Ancient Enemy Box Set


Mark Lukens - 2020
     It starts when Stella, an archaeologist specializing in Anasazi culture, finds David, a young Navajo boy who stumbles onto their dig site in a remote corner of the Navajo Reservation. David's coat is smeared with blood and he's in shock from something he's seen, revealing nothing but his name. Soon Stella and the other archaeologists will discover that something is chasing David, an unimaginable ancient evil that will stop at nothing to get him. After Stella escapes the dig site with David, driving north into Colorado, right into a blizzard, she's carjacked by a gang of criminals fleeing a botched bank robbery. All of them take refuge from the snowstorm in what they believe is an abandoned cabin. But after they find the owner's mutilated body stuffed into a freezer, they realize that something is out there in the blizzard waiting for them. The Ancient Enemy wants things . . . you have to give it what it wants or bad things will happen. Very bad things.

East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi


Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - 1998
    Whether in New Delhi or Manhattan, the characters face the universal quandaries of human experience.

A Tiger for Malgudi and the Man-Eater of Malgudi


R.K. Narayan - 2009
    K. Narayan at his best, offering enchanting tales of human absurdity that are also skillfully woven parables infused with Hindu mysticism. A Tiger for Malgudi is told from the point of view of the tiger Raja, now old and toothless, who looks back on his life in the circus and in films, and on his dramatic bid to escape the brutish human world in a quest for freedom. The Man-Eater of Malgudi is the story of Nataraj, a mild-mannered printer who stands up to Vasu, a pugnacious taxidermist, when Vasu begins to covet the beloved temple elephant for his collection.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

All the Beautiful Sinners


Stephen Graham Jones - 2003
    But unbeknownst to him, the suspect--an American Indian--holds chilling connections to the disappearance of Doe's sister years before. And the closer Doe gets to the fugitive's trail, the more he realizes that his own involvement in the case is hardly coincidental. A descendant of the Blackfeet Nation himself, Doe keeps getting mistaken for the killer he's chasing. And when the FBI's finest three profilers descend on the case, Doe suspects the hunt has only just begun. But beneath the novel's pyrotechnic plotting, the deeper psychic cadences of Stephen Graham Jones's prose take hold. His specific imagery and telling detail coalesce into the literary equivalent of an Edward Hopper painting. But like the other seminal works in the genre ("Fight Club, Red Dragon"), "All The Beautiful Sinners" will unnerve you, and it will then send you back to page one to experience its mysteries all over again.

Shadow Child


Joseph A. Citro - 1987
    Joseph A. Citro's widely read publications about the more haunting history, legends, and lore of New England have earned him a reputation as an expert on themes of the supernatural. In this book (first published in 1987), however, he deftly melds real-life ancient ruins, a keen eye for the social fabric of small-town Vermont, and a soaring imagination to fashion a gripping tale of a family's life-or-death struggle to save their farm from an enemy far more devastating than banks, taxes, or land developers. Eric Nolan is a man already too familiar with death. His brother's long-ago disappearance, the loss of his parents, and his wife's recent demise in an auto accident have left him near the edge physically and emotionally. In desperation he returns to his boyhood haunt, the family farm in rural Antrim, Vermont, now occupied by his cousin, Pamela, her husband, Clint, and Luke, their four-year-old son. But any solace Eric might find there is short-lived. Something terrible is going on in the woods on Pinnacle Mountain and it seems to be centered around a mysterious stone structure that, a local historian believes may be the relic of an ancient race. The mystery deepens as people begin to vanish one by one, first a village policeman, then a local hermit, a researcher, and finally Clint himself. As baffling and violent incidents continue it becomes harder to deny that a powerful and malevolent force is at work in the Green Mountains, a force that has targeted young Luke. Though it defies Eric's every rational instinct, he must ultimately confront a reality he can neither accept nor deny. As he and the others struggle to quell the rising tide of evil, the siege escalates to a brutal battle for life itself. Citro twists every shock possible out of this finely crafted gothic thriller that tests the limits of legend and belief.

Desert Heat (Victor Loshak #4)


L.T. Vargus - 2022
    A human body draped over the limbs of a cactus. Sand scouring the naked flesh every time the wind blows.A shocking death launches Special Agent Victor Loshak on a new investigation with an ominous message: They know everything. He heads to Tucson, Arizona, where a recent murder spree seems to be linked to the human trafficking conspiracy he's been working in secret for months.Loshak still has dreams about the Kansas City case. Nightmares about the team of techs peeling up the floorboards in a suburban home. Finding the rotting bodies face down in the muddy earth of the crawlspace. A grisly discovery that ultimately led to more questions than answers.Now he may be closer than ever to solving the puzzle.If you follow the conspiracy rabbit hole all the way down, you eventually reach the bottom.The task force working the desert murders seems oblivious to the conspiracy link, and Loshak must tread lightly. He doesn't know who to trust, what information to share.The tendrils of the human trafficking ring lead in all directions outward from that Kansas City crawlspace. Their influence reaches the highest levels of government and law enforcement. They have eyes and ears everywhere.Even with the complications, the Tucson case slowly unravels the web of connections behind the crimes, both the murders and the conspiracy.Questions get answered. Names and faces are laid bare. Puzzle pieces snapping into place at long last.But the revelations bring about the gravest danger yet.

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, Vol. I


Rakesh KhannaVidya Subramaniam - 2008
    South Asia Studies. Mad scientists Hard-boiled detectives Vengeful goddesses Murderous robots Scandalous starlets Drug-fuelled love affairs This anthology features seventeen stories by ten best-selling authors of Tamil crime, romance, science fiction, and detective stories, none of them ever before translated into English, along with reproductions of wacky cover art and question-and-answer sessions with some of the authors. Grab a masala vadai, sit back and enjoy

Feed


Michael Bray - 2017
    Sick of his life and plagued by alcoholism, he makes the decision to divorce his wife, sell everything he owns and travel the world to try and find focus and rid himself of his addiction. Eventually arriving on the sun drenched shores of Australia and still plagued by his demons, he has spent all his savings and is facing the prospect of having to return to his old life. It is here that he meets two men with an outlandish story about a horde of sunken drug money in an area known as the Devil’s Triangle – Australia’s answer to its Bermuda namesake and said to be the lair of a terrifying monster of the deep. Offered a share of the fortune if he helps retrieve it, Tyler agrees to go with the men to the location, sceptical and thinking only of prolonging his journey of self discovery. He will learn, however, that this particular urban legend is real, and they encounter a giant of the seas, the previously thought to be extinct Megalodon which makes its home within the area of the Devil’s triangle. Barely escaping with their lives, the three men wash up on an isolated island – no more than a rocky outcrop with no vegetation, fresh water of food sources. As desperation to survive intensifies, horrifying decisions will be made that will illustrate how man is sometimes the most violent predator on earth and when left with no option will do anything, even the unthinkable, in order to survive.

Throat Sprockets


Tim Lucas - 1994
    Spending his lunch hours in a porno theater to relieve his boredom, a young advertising executive discovers an obscure film called Throat Sprockets and develops a fascination for women's throats that gradually consumes his life.

Bad Ronald


John Holbrook Vance - 1973
    Perhaps that was the trouble--no one really took a good look at Ronald. Except for his devoted mother, who saw only the son she wanted to see. Who, then, is Ronald? Ronald is that faceless unknown who waits - to take, to grab what he needs, to become the ultimate invader.

Poor Little Rich Girl


Katie Flynn - 2002
    Hester Lowe agrees to act as governess to spoilt, self-willed, little Lonnie Hetherington-Smith when they leave India to live with Lonnie's elderly aunt in Shaw Street, Liverpool. Hester speedily realises that her new employer dislikes her niece and means to make life uncomfortable for both of them. Things improve a little when they meet the poor, but happy, Bailey family who live in a court off Heyworth Street. Hester likes Dick Bailey very much, but her employer does not permit 'followers', whilst Lonnie and young Ben Bailey are deadly enemies. Then, the regime in Shaw Street changes and Hester is forced to leave the comforts of a middle-class household to make her own way in what is, to her, a strange country... Poor Little Rich Girl is sure to please the huge and growing fanbase of one of the most popular saga authors in the country, with more than two million books sold nationwide.

