Four Oxrun Station horror novellas each from a different 20th century decade starting with 1950, keyed to the seasons.

    Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying and the terror that lies in between…No one tells a story like Peter Straub. He dazzles with the richness of his plots and the eloquence of his prose. He startles you into laughter in the face of events so dark that you begin to question your own moral compass. Then he reduces you to jelly by spinning a tale so terrifying – and surprising – that you have to sleep with the lights on. Now, with these seven acclaimed stories he has given us his finest and most imaginatively unsettling collection yet.‘WHEN STRAUB TURNS ON ALL HIS JETS, NO ONE IN THE SCREAM FACTORY CAN EQUAL HIM.’STEPHEN KING

    At noon, the murdered child begs for his help. And by nightfall, they have killed a man together and set off into the afterlife, where nothing is what it was, and death is only the beginning of punishment. An eerie story about the nature of death and the self, Midnight Picnic inhabits an American landscape made strange and unfamiliar. From the author of the cult novel Fires, Midnight Picnic is a haunting and disturbing experience.

    Located beyond life, The Library of Lost Childhood Memories holds the answer. The Librarian is Mr. Wicker—a seductive yet sinister creature with an unthinkable past and an agenda just as lethal. After committing suicide, Alicia finds herself before the Librarian, who informs her that her lost memory is not only the reason she took her life, but the cause of every bad thing that has happened to her. Alicia spurns Mr. Wicker and attempts to enter the hereafter without the Book that would make her spirit whole. But instead of the oblivion she craves, she finds herself in a psychiatric hold at Bayford Hospital, where the staff is more pernicious than its patients.Child psychiatrist Dr. James Farron is researching an unusual phenomenon: traumatized children whisper to a mysterious figure in their sleep. When they awaken, they forget both the traumatic event and the character that kept them company in their dreams—someone they call "Mr. Wicker."During an emergency room shift, Dr. Farron hears an unconscious Alicia talking to Mr. Wicker—the first time he's heard of an adult speaking to the presence. Drawn to the mystery, and then to each other, they team up to find the memory before it annihilates Alicia for good. To do so they must struggle not only against Mr. Wicker's passions, but also a powerful attraction that threatens to derail her search, ruin Dr. Farron’s career, and inflame the Librarian’s fury.After all, Mr. Wicker wants Alicia to himself, and will destroy anyone to get what he wants. Even Alicia herself.

    Original.

    Originally available only in limited-edition hardcover, these tales run the gamut from devilish fantasy to twisted courtroom drama to vampire-robot western. Each story has an introduction in which the author relates the background of and inspiration for the story, whether it was drawn from history, literature, or pure imagination. The title story, about a serial killer in Texas in the 1930s, won the 1999 Bram Stoker Horror Award for long fiction.

    Attempting to come to terms with a failed marriage and longing for his son, Peter Travers's struggle to build a new life is haunted by mysterious visions of a woman and child as the spirits of the past come alive and a dark and terrible secret refuses to die.

    A virtually instant cult film based on Barker's novella Cabal, it was nominated for three Saturn Awards and won several prizes at European film festivals.Midian Unmade tells the stories of the Nightbreed after the fall of their city, Midian. Driven from their homes, their friends and family members slain before their eyes, the monsters become a mostly-hidden diaspora. Some are hunted; others, hunters. Some seek refuge. Others want revenge.Contributors include: Karl Alexander, author of the classic novel Time After Time; actor, writer, and director Amber Benson (Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer); New York Times bestselling author Nancy Holder; Hugo and John W. Campbell Award winner Seanan McGuire; Bram Stoker Award winner Weston Ochse; David J. Schow, winner of the World Fantasy Award and writer of the screenplay for The Crow; New York Times bestselling writer Stephen Woodworth; and many more--23 stories in all.With an introduction by Clive Barker, this is an outstanding collection of original horror short stories in a dazzling variety of styles.

    It continues after midnight, when a young boy, held captive in a basement, is filled with unearthly visions of fantastic and frightening worlds. How could his kidnappers know that the ransom would be their own souls? For, as the hours pass, the boy's nightmares invade his captors like parasites-and soon, they become real.This audiobook also contains the short stories "Underworld," "O Rare and Most Esquisite," "The Rendering Man," "The Fruit of Her Womb," "The Hurting Season," "Chosen," "The Night Before Alec Got Married," "Only Connect," "The Little Mermaid," "Damned if You Do," and "The Ripening Sweetness of Late Afternoon." You can also listen to the acclaimed novelettes, "White Chapel" and "I am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes."

    Features works by Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee and Steve Rasnic Tem.

     Reviews "A wonderful collection of tales that range from creepy to silly to haunting. ...Gammell's drawings add just the right touch..." -- John Scieszka, Entertinment Weekly"Guaranteed to make your teeth chatter and your spine tingle." -- School Library Journal"Read these if you dare." -- The New York Times

    Crammed with stories new and old by the masters of the macabre, including Clive Barker, Robert Bloch, Graham Masterston, Ramsey Campbell, Hugh B. Cave, and others.INTRODUCTION: THE DEAD THAT WALK Stephen Jones SEX, DEATH AND STARSHINE Clive Barker RISING GENERATION Ramsey Campbell THE SONG OF THE SLAVES Manly Wade Wellman THE GHOULS R. Chetwynd-Hayes THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR Edgar Allan Poe STICKS Karl Edward Wagner QUIETLY NOW Charles L. Grant THE GREY HOUSE Basil Copper A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS M.R. James THE CRUCIAN PIT Nicholas Royle THE DISAPPROVAL OF JEREMY CLEAVE Brian Lumley HERBERT WEST—REANIMATOR H.P. Lovecraft TREADING THE MAZE Lisa Tuttle OUT OF CORRUPTION David Riley THE TAKING OF MR. BILL Graham Masterton SCHALKEN THE PAINTER J. Sheridan Le Fanu CLINICALLY DEAD David Sutton THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU Les Daniels MISSION TO MARGAL Hugh B. Cave LATER Michael Marshall Smith MARBH BHEO Peter Tremayne THE BLOOD KISS Dennis Etchison NIGHT AFTER NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD Christopher Fowler THE DEAD DON'T DIE! Robert Bloch PATRICIA'S PROFESSION Kim Newman ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE CADILLAC DESERT WITH DEAD FOLKS Joe R. Lansdale

    His friend and one-time lover, deputy district attorney Allison Roche, wants him to slip into the mind of serial killer Henry Lake "Spanky" Spanning because after successfully damning Spanning to the electric chair for 29 murders, she has fallen in love with him and wants to be sure of his innocence.

    She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945.... Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town.... Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead....The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...

    For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago. These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona Webster