Although In Darkness Waiting begins in much the same vein as many horror novels (mysterious deaths; a small town invaded by evil; plucky, attractive young lovers; the logical level-headed doctor; some salt-of-the-earth townsfolk...) by its end you will have discovered it is not "just another horror novel." With its exploration of the "insect" inside us all, In Darkness Waiting proves more relevant today than ever. Considering a read of In Darkness Waiting is like considering a trip through the Amazon with no weapons and no vaccinations and no shoes. It's like contemplating a journey in the Arctic clad only in your underwear. Or maybe it's more like dropping into one of those spelunker's challenges, those chilling pitch-black shafts into the Earth's crust-and when you get down there your light burns out and you remember the chitinous fauna of the cavern... Unlike undertaking those endeavors, you can get through the harrowing pages of In Darkness Waiting alive (although we are not promising you'll remain unscathed.) Towards the end you'll discover one of the most extreme yet literate passages ever written. It may well be the most outré scene ever created. But John Shirley wasn't after shock alone. Shock is never enough for him.

    'The Complete Symphonies Of Adolf Hitler' 'Lapland Nights' 'The Garden Of Strangers' 'Among The Tombs' 'The Skins' 'The Sermons Of Dr Hodnet' 'Magus Zoroaster' 'The Time Of Blood' 'Parma Violets' 'Difficult People' 'The Constant Rake' 'The Blue Room' 'A Nightmare Sang' 'The Babe Of The Abyss' 'Bloody Bill' 'A Christmas Card'

    She begins searching the tabloid's archives for a story that can get her career back on track. A strange bridge, with an abnormally high rate of suicides, seems like the perfect place to start. She journeys to the little town, eager to investigate, but encounters a tale far more sinister than she ever expected… Paperback includes two bonus tales set in the same world as The Town That Feared Dusk: 'A Gift from the Bridge' and 'From Dusk till Death'.

    It came from behind the five peaks. The beam drove up through a column of blue haze whose edges were marked as sharply as the rain that streams from the edges of a thunder cloud. It was like the flash of a searchlight through an azure mist. It cast no shadows.As it struck upward the summits were outlined hard and black and I saw that the whole mountain was shaped like a hand. As the light silhouetted it, the gigantic fingers stretched, the hand seemed to thrust itself forward. It was exactly as though it moved to push something back. The shining beam held steady for a moment; then broke into myriads of little luminous globes that swung to and fro and dropped gently. They seemed to be searching.

    When a careless exploration leaves her trapped underground, she learns to live again in the absence of everything she once knew. Even driven by love and light, Sally Ann finds the deepest darkness within herself in When Darkness Loves Us.Beauty Is... - Old Martha Mannes has been a part of Morgan, Illinois since her birth. The whole town knows her as the dim-witted woman who was born without a nose, but Martha's mind wasn't always a blank slate. Unlocking the monster buried deep in her memories may bring back the sparkling child she once was... or it may send those around her crashing down into the nightmares of a little girl gone wrong.

    Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Soon, though, they come to realize that more is wrong than their diminished privacy. Surely the house can't be "haunted," yet something about it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart.

    Some of Howard’s best-known characters–Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them–roam the forbidding locales of the author’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation–and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers–and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” and “The Cairn on the Headland,” Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world’s great masters of the macabre.

    Born in mystery of an unknown mother. Abandoned the morning of her birth. Adopted by the Marlows, who already have four children of their own.THE OBSESSION...Once unleashed, where will it end? The ultimate evil. Profound. Shattering. Ask Bonnie - demonic possession is child's play.THE NIGHTMARE...At first they are accidents. The crib death of the Marlows' baby. The drowning of their son. Then a third child's neck is broken. And the unspeakable is begun...

    "Straub at his spellbinding best".--Publishers Weekly.

    Whether the stories are familiar to readers or discovered for the first time, readers will revel in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tales, and how they’ve been brought to life in 13 unique and unforgettable ways.Contributors include Kendare Blake (reimagining “Metzengerstein”), Rin Chupeco (“The Murders in the Rue Morge”), Lamar Giles (“The Oval Portrait”), Tessa Gratton (“Annabel Lee”), Tiffany D. Jackson (“The Cask of Amontillado”), Stephanie Kuehn (“The Tell-Tale Heart”), Emily Lloyd-Jones (“The Purloined Letter”), Hillary Monahan (“The Masque of the Red Death”), Marieke Nijkamp (“Hop-Frog”), Caleb Roehrig (“The Pit and the Pendulum”), and Fran Wilde (“The Fall of the House of Usher”).

    When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris’s Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: “Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs.”The revisions in the present volume of Songs of a Dead Dreamer have been calculated to make its stories into enhanced incarnations of the originals. This edition is and will remain definitive.For those already familiar with the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, an invitation is extended to return to them in their ultimate state. For those new to the collection, it is submitted to engage them with some of the most extraordinary tales of their kind. In either case, this publication of Songs of a Dead Dreamer offers evidence for why Ligotti has been judged to be among the most important authors in the history of supernatural horror.

    from the French "D'entre les Morts" by Geoffrey Sainsbury. First published as "The Living and the Dead" in Great Britain in 1956.

    Sheridan LeFanu -- Irish author of such classics as the short vampire novel Carmella (reputed to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula) and A Chapter in the History of the Tyrone Family (said to be the tale that gave rise to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights -- lived from 1814 until 1873. He wrote all sorts of tales, but he's best remembered as a writer of mysteries and horror.

    

    Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories--many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for--suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural—can be found in these pages.  FEATURING:-        Unscrupulous Santas-        Crimes of Christmases Past and Present-        Festive felonies-        Deadly puddings-        Misdemeanors under the mistletoe-        Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe.