Anson House, Greyminster, Staircase No. 3. How can Flavia de Luce resist such an urgent plea? After all, examining a dead body sounds like a perfectly splendid way to spend a Sunday. So Flavia hops upon her trusted bicycle, Gladys, whose rubber tires hiss happily along the rainy road, and arrives at her father’s mist-shrouded old school. There, a terrified boy leads her to the loo where, sitting in a bathtub, is what appears to be a statue. But, no: To Flavia’s surprise, the thing is in fact a naked dead man. Save his face, he seems to have been carved out of copper. Never one to shy away from the macabre, Flavia gets to work—only to find that when an investigation begins with a metallic cadaver, ever more curious twists are to be expected.

    But it was neither the first nor the last. This anthology presents 23 rare vampire stories written between 1867 & 1940. B&W illus.

    Twain's Adam was based on himself while Eve was modelled after his wife Livy. It is fitting that these two essays be joined together in one package.

    Each Playaway comes with the digital content already pre-loaded on it and a battery to make it play. Simply plug in earbuds and enjoy. Each ultra-portable Playaway weighs only two ounces and comes packaged with earbuds and a standard AAA battery to allow for immediate listening. Every Playaway comes ready to shelve in drop-box friendly packaging, complete with title inserts and instructions. Playaway is being circulated in over 11,000 public, academic, military and government libraries with a 99% library customer satisfaction rate. With 70 respected publishing partners, a growing collection of over 1,500 titles across 30 genres is available. No Cassettes. No CD's. No downloads. Just Play.

    But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days. The resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket, from which tales of characters transformed through disguise, magic and illusion, of honour and cowardice, of hauntings and seductions, leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices. Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic, picaresque, adventure, pastoral, erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories, which, like the Decameron and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, provides entertainment on an epic scale.

    And now, due to circumstances beyond their control, the family has come together to do the one thing that none of them has ever wanted to do.They have come together to bury Daniel.Shattered by the death of their little boy, Jonathan and Frances set out to find the Campbell Family Carnival, where Fran's old friend Juniper's talent for talking to ghosts may allow her to believe that her child is truly at rest. Jonathan has no such hopes; he just wants to there's a chance his wife will survive the labyrinth of her grief.This is not a happy story, and it does not chronicle a happy time in the annals of the Price family. But this is what happened, and when it happened, and it shaped so very much of what came after.Rest well, Daniel Healy. You never had a chance.

    They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were also the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's brilliant 1953 film Ugetsu.The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon. In "Shiramine," the vengeful ghost of the former emperor Sutoku reassumes the role of king; in "The Chrysanthemum Vow," a faithful revenant fulfills a promise; "The Kibitsu Cauldron" tells a tale of spirit possession; and in "The Carp of My Dreams," a man straddles the boundaries between human and animal and between the waking world and the world of dreams. The remaining stories feature demons, fiends, goblins, strange dreams, and other manifestations beyond all logic and common sense.The eerie beauty of this masterpiece owes to Akinari's masterful combination of words and phrases from Japanese classics with creatures from Chinese and Japanese fiction and lore. Along with The Tale of Genji and The Tales of the Heike, Tales of Moonlight and Rain has become a timeless work of great significance. This new translation, by a noted translator and scholar, skillfully maintains the allure and complexity of Akinari's original prose.

    Although Pakhom enjoys health and family happiness, he feels dissatisfied when he learns of the grand fortunes of his relatives. He decides to go on a quest for more land, only to find that with each new acquisition new problems develop... How Much Land Does A Man Need? gives a delightful insight into old Russian values

    Immersed in the history, atmosphere and rumours of hauntings, they channelled their darker imaginings into a series of extraordinary new ghost stories.Sarah Perry's intense tale of possession at the Jacobean country house Audley End is a work of psychological terror, while Andrew Michael Hurley's story brings an unforgettably shocking slant to the history of Carlisle Castle. Within the walls of these historic buildings each author has found inspiration to deliver a new interpretation of the classic ghost story.Also includes two afterwords: Andrew Martin's Within These Walls: How the Abbeys and Houses of England Inspired the Ghost Story, and Katherine Davey's A Gazetteer of English Heritage Hauntings, properties which are said to be haunted, including the eight locations which inspired the stories in this book.

    Smee is a crackling ghost story about a guest in a haunted house telling other visitors of the death of a young girl, years ago, playing a game of hide-and-seek.

    Butler’s shattering meditation on symbiosis, love, power and tough choices. It won the Hugo, Locus, Nebula and Science Fiction Chronicle awards and is widely regarded as one of her greatest works.Years ago, a group known as the Terrans left Earth in search of a life free of persecution. Now they live alongside the Tlic, an alien race who face extinction; their only chance of survival is to plant their larvae inside the bodies of the humans.When Gan, a young boy, is chosen as a carrier of Tlic eggs, he faces an impossible dilemma: can he really help the species he has grown up with, even if it means sacrificing his own life?Perfect for fans of the thrilling Arrival and the works of Ursula Le Guin.

    

    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.

    His work is credited with turning the Gothic's focus from the external sources of horror to the inward effects of terror, thus helping to create the psychological basis for supernaturalist literature that continues to this day. Inspired by the Dutch painter Godfried Schalcken, 'Schalken the Painter' is a timeless Gothic tale. Many of the earliest occult stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive.

    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.