Book picks similar to
The Complete Pegāna by Lord Dunsany
fantasy
cthulhu-mythos
chaosium
classics
The Border Keeper
Kerstin Hall - 2019
. . . This twisty example of the new weird genre examines love, loss and loyalty, packing skilful world-building and a powerful emotional punch into a little over 200 pages."—The GuardianShe lived where the railway tracks met the saltpan, on the Ahri side of the shadowline. In the old days, when people still talked about her, she was known as the end-of-the-line woman.Vasethe, a man with a troubled past, comes to seek a favor from a woman who is not what she seems, and must enter the nine hundred and ninety-nine realms of Mkalis, the world of spirits, where gods and demons wage endless war.The Border Keeper spins wonders both epic—the Byzantine bureaucracy of hundreds of demon realms, impossible oceans, hidden fortresses—and devastatingly personal—a spear flung straight, the profound terror and power of motherhood. What Vasethe discovers in Mkalis threatens to bring his own secrets into light and throw both worlds into chaos.Praise for The Border Keeper"Beautifully and vividly imagined. Eerie, lovely, and surreal."—Ann Leckie“A labyrinth of demons, dead gods, cranky psychopomps, and broken all-too-human lives. Hall is by turns wry and lush, genuine and venomous. So can I have the next one already?”—Max Gladstone
Tomorrow's Cthulhu
Scott GableMike Allen - 2015
Madness. Transhumanism.This is the dawn of posthumanity. Some things can’t be unlearned. Gleaming labs whir with the hum of servers as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe. But as we peel away mysteries, the universe glances back at us. Even now, terrors rise from the Mariana Trench and drift down from the stars. Scientists are disappearing—or worse. Experiments take on minds of their own. Some fight back against the unknown, some give in, some are destroyed, and still others are becoming… more. The human and inhuman are harder and harder to distinguish. Mankind is changing, whether it wants to or not, with brand new ways of thinking. What havoc is wreaked by those humans trying to harness and control their discoveries? As big science progresses and the very fundamentals of this universe are understood, what stories are being hushed up? Of course, the Old Ones laugh at our laws, scientific and otherwise. These are transhumanist near-future science fiction tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. These are tales of more than merely cosmic dread. They exist in our world of the next couple years. This is the era of big science and—what is that? We’ll be right back.
The Briar King
Greg Keyes - 2002
In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls are playing in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead when they stumble upon the unknown crypt of a legendary ancestral queen.
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural
Marvin KayeJ. Sheridan Le Fanu - 1985
A gripping, chilling collection of 47 stories and six poems, dating back to Shelley and Stevenson, but also including modern masters.
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Cory Doctorow - 2005
This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings--wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain; his mother is a washing machine; and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick, are on his doorstep--well on their way to starvation, because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, who Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned...bent on revenge.Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city's dumpsters. But Alan's past won't leave him alone--and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and all his friends.
The Dark Domain
Stefan Grabiński - 1993
These stories are explorations of the extreme in human behaviour, where the bizarre chills the spine, and few authors can match Grabinski's depiction of seething sexual frenzy. The Dark Domain will introduce to English readers one of Europe's most important authors of literary fantasy.
The Dark Descent
David G. Hartwell - 1987
Adopted by colleges across the country to be used in literature courses, The Dark Descent showcases some of the finest horror fiction ever written.Contents: Pt. 1 - The Color of EvilThe Reach / Stephen KingEvening Primrose / John CollierThe Ash-Tree / M. R. JamesThe New Mother / Lucy CliffordThere's a Long, Long Trail A-winding / Russell KirkThe Call of Cthulhu / H. P. LovecraftThe Summer People / Shirley JacksonThe Whimper of Whipped Dogs / Harlan EllisonYoung Goodman Brown / Nathaniel HawthorneMr. Justice Harbottle / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Crowd / Ray BradburyThe Autopsy / Michael SheaJohn Charrington's Wedding / E. NesbitSticks / Karl Edward WagnerLarger Than Oneself / Robert AickmanBelsen Express / Fritz LeiberYours Truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert BlochIf Damon Comes / Charles L. GrantVandy, Vandy / Manly Wade WellmanPt. 2 - The Medusa in the ShieldThe Swords / Robert AickmanThe Roaches / Thomas M. DischBright Segment / Theodore SturgeonDread / Clive BarkerThe Fall of the House of Usher / Edgar Allan PoeThe Monkey / Stephen KingWithin the Walls of Tyre / Michael BishopThe Rats in the Walls / H. P. LovecraftSchalken the Painter / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Yellow Wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins GilmanA Rose for Emily / William FaulknerHow Love Came to Professor Guildea / Robert HichensBorn of Man and Woman / Richard MathesonMy Dear Emily / Joanna RussYou Can Go Now / Dennis EtchisonThe Rocking-Horse Winner / D. H. LawrenceThree Days / Tanith LeeGood Country People / Flannery O'ConnorMackintosh Willy / Ramsey CampbellThe Jolly Corner / Henry JamesPt. 3 - A Fabulous Formless Darkness Smoke Ghost / Fritz LeiberSeven American Nights / Gene WolfeThe Signal-Man / Charles DickensCrouch End / Stephen KingNight-Side / Joyce Carol OatesSeaton's Aunt / Walter de la MareClara Militch / Ivan TurgenevThe Repairer of Reputations / Robert W. ChambersThe Beckoning Fair One / Oliver OnionsWhat Was It? / Fitz-James O'BrienThe Beautiful Stranger / Shirley JacksonThe Damned Thing / Ambrose BierceAfterward / Edith WhartonThe Willows / Algernon BlackwoodThe Asian Shore / Thomas M. DischThe Hospice / Robert AickmanA Little Something for Us Tempunauts / Philip K. Dick
Tales of Moonlight and Rain
Ueda Akinari - 1776
They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were also the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's brilliant 1953 film Ugetsu.The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon. In "Shiramine," the vengeful ghost of the former emperor Sutoku reassumes the role of king; in "The Chrysanthemum Vow," a faithful revenant fulfills a promise; "The Kibitsu Cauldron" tells a tale of spirit possession; and in "The Carp of My Dreams," a man straddles the boundaries between human and animal and between the waking world and the world of dreams. The remaining stories feature demons, fiends, goblins, strange dreams, and other manifestations beyond all logic and common sense.The eerie beauty of this masterpiece owes to Akinari's masterful combination of words and phrases from Japanese classics with creatures from Chinese and Japanese fiction and lore. Along with The Tale of Genji and The Tales of the Heike, Tales of Moonlight and Rain has become a timeless work of great significance. This new translation, by a noted translator and scholar, skillfully maintains the allure and complexity of Akinari's original prose.
The Dark Tower: And Other Stories
C.S. Lewis - 1977
S. Lewis’s adult religious books, a repackaged edition of the revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind.From C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—comes a collection of his dazzling short fiction.This collection of futuristic fiction includes a breathtaking science fiction story written early in his career in which Cambridge intellectuals witness the breach of space-time through a chronoscope—a telescope that looks not just into another world, but into another time. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal reading for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.
Fancies and Goodnights
John Collier - 1951
They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it's always easy to tell one from another), Collier's dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise.