From "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," Clement C. Moore's classic depiction of St. Nicholas at work, to O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," which embodies the very spirit of Christmas, Favorite Stories of Christmas Past has something for everyone.

    Talk about the horse's mouth! This book is long overdue."- Peter Straub "Lovecraft opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me -- Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, and Ray Bradbury among them. The reader would do well to remember that it is his shadow, so long and gaunt, and his eyes, so dark and puritanical, which overlie almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since."- Stephen King "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."- H.P. Lovecraft  In 1927, Howard Philips Lovecraft published a 30,000-word essay titled "Supernatural Horror in Literature." In it, the father of American horror writing  whose tales  presented one of the earliest scholarly studies of the supernatural in fiction, defined the horror story as one in which "a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present." Those authors discussed in Lovecraft's seminal essay were used as the basis for the 1993 anthology H.P. Lovecraft's Book of Horror, edited by Dave Carson and Stephen Jones. With H.P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural, Jones uses that same essay as inspiration for a new anthology of nineteen new selections, each preceded by an excerpt from Lovecraft. Included here are works from authors as varied as Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson. While these stories maycarry a classical pedigree, their contents remain just as chilling and disturbing as anything cooked up by modern-day horror writers. The book also includes a short essay from Lovecraft himself, "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction," in which he lays out tips and rules for mastering the form.

    Simple, Simple to his fans, made weekly appearances beginning in 1943 in Langston Hughes' column in the Chicago Defender. Simple may have shared his readers feelings of loss and dispossession, but he also cheered them on with his wonderful wit and passion for life.

    The Hills hold everything she desires: her family; her beloved dog, Aerlich - and soon, her fiancé, Donal, who has been away for a year. But one evening a lamb is lost. And when Maddy returns to the Hills to find it, she discovers something else the Hills possess - something that will change her forever...Originally published in Imaginary Lands

    On a night when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, all that is real and unreal meet in a nowhere place, at a nowhere time.'

    Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.In short, it's about everything.

    

    Humor and a somewhat postmodern outlook carried over into his novels as well. One of his stories, "Arena," is officially credited for an adaptation as an episode of the landmark television series, Star Trek. With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered -- except one of the flaws of human nature. . . ."

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    16,000 words in length.

    But Janet soon finds that she has an otherworldly rival for her role as protector of Carterhaugh. An elfin knight by the strange name of Tam Lin haunts her forest, and extracts a heavy price from any unwary maiden who might wander there and cut the legendary roses. After her best friend returns from a terrifying encounter with Tam Lin, brave Janet sets out to confront the mysterious and malevolent knight. She cuts the sacred roses to goad him into appearing, but soon finds herself ensnared by the laws of the fairy kingdom. Her transgression is such that Tam Lin demands the ultimate penalty from a noble maiden: her virginity.As Janet prepares for her fate, she discovers that there is a darker force behind Tam Lin’s actions: he is in service to the ruthless and omnipotent Fairy Queen, who demands a severe price of her own. It is told that every seven years she is required to pay a tithe to Hell, a human sacrifice, and the seventh year anniversary is rapidly approaching. In order to save everything she holds dear, Janet will have to go to battle with the spellbinding and terrifying queen on Halloween night. Tam Lin prepares her for the ordeal – but can he be trusted?The trials Janet endures at the hands of the Fairy Queen are rich in symbolism and steeped in the wisdom of the Celts. For this is no mere fairy tale, no simplistic story of dark and light, wicked queen and maiden fair. This is a complex and sensual exploration of feminine power in all of its aspects, with some unexpected twists. The Ballad of Tam Lin is a novella based on an ancient folksong from the Scottish Borders. It is the first in Kathleen McGowan’s series, Legends of the Divine Feminine. A non-fiction analysis of the ballad, its origins, and its exquisite preservation of ancient wisdom teachings follows the fiction along with the author’s notes on her years of research into the story and locations. The Ballad of Tam Lin is a profound spiritual and esoteric fable, an illustration of the power of the divine feminine in its multiple guises unlike any other.