A treasured source used by almost all the significant writers in the American pulp tradition — H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and many others — it endures as a work of remarkable power and one of the most chillingly original books in the genre.This collection reprints all the supernatural stories from The King in Yellow, including the grisly "Yellow Sign," the disquieting "Repairer of Reputations," the tender "Demoiselle d'Ys," and others. Robert W. Chambers' finest stories from other sources have also been added, such as the thrilling "Maker of Moons" and "The Messenger." In addition, an unusual pleasure awaits those who know Chambers only by his horror stories: three of his finest early biological science-fiction fantasies from In Search of the Unknown appear here as well.

    H. Lawrence. The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne'er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn't earn as much as she'd like. The family's lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety; moreover, the kids even claim they can hear the house whispering "There must be more money." Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He's been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names. After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky." As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there," into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner's name. Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother: "I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!" "No, you never did," said his mother. The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.

    A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society’s elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey’s imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend’s glamorous facade.   When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day. But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey’s sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre.   John William Polidori’s The Vampyre is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola. Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and misattributed to Polidori’s friend Lord Byron, The Vampyre has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.

    Gathering works from the previously published Monday or Tuesday, as well as stories published in American and British magazines, this book compiles some of the best shorter fiction of one of the most important writers of our time.

    Half these stories never published before in U.S.

    P. Lovecraft, published his first story, the monstrosities that crawled out of his brain have become legend: the massive, tentacled Cthulhu, who lurks beneath the sea waiting for his moment to rise; the demon Sultan Azathoth, who lies babbling at the center of the universe, mad beyond imagining; the Deep Ones, who come to shore to breed with mortal men; and the unspeakably-evil Hastur, whose very name brings death. These creatures have been the nightmarish fuel for generations of horror writers, and the inspiration for some of their greatest works.This impressive anthology celebrates Lovecraft's most famous beasts in all their grotesque glory, with each story a gripping new take on a classic mythos creature and affectionately accompanied by an illuminating illustration. Within these accursed pages something unnatural slouches from the sea into an all-night diner to meet the foolish young woman waiting for him, while the Hounds of Tindalos struggle to survive trapped in human bodies, haunting pool halls for men they can lure into the dark. Strange, haunting, and undeniably monstrous, this is Lovecraft as you have never seen him before.Contents"Only the End of the World Again" by Neil Gaiman"The Bleeding Shadow" by Joe R. Lansdale"Love is Forbidden, We Croak & Howl" by Caitlín R. Kiernan"Bulldozer" by Laird Barron"A Quarter to Three" by Kim Newman"Inelastic Collisions" by Elizabeth Bear"That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" by Nick Mamatas"Red Goat Black Goat" by Nadia Bulkin"Jar of Salts" and "Haruspicy" by Gemma Files"Black is the Pit From Pole to Pole" by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley"I've Come to Speak with You Again" by Karl Edward Wagner"The Sect of the Idiot" by Thomas Ligotti"The Dappled Things" by William Browning Spencer"The Same Deep Waters as You" by Brian Hodge"Remnants" by Fred Chappell"Waiting at the Cross Roads" by Steve Rasnic Tem"Children of the Fang" by John Langan

    Not only did it win the $100 prize, but, published anonymously, it marked the first in the series of "blood & thunder tales" that would be her livelihood for years. In Behind a Mask, editor Madeleine Stern introduces four Alcott thrillers: "Pauline's Passion and Punishment," "The Mysterious Key," "The Abbot's Ghost," and the title story, "Behind a Mask." First published in one volume in 1975, they are regarded as Alcott's finest work in this genre.

