finds that life can be warm and wonderful. Then Susan almost drowns -- and is terribly changed. She has become as cold as death, and Jerry is determined to find out why.In India, Govinda Sharma's spiritual master has given him a dangerous job -- to pursue a seemingly invincible man, a blind man who can dominate another's will with a mere thought. This man will lead Govinda to the Cold One, and to a great truth that will shatter him to the core.Govinda Sharma, Jerry Washington, and Peter Jacobs are the last defenders of mankind.The Cold One knows who they are. It knows they are coming. And it does not care.

    In addition to nineteen superb stories of dark fantasy and horror, The Color of Evil includes a long, insightful introduction, which delineates the evolution of horror fiction, and, for each writer, notes which say something about the literature and the author's place in it.

    For some curious reason she feels the secret of her past may be uncovered in the bleak manor high on Widow's Hill.From the moment she arrives, Victoria becomes the target of someone in the house determined to destroy her.As the wind moans and the rain lashes around the isolated Collins House, Victoria, without friends in the manor, feels death close in on her, a choking, frightening death.

    J. Gahagan] · ss Courier Spr ’38 77 · The Ape and the Mystery [“The Mysterious Mona Lisa Smile”] · ss The Saturday Evening Post Jun 26 ’48 89 · The King Who Collected Clocks [“Royal Impostor”] · nv The Saturday Evening Post May 3 ’47 117 · Bone for Debunkers [“The Karmesin Affair”; Karmesin] · ss The Saturday Evening Post Dec 15 ’62 133 · A Lucky Day for the Boar · ss Playboy Oct ’62 143 · Voices in the Dust of Annan · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 13 ’47 161 · Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo? · nv The Brighton Monster, London: Heinemann, 1953; Star Science Fiction Stories #3, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1954

    They were tired and tense, two guys and three girls arguing over a vacation gone bad. But things were about to get worse for the five young friends. Much, much worse. In fact, most of them would never see the highway again. — The woods were dark and forbidding, filled with unseen dangers and inhuman sounds. The light in the distance promised sanctuary from the grasping terrors. Instead, the light lured the travelers to the very heart of evil, a house at the entrance of Hell, a house that held only torture, depravity and--for the lucky ones--death.When the front door closes, the screaming begins!

    Infidelity will change you forever. There can be no going back.Kirsten Calloway knows she should be grateful. She has a stable marriage, decent job, and a wonderful teenage daughter. But she also has a raging libido that won't shut up, and a husband who'd rather go on a bike ride.She bumps into an old friend at a school reunion who faces a similar problem. Dianne, though, has found the answer: a discreet agency which arranges casual sex for people just like them, people who want to keep their marriages but also scratch that itch.Enter Zac: younger, handsome and everything Kirsten could hope for in bed. For a while, they seem to have it all. Kirsten even finds herself becoming a better wife and mother. But Zac wants more – a lot more, and he'll stop at nothing to get it.Sexually charged, shocking and relatable, Reckless is a profound exploration of marriage, motherhood and desire.

    A Marine Corps psychiatrist with a crisis of faith encourages his patients to enact their fantasies as part of their therapy. However, he proves himself to be more deeply disturbed than at first appears and finally sacrifices himself to save one of his patients.

    On a moonlight night in early spring, twenty-seven people entered the mansion's labyrinthine halls, to partake in an orgy of diabolical debauchery, the likes of which beggared description. And one by one, twenty-six of them were butchered in place. The twenty-seventh body was never recovered. House of Sin The screams have faded, and the blood has dried but the spectral house remains...waiting. House of Hell Welcome to the mansion made in Hell Flesh Gothic Where the temple of evil is your own body...

    Few know these characters—and their creators—better than Sarah Weinman. One of today’s preeminent authorities on crime fiction, Weinman asks: Where would bestselling authors like Gillian Flynn, Sue Grafton, or Tana French be without the women writers who came before them? In Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Weinman brings together fourteen hair-raising tales by women who—from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—took a scalpel to contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence. Lovers of crime fiction from any era will welcome this deliciously dark tribute to a largely forgotten generation of women writers.

    They shine a light on what it really feels like when your world shatters and how they found hope in the deepest despair.Best friends since they met at university, Kerry and Pat had no idea that thirty years later, they’d need every ounce of their friendship to survive. In 2017, their worlds came crashing down when their teenage sons were both diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses within weeks of each other.During the following rollercoaster months, Kerry and Pat regularly snatched time to message each other – often with black humour – providing a momentary refuge from their frightening realities. Together these two ordinary mums found a way to survive their extraordinary challenges and to navigate a new normal in an alien and isolating world. With raw honesty, they share the things they’ve learnt and what they wish they’d known – from how to tame raging mother guilt to restoring their natural optimism in the aftershock of tragedy.In this profoundly moving book, Kerry and Pat take readers on a very personal exploration of the universal experiences of grief and loss, love and friendship that connect us all. Like a wise companion offering comfort, Take My Hand is a lifeline both to those overwhelmed by heartbreak and for friends and family who don’t know how to help. Most of all, it’s a powerful reminder that no matter how difficult life gets, you are not alone.

    They guard the last cathedral-turned-sanctuary atop a bald knoll in the North Carolina mountains.Gargoyle protection grudgingly extends to any human who can make it inside the Sanctuary, but the power of the stonecutter blood magic, which protects the sanctuary, may not be enough when a rogue grotesque and his badly-wounded ward arrive.All the hounds of hell are on their heels. The last Sanctuary is about to fall.

    Only a drug-addicted detective and a young man with a gift for mathematics have the means to solve an enigmatic murder--a murder that may be the key to saving Trowth from certain destruction.A new edition of this book is available! Sure, it's a dollar more, but it also includes three short stories--check out The Translated Man and Other Stories.

    But when the rain came, the creatures left the shadows...WORMSSpectres from the past tortured James Hildebrand's mind. His blackest nightmares were crowded with malevolent, coiling images of decay. Then, suddenly, he knew the threat was real.WORMSThe dead alone could not quench their hunger. And, for the living, the horrors that fed and multiplied in the darkness of the night became more terrible with the dawn...