The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror


William Sloane - 1964
    In To Walk the Night, Bark Jones and his college buddy Jerry Lister, a science whiz, head back to their alma mater to visit a cherished professor of astronomy. They discover his body, consumed by fire, in his laboratory, and an uncannily beautiful young widow in his house—but nothing compares to the revelation that Jerry and Bark encounter in the deserts of Arizona at the end of the book. In The Edge of Running Water, Julian Blair, a brilliant electrophysicist, has retired to a small town in remotest Maine after the death of his wife. His latest experiments threaten to shake up the town, not to mention the universe itself.

Dark Circles


Udayan Mukherjee - 2018
    When the cremation rites are complete, Ronojoy is handed a letter from his mother that is not so much a farewell as a confession. As before, it is left to him to decide whether to share the disturbing contents with his brother, whom he has always sought to protect.Thus, begins another tumultuous cycle in the lives of the two brothers who already carry deep scars from their childhood; their fragile minds ever at risk of succumbing to the dark.Written in spare, stark prose, Dark Circles deftly weaves past and present, offering tantalizing glimpses of bottled truths buried deep in the recesses of repressed memory; brilliantly exposing the dark undercurrents that swirl under the seemingly placid lives of families.

Pyre


Perumal Murugan - 2013
    After a hasty wedding, they arrive in Kumaresan’s village, harbouring the dangerous secret that their marriage is an inter-caste one, likely to anger the villagers should they learn of it. Kumaresan is confident that all will be well. He naively believes that after the initial round of curious questions, the inquiries will die down and the couple will be left alone. But nothing is further from the truth. The villagers strongly suspect that Saroja must belong to a different caste. It is only a matter of time before their suspicions harden into certainty and, outraged, they set about exacting their revenge.With spare, powerful prose, Murugan masterfully conjures a terrifying vision of intolerance in this devastating tale of innocent young love pitted against chilling savagery.

Afraid of the Shadows


Victoria SelmanPhoebe Morgan - 2021
    Craven. A psychopath takes Trick or Treating a step too far. And a woman's dream of a quiet life is shattered by a knock on the door.Afraid Of The Shadows is a collection of gripping- sometimes funny, always spooky- short stories from some of the biggest names in crime fiction.From possessed sweaters to creepy wardrobes and disco shape shifters, there’s something for everyone in this Halloween bucket of short story goodies making it the perfect companion to snuggle up with as the nights draw in. Though be warned, you might want to leave the lights on...****************************************************************CONTRIBUTORSAfraid Of The Shadows is brought to you by twenty bestselling crime and thriller writers who between them have topped the Sunday Times and Amazon charts, won the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger Award, Gold Dagger Award and New Blood Dagger Award, the Bath Novel Award, the UK National Book Awards and the WHSmith Best Crime Author of All Time Award.Special guests:M.W. CravenPeter JamesT.M. LoganMatt WesolowskiTrevor WoodRachael BlokElle Croft (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Heather CritchlowJames Delargy (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Clare EmpsonJo FurnissT.E. KinseyN.J. MackayS.R. MastersPhoebe MorganDominic Nolan (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Robert Scragg (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Victoria Selman (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Kate SimantsAdam Southward (Longlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)****************************************************************Profits from the sale of Afraid Of The Shadows will be donated to the Barnardo's Children in Crisis Covid AppealThis delivers practical and emotional support to vulnerable children caught in a downward spiral of deprivation as a result of the coronavirus crisis.Children and families across the UK are increasingly in or on the brink of poverty as a result of coronavirus.The impact of the second wave is pushing a generation of the most vulnerable children into a downward spiral of deprivation. With your support Barnardo’s can deliver the practical and emotional support families in crisis need.