    Responding to people's overwhelming attraction to anything frightening, this marvelous anthology of some of the very best English ghost stories combines a serious literary purpose with the simple intention of arousing a pleasurable fear of the doings of the dead. As the first volume to present the full range and vitality of the ghost fiction tradition, this selection of forty-two stories, written between 1829 and 1968, demonstrates the tradition's historical development, as well as its major themes and characteristics. Though the genre reached its peak in the nineteenth century, it enjoyed a second flowering between the two World Wars and even now still attracts dedicated practitioners and readers. The anthology includes stories by Walter Scott, M. R. James, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, Somerset Maugham, T. H. White, and many others. Stressing the important contribution women writers have made to the genre, the collection also offers eight stories by women, ranging from Amelia Edward's "The Phantom Ghost" (1864) to Elizabeth Bowen's "Hand in Glove" (1952).The tapestried chamber / Walter Scott --The phantom coach / Amelia B. Edwards --Squire Toby's will / J.S. Le Fanu --The shadow in the corner / M.E. Braddon --The upper berth / F. Marion Crawford --A wicked voice / Vernon Lee --The judge's house / Bram Stoker --Man-size in marble / E. Nesbit --The roll-call of the reef / Arthur Quiller-Couch --The friends of the friends / Henry James --The red room / H.G. Wells --The monkey's paw / W.W. Jacobs --The lost ghost / Mary E. Wilkins --"Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad" / M.R. James --The empty house / Algernon Blackwood --The cigarette case / Oliver Onions --Rose Rose / Barry Pain --The confession of Charles Linkworth / E.F. Benson --On the Brighton Road / Richard Middleton --Bone to his bone / E.G. Swain --The true history of Anthony Ffryar / Arthur Gray --The Taipan / W. Somerset Maugham --The victim / May Sinclair --A visitor from down under / L.P. Hartley --Fullcircle / John Buchan --The clock / W.F. Harvey --Old man's beard / H. Russell Wakefield --Mr Jones / Edith Wharton --Smee / A.M. Burrage --The little ghost / Hugh Walpole --Ahoy, sailor boy! / A.E. Coppard --The hollow man / Thomas Burke --Et in sempiternum pereant / Charles Williams --Bosworth summit pound / L.T.C. Rolt --An encounter in the mist / A.N.L. Munby --Hand in glove / Elizabeth Bowen --A story of Don Juan / V.S. Pritchett --Cushi / Charistopher Woodforde --Bad company / Walter de la Mare --The bottle of 1912 / Simon Raven --The Cicerones / Robert Aickman --Soft voices at Passenham / T.H. White

    Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form—in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway—but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. Edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine, this paperback edition includes the stunning Red Cavalry Stories; The Odessa Tales, featuring the legendary gangster Benya Krik; and the tragic later stories, including "Guy de Maupassant." This will be the standard edition of Babel's stories for years to come.

    But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin. . . .A Man in Slices: A man proves his "legendary love" to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh's--and sends her more than his heart.Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture--and kill--the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin's dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care . . . and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it--until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.

    American Supernatural Tales celebrates the richness of this tradition with chilling contributions from some of the nation’s brightest literary lights, including Poe himself, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and—of course— Stephen King. By turns phantasmagoric, spectral, and demonic, this is a frighteningly good addition to Penguin Classics.

    Entertaining and readable, these tales present the ancient Germanic and Scandinavian myths that have helped shape literature.This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

    The volume also includes extracts and translations by the author from Babylonian, Coptic and Biblical texts alongside poems and fairy tales.The book’s cover features artwork by David and design by Ania Goszczyńska; the frontispiece also reproduces a painting by David.

    The Corn Maiden is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Taken by an older girl from her school who has told two friends in her thrall of the Indian legend of the Corn Maiden, in which a girl is sacrificed to ensure a good crop, Marissa is kept in a secluded basement and convinced that the world has ended. Marissa s seemingly inevitable fate becomes ever more terrifying as the older girl relishes her power, giving the tale unbearable tension with a shocking conclusion. In Helping Hands, published here for the first time, a lonely woman meets a man in the unlikely clutter of a dingy charity shop and extends friendship. She has no idea what kinds of doors she may be opening. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Joyce Carol Oates s standing as one of the world s greatest writers of suspense."