Banks.Over the last thirty years, M. John Harrison has been inspiring readers and writers alike across the world. His return to science fiction in 2002 with the magnificent space opera LIGHT was a monumental triumph, shortlisted for every major award in the genre. He combines brilliant storytelling with complex plots and evocative, mesmerising writing.THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN is M. John Harrison's definitive collection of short fiction, twenty-four dazzling stories of science fiction and fantasy; the perfect introduction to one of Britain's most brilliant writers.Contents:Settling the World (1975)Running Down (1975)The Incalling (1978)The Ice Monkey (1980)Egnaro (1981)Old Women (1984)The New Rays (1982)The Quarry (1983)A Young Man's Journey to London (1985)Small Heirlooms (1987)The Great God Pan (1988)The Gift (1988)The Horse of Iron and How We Can Know It and Be Changed by It Forever (1989)Gifco (1992)Anima (1992)Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring (1994)Empty (1995)Seven Guesses of the Heart (1996)I Did It (1996)The East (1996)Suicide Coast (1999)The Neon Heart Murders (2000)Black Houses (1998)Science & The Arts (1999)

    Everyone is someone else when the world isn't looking. Sometimes that person is good, sometimes that person is not. In Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke's latest terrifying collection of short stories, you'll meet thirteen people who discover the horror of what happens when those secret faces are removed and the true darkness that dwells within us all is unleashed.Table of Contents:HomeStalledThe End of UsThe Red Light is BlinkingMother/NatureI’m Not ThereMemory LaneTerminalForced EntryThe QuietThe One Night of the YearPigHoarder With an introduction and story notes by the author.

    Her rescuer, an awkward, geeky folklore student named Teddy, single-handedly slew the undead occupants of the Omega Alpha sorority house, spurred into heroic action by fate itself, inexorably intertwining his and Laura's destinies. After navigating her way through law school, Laura is now a junior FBI agent assigned to the Bureau's Boston office. Unfortunately, she finds her job involves more paperwork than adventure. When Ted stumbles onto a group of Cthulhu cultists planning to awaken the Old Ones through mystic incantations culled from the fabled Necronomicon, he and Laura must spring into action, traveling from Boston to the seemingly-peaceful suburbs of Providence and beyond, all the way to the sanity-shattering non-Euclidian alleyways and towers of dread R'lyeh itself, in order to prevent an innocent shopping center from turning into... The Mall of Cthulhu!

    Lovecraft, the American master of horror, understood with horrible clarity that all things must die. After summer is winter, and life inevitably gives way to frozen sterility. In our modern world, we live cushioned existences, and congratulate ourselves on our supposed escape from the old dangers. We think ourselves caught out of nature’s reach by our technological wizardry. Safely cocooned. This foolishness blinds us to the truth that our elder forebears could not avoid. Engulfed by the rhythms of the world, they understood... Autumn means death. There are far worse fates than mere death, of course. As blight spreads, the leaves wither and fall — as do the most important foundations of life. There is nothing more horrible than watching the sources of meaning in your world unravel before you. But these things we cherish are just pretty lies. In autumn’s cold grasp, the bright petals of our reality shrivel and die. Beneath them, there is nothing but the insanity of the howling void. Faced with inevitable, agonizing corruption, death is a gentle blessing. The stories collected in "Autumn Cthulhu" reflect the darkest, most ancient truths of the season. Inside, you’ll find nineteen beautiful, terrifying glimpses of decay and loss inspired by Lovecraft’s work. Be sure that you want the burden of understanding before venturing further, though. The dissolving strands of mind, of love, of legacy within leave no room for merciful doubt. The true meaning of life is that there is no meaning.

     A Victorian Englishman summons a strange puppet-like being to an old Colonial Inn. A doctor returns from the Great War and discovers a mysterious naked woman at the edge of the Atlantic. A contemporary collector of arcane books retraces the steps of these other men -- adventurers who sought out the mysteries of neighboring dimensions. In THE SEA OF ASH, Scott Thomas takes us along as three men from three different centuries experience the wonders and horrors of an unknown New England. "Never had the universe felt so vast, and I so small within it. I had, through circumstance, been made aware of something, but of what? Something either too horrible or too beautiful for humans to know." —From The Sea of Ash

    Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace. Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors. A taloned monster stalks the city’s underground and snatches victims into the dark.Donna isn’t missing. She was taken.To save the woman she loves, Monique must descend deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears—a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.

    That is abundantly clear in the stories he spins. No matter where he draws inspiration from, whether the weird tales of Lovecraft, Machen, and Poe or the films of Murnau, Corman, and Argento, the end result is inevitably fresh and new. And wonderfully monstrous.If you love monsters—the macabre, the murderous, the misunderstood; the strange, the sinister, the sympathetic; the cinematic and the literary—you will find plenty to love in Orrin Grey’s Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts.

