Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories "Children of the Corn," "The Lawnmower Man," "Graveyard Shift," "The Mangler," and "Sometimes They Come Back"-which were all made into hit horror films.From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above a hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge readers into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.Contents:· Introduction · John D. MacDonald · in · Foreword · fw · Jerusalem’s Lot · nv Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978 · Graveyard Shift · ss Cavalier Oct ’70 · Night Surf · ss Cavalier Aug ’74 · I Am the Doorway · ss Cavalier Mar ’71 · The Mangler · nv Cavalier Dec ’72 · The Boogeyman · ss Cavalier Mar ’73 · Gray Matter · ss Cavalier Oct ’73 · Battleground · ss Cavalier Sep ’72 · Trucks · ss Cavalier Jun ’73 · Sometimes They Come Back · nv Cavalier Mar ’74 · Strawberry Spring · ss Ubris Fll ’68; Cavalier Nov ’75 · The Ledge · ss Penthouse Jul ’76 · The Lawnmower Man · ss Cavalier May ’75 · Quitters, Inc. · ss Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978 · I Know What You Need · nv Cosmopolitan Sep ’76 · Children of the Corn · nv Penthouse Mar ’77 · The Last Rung on the Ladder · ss Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978 · The Man Who Loved Flowers · ss Gallery Aug ’77 · One for the Road · ss Maine Mar ’77 · The Woman in the Room · ss Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780450042683

    Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty...except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame.But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them...and about all the ways to make them die.

    It is the home of Edmund Stearn and his family – a historian, scholar and land-owner, he's an upstanding member of the local community. But all is not well at Wake's End. Edmund dominates his family tyrannically, in particular daughter Maud. When Maud's mother dies in childbirth and she's left alone with her strict, disciplinarian father, Maud's isolation drives her to her father's study, where she happens upon his diary.During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund spots an eye in the undergrowth. His terror is only briefly abated when he discovers its actually a painting, a 'doom', taken from the church. It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. The stench of the Fen permeates the house, even with the windows closed. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound – like claws on the wooden floor...Wakenhyrst is a terrifying ghost story, an atmospheric slice of gothic, a brilliant exploration of the boundaries between the real and the supernatural, and a descent into the mind of a psychopath.

    28 Days of Terror in a House Possessed by Evil SpiritsIn December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their dream home, the same home where Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers and sisters just one year earlier.the psychic phenomena that followed created the most terrifying experience the Lutz family had ever encountered, forcing them to flee the house in 28 days, convinced that it was possessed by evil spirits.Their fantastic story, never before disclosed in full detail, makes for an unforgettable book with all the shocks and gripping suspense of The Exorcist, The Omen or Rosemary's Baby, but with one vital difference...the story is true--back cover

    There are no superficial scares here; these are stories that will make you think even as they keep you on the edge of your seat. From bloody horror to supernatural creatures to unsettling, all-too-possible realism, this collection has something for any reader looking for a thrill.Fans of TV’s The Walking Dead, True Blood, and American Horror Story will tear through tales by these talented authors:Stefan BachmannLeigh BardugoKendare BlakeA. G. HowardJay KristoffMarie LuJonathan MaberryDanielle PaigeCarrie RyanMegan ShepherdNova Ren SumaMcCormick TemplemanApril Genevieve TucholkeCat Winters

    doomed to perish in tortures the most severe'Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in by its mixture of bloodshed, sex and scandal.

    She is able to see the unbroken link of the macabre that ties Edgar Allan Poe to Anne Rice and to recognize the dark psychological bonds between Henry James and Stephen King. This remarkable anthology of gothic fiction, spanning two centuries of American writing, gives us an intriguing and entertaining look at how the gothic imagination makes for great literature in the works of forty-six exceptional writers. In showing us the gothic vision—a world askew where mankind’s forbidden impulses are set free from the repressions of the psyche, and nature turns malevolent and lawless—Joyce Carol Oates includes Henry James’s “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” Herman Melville’s horrific tale of factory women, “The Tartarus of Maids,” and Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” which are rarely collected and appear together here for the first time.Added to these stories of the past are new ones that explore the wounded worlds of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Raymond Carver, and more than twenty other wonderful contemporary writers. This impressive collection reveals the astonishing scope of the gothic writer’s subject matter, style, and incomparable genius for manipulating our emotions and penetrating our dreams. With Joyce Carol Oates’s superb introduction, American Gothic Tales is destined to become the standard one-volume edition of the genre that American writers, if they didn’t create it outright, have brought to its chilling zenith.rom Wieland, or The transformation / Charles Brockden Brown --The legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving --The man of adamant / Nathaniel Hawthorne --Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne --The Tartarus of maids / Herman Melville --The black cat / Edgar Allan Poe --The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --The romance of certain old clothes / Henry James --The damned thing / Ambrose Bierce --Afterward / Edith Wharton --The striding place / Gertrude Atherton --Death in the woods / Sherwood Anderson --The outsider / H.P. Lovecraft --A rose for Emily / William Faulkner --The lonesome place / August Derleth --The door / E.B. White --The lovely house / Shirley Jackson --Allal / Paul Bowles --The reencounter / Isaac Bashevis Singer --In the icebound hothouse / William Goyen --The enormous radio / John Cheever --The veldt / Ray Bradbury --The Dachau shoe / W.S. Merwin --The approved / W.S. Merwin --Spiders I have known / W.S. Merwin --Postcards from the Maginot Line / W.S. Merwin --Johnny Panic and the Bible of dreams / Sylvia Plath --In bed one night / Robert Coover --Schrödinger's cat / Ursula K. Le Guin --The waterworks / E.L. Doctorow --Shattered like a glass goblin / Harlan Ellison --Human moments in World War III / Don DeLillo --The anatomy of desire / John L'Heureux --Little things / Raymond Carver --The temple / Joyce Carol Oates --Freniere (from Interview with the Vampires) / Anne Rice --A short guide to the city / Peter Straub --In the penny arcade / Steven Millhauser --The reach / Stephen King --Exchange value / Charles Johnson --Snow / John Crowley --The last feast of Harlequin / Thomas Ligotti --Time and again / Breece D'J Pancake--Replacements / Lisa Tuttle --Spirit seizures / Melissa Pritchard --Cat in glass / Nancy Etchemendy --The girl who loved animals / Bruce McAllister --Ursus Triad, later / Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg --(from Geek Love) The nuclear family: his talk, her teeth / Katherine Dunn --Subsoil / Nicholson Baker

    Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss. This edition features a new introduction by Bradbury, an invaluable essay on writing, wherein the author tells of his "Theater of Morning Voices," and, by inference, encourages you to listen to the same murmurings in yourself. And has any writer anywhere ever made such good use of exclamation marks!? (Illustrated by Joe Mugnaini.)Contents:· The Dwarf · ss Fantastic Jan/Feb ’54 · The Next in Line · nv Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse · ss Beyond Fantasy Fiction Mar ’54 · Skeleton · ss Weird Tales Sep ’45 · The Jar · ss Weird Tales Nov ’44 · The Lake · ss Weird Tales May ’44 · The Emissary · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · Touched with Fire [“Shopping for Death”] · ss Maclean’s Jun 1 ’54 · The Small Assassin · ss Dime Mystery Magazine Nov ’46 · The Crowd · ss Weird Tales May ’43 · Jack-in-the-Box · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Scythe · ss Weird Tales Jul ’43 · Uncle Einar · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Wind · ss Weird Tales Mar ’43 · The Man Upstairs · ss Harper’s Mar ’47 · There Was an Old Woman · ss Weird Tales Jul ’44 · The Cistern · ss Mademoiselle May ’47 · Homecoming · ss Mademoiselle Oct ’46 · The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone · ss Charm Jul ’54

    But we can visit our fears at night, in the dark. We can turn them over and weigh them in our hands and maybe that will protect us from them. But maybe not.The characters in this collection find their aspirations for happy homes, happy families and happy memories dissected and imbued with shimmering menace. Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation; another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool. Couples wrestle with a lack of connection to their children; a schoolgirl becomes obsessed with the female anatomical models in a museum; and a cheery account of child’s day out is undercut by chilling footnotes.These dark tales explore women’s fears with electrifying honesty and invention and speak to one another about female bodies, domestic claustrophobia, desire and violence. From a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter, Things We Say in the Dark is a powerful contemporary collection of feminist stories, ranging from vicious fairy tales to disturbing horror and tender ghost stories.KIRSTY LOGAN WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF BRITAIN'S TEN MOST OUTSTANDING LGBTQ WRITERS by Val McDermid for the International Literature Showcase in 2019

    This edition offers the original story with all its atmospheric Victorian trimmings. The story of Todd's murderous partnership with pie-maker Margery Lovett--at once inconceivably unpalatable and undeniably compelling--has subsequently set the table for a seemingly endless series of successful dramatic adaptations, popular songs and ballads, novellas, radio plays, graphic novels, ballets, films, and musicals. Both gleeful and ghoulish, the original tale of Sweeney Todd, first published under the title The String of Pearls, combines the story of Todd's grisly method of robbing and dispatching his victims--by way of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies--with a romantic sub-plot involving deception, disguise, and detective work, set against the backdrop of London's dark and unsavory streets. Editor Robert Mack 'fleshes' out the story with a fascinating introduction touching on the origins of the tale, the growth of the legend, and a history of its many retellings. Mack also includes explanatory notes that point out interesting aspects, plus a full chronology of the many versions of Sweeney Todd.Since Sweeney Todd first entered the public imagination in the mid-nineteenth-century, his exploits have chilled and fascinated audiences around the world. This new edition allows modern readers to savor the ghastly original in all its gruesome glory.

    Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents — an odd brother and sister — extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late... Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

    The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives. These are selected examples of the forbidding array of persons and places that compose the mesmerizing fiction of Thomas Ligotti.

    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.

    But by the time Rosemary discovers the horrifying truth, it may be far too late!

    Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew. The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.