    Kiernan, Brian Stableford, Ramsey Campbell, Michael Shea, Darrell Schweitzer, Donald R. Burleson, and David J. Schow delve deep into the psyche, expanding on concepts H.P. Lovecraft created and taking them in new directions. The result is stories that are wholly original, some even featuring Lovecraft himself as a character. Black Wings editor S.T. Joshi is the recognized authority on all things Lovecraftian, and is famous for his restorations of Lovecraft's original works. He has assembled a star-studded line-up in a book that is essential for every horror library.  Including:  Pickman's Other Model - Caitlín R. Kiernan  Desert Dreams - Donald R. Burleson  Engravings - Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.  Copping Squid - Michael Shea  Passing Spirits - Sam Gafford  The Broadsword - Laird Barron  Usurped - William Browning Spencer  Denker's Book - Davd J. Schow  Inhabitants of Wraithwood - W.H Pugmire  The Dome - Mollie L. Burleson  Rotterdam - Nicholas Royle  Tempting Providence - Jonathan Thomas  Howling in the Dark - Darrell Schweitzer  The Truth About Pickman - Brian Stableford  Tunnells - Philip Haldeman  The Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nash - Annotated by Ramsey Campbell  Violence, Child of Trust - Michael Cisco  Lesser Demons - Norman Partridge  An Eldritch Matter - Adam Niswander  Substitutions - Michael Marshall Smith  Susie - Jason Van Hollander

    They represent the whole evolving trajectory of such notions as Hastur, the King in Yellow, Carcosa, the Yellow Sign, the Black Stone, Yuggoth, and the Lake of Hali. A succession of writers from Ambrose Bierce to Ramsey Campbell and Karl Edward Wagner have explored and embellished these concepts so that the sum of the tales has become an evocative tapestry of hypnotic dread and terror, a mythology distinct from yet overlapping the Cthulhu Mythos. Here for the first time is a comprehensive collection of all the relevant tales.

    No pastiches and no stories in his style. Using variety in tone, setting, point of view, time, but no direct reference in the story to Lovecraft or his works. Featuring work by Laird Barron, Brian Evenson, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeffrey Ford, Nathan Ballingrud, and many more, with a stunning cover by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.

    From the summer isles to the mysterious people next door all the way to the odd guy one cubicle over, Hand teases apart the dark strangenesses of everyday life to show us the impossibilities, broken dreams, and improbable dreams that surely can never come true.“Ten evocative novellas and stories whisper of hidden mysteries carved on the bruised consciousness of victims and victimizers. Memories and love are as dangerous as the supernatural, and Hand often denies readers neat conclusions, preferring disturbing ambiguity. The Hugo-nominated “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” marries science fiction and magical realism as three men recreate a legendary aircraft’s doomed flight for a dying woman. A grieving widower in “Near Zennor” unearths a secret of spectral kidnapping in an ancient countryside. “Hungerford Bridge,” a lesser piece, shares a secret that can only be enjoyed twice in one’s life. Celtic myth and human frailty entangle in the darkly romantic “The Far Shore.” The vicious nature of romantic love is dissected with expressionistic abandon in the dreamlike “Summerteeth.” Hand’s outsiders haunt themselves, the forces of darkness answering to the calls of their battered souls. Yet strange hope clings to these surreal elegies, insisting on the power of human emotion even in the shadow of despair. Elegant nightmares, sensuously told.”—Publishers WeeklyTable of ContentsThe Maiden Flight of McCauley’s BellerophonNear Zennor (a Shirley Jackson Award winner)Hungerford BridgeThe Far ShoreWinter’s WifeCruel Up NorthSummerteethThe Return of the Fire WitchUncle LouErrantryElizabeth Hand's novels include Shirley Jackson Award–winner Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Available Dark.

    Professor Nathaniel Peaslee collapses in front of a class of students, only coming to his senses five years later. Horrified to discover that his body has been far from inactive during the intervening period - and plagued by unsettling and outlandish nightmares - Peaslee attempts to piece together the truth behind the missing years of his life. A chilling journey through time, space and the recesses of the mind, this adaptation gives terrifying from to one of H.P. Lovecraft's final tales.

    Ghosts, ghouls, incubi: all have one thing in common. They know Booth for one of their own . . .

    A couple are invited over to a neighbor's daughter's exorcism. A country witch with a sea-captain's head in a glass globe intercedes on behalf of abused and abandoned children. In July of 1915, in Hardin County, Ohio, a boy sees ghosts. Explore contemporary natural history in a baker's dozen of exhilarating visions.Contains:-The Blameless-Word Doll-The Angel Seems-Mount Chary Galore-A Natural History of Autumn-Blood Drive-A Terror Rocket Ship to Hell-The Fairy Enterprise-The Last Triangle-Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart The Thyme Fiend-The Prelate's Commission

    For the first time, these surviving stories have been collected in one anthology. These are stories that challenge expectations and reject the staid conventions of the genre. These are stories that don't compromise.Above all, what readers understood and appreciated was that these stories were about something. These are stories that, in the finest tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Dennis Etchinson, and T.E.D. Klein, articulate what you'be always suspected: that life is a losing proposition.