Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, Poe’s Children is Peter Straub’s tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities.Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.

    He runs across a barker with a strange power over the crowd: attractive women leave their men and disappear into an unmarked tent, never to be seen again, and the men wander away, forgetting that they ever had girlfriends or wives. When Granuaile falls under the barker’s influence and enters the tent, Atticus isn’t about to forget it and move on. He and his Irish wolfhound, Oberon, pursue her and discover the horrifying secret to the carnival’s success.

    R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre. This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.

    He promises to forever proclaim her supreme beauty and asks that in return she save him from damnation.Emboldened by the deal and driven by insatiable greed, he embarks on a necromantic journey to an enchanted palace beneath the Alhambra. In an orgy of beasts, demons and slumbering infantas Don Juan is called upon to uphold his side of the bargain and in doing so lose everything his lustful heart desires.ContentsPrince Alberic and the Snake LadyA Wedding ChestAmour DureA Wicked VoiceThe Legend of Madame KrasinskaThe Virgin of the Seven Daggers

    His chilling mythology established a gateway between the known universe and an ancient dimension of otherworldly terror, whose unspeakable denizens and monstrous landscapes - dread Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, the Plateau of Leng, the Mountains of Madness - have earned him a permanent place in the history of the macabre.In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, a pantheon of horror and fantasy's finest authors pay tribute to the master of the macabre with a collection of original stories set in the fearsome Lovecraft tradition.Contents:- Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn! (1990) by Jim Turner [as by James Turner] - The Call of Cthulhu (1928) by H.P. Lovecraft- The Return of the Sorcerer (1931) by Clark Ashton Smith- Ubbo-Sathla (1933) by Clark Ashton Smith- The Black Stone (1931) by Robert E. Howard- The Hounds of Tindalos (1929) by Frank Belknap Long- The Space-Eaters (1928) by Frank Belknap Long- The Dweller in Darkness (1944) by August Derleth- Beyond the Threshold (1941) by August Derleth- The Shambler from the Stars (1935) by Robert Bloch- The Haunter of the Dark (1936) by H.P. Lovecraft- The Shadow from the Steeple (1950) by Robert Bloch- Notebook Found in a Deserted House (1951) by Robert Bloch- The Salem Horror (1937) by Henry Kuttner- The Terror from the Depths (1976) by Fritz Leiber- Rising with Surtsey (1971) by Brian Lumley- Cold Print (1969) by Ramsey Campbell- The Return of the Lloigor (1969) by Colin Wilson- My Boat (1976) by Joanna Russ- Sticks (1974) by Karl Edward Wagner- The Freshman (1979) by Philip José Farmer- Jerusalem's Lot (1978) by Stephen King- Discovery of the Ghooric Zone (1977) by Richard A. LupoffCover illustration by John Jude Palencar

    Each story contains the common elements of the gothic tale--a warped sense of time, a claustrophobic setting, a link to archaic modes of thought, and the impression of a descent into disintegration. Yet taken together, they reveal the progression of the genre from stories of feudal villains amid crumbling ruins to a greater level of sophistication in which writers brought the gothic tale out of its medieval setting, and placed it in the contemporary world. Bringing together the work of such writers as Eudora Welty, Thomas Hardy, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jorge Luis Borges, The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales presents a wide array of the sinister and unsettling for all lovers of ghost stories, fantasy, and horror.

    In A Simple Heart, the poignant story that inspired Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, Felicite, a French housemaid, approaches a lifetime of servitude with human-scaled but angelic aplomb. No other author has imparted so much beauty and integrity to so modest an existence. Flaubert's "great saint" endures loss after loss by embracing the rich, true rhythms of life: the comfort of domesticity, the solace of the Church, and the depth of memory. This novella showcases Flaubert's perfectly honed realism: a delicate counterpoint of daily events with their psychological repercussions.

    L. N. Hanover“Demon Lover” copyright © 2010 by Cecelia Holland“The Wayfarer’s Advice” copyright © 2010 by Melinda Snodgrass“Blue Boots” copyright © 2010 by Robin Hobb“The Thing About Cassandra” copyright © 2010 by Neil Gaiman“After the Blood” copyright © 2010 by Marjorie M. Liu“You, and You Alone” copyright © 2010 by Jacqueline Carey“His Wolf” copyright © 2010 by Lisa Tuttle“Courting Trouble” copyright © 2010 by Linnea Sinclair“The Demon Dancer” copyright © 2010 by Mary Jo Putney“Under/Above the Water” copyright © 2010 by Tanith Lee“Kaskia” copyright © 2010 by Peter S. Beagle“Man in the Mirror” copyright © 2010 by Yasmine Galenorn“A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows” copyright © 2010 by Diana Gabaldon

    Yet along with the full-length fiction within The Human Comedy stand many shorter works, among the most brilliant and forceful of his fictions. Drawn always to the tradition of oral storytelling—to the human voice telling of experience—and to the kinds of reactions produced in the listeners to stories, Balzac repeatedly dramatizes both telling and listening, and the interactions of men and women around the story told. It’s in the short fiction that we get some of his most daring explorations of crime, sexuality, and artistic creation. As Marcel Proust noted, it is in these tales that we detect, under the surface, the mysterious circulation of blood and desire. Included here are tales of artists, of the moneylender who controls the lives of others, of passion in the desert sands and in the drawing rooms of Parisian duchesses, episodes of madness and psychotherapy, the uncovering of fortunes derived from crime and from castration. And stories about the creation of story, the need to transmit experience. All are newly translated by three outstanding translators who restore the freshness of Balzac’s vivid and highly colored prose.SARRASINEGOBSECKADIEUZ. MARCASA PASSION IN THE DESERTTHE DUCHESS OF LANGEAISTHE RED INNFACINO CANEANOTHER STUDY OF WOMANKIND

    It includes stories by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, W. W. Jacobs, and L. P. Hartley, among other masters of the fine art of making the flesh creep, all accompanied by Gorey's inimitable illustrations.ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, "The Empty House"W.F. HARVEY, "August Heat"CHARLES DICKENS, "The Signalman"L.P. HARTLEY, "A Visitor from Down Under"R.H. MALDEN, "The Thirteenth Tree"ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, "The Body-Snatcher"E. NESBIT, "Man-Size in Marble"BRAM STOKER, "The Judge's House"TOM HOOD, "The Shadow of a Shade"W.W. JACOBS, "The Monkey's Paw,"WILKIE COLLINS, "The Dream Woman"M.R. JAMES, "Casting the Runes"

    The anthology contains 45 illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, over 20 stories by the likes of Stephen King, Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell, Gary A. Braunbeck, Mort Castle, Josh Malerman, Scott Edelman, Richard Thomas, Richard Chizmar and Gene O’Neill, and with 20 intertwined poems by the likes of Elizabeth Massie, Marge Simon, Bruce Boston, Erik T. Johnson, Stephanie M. Wytovich, and also includes an introduction by the extraordinary Chuck Palahniuk.

    It is a collection of short prose narratives that offer a blend of pataphysical humor and surreal nightmare: secret societies so secret that one cannot know if one is a member or not, music-hall acts that walk a tightrope from humor to horror, childhood memories of a man never born, and correspondence from countries that are more states of mind than geographical locales. Lying somewhere between Kafka's parables and the prose poems of Henri Michaux, Ferry's tales read like pages from the journal of a stranger in a familiar land. Though extracts have appeared regularly in Surrealist anthologies over the decades, "The Conductor" has never been fully translated into English until now. This edition includes four stories not included in the original French edition and is illustrated throughout with collages by Claude Ballare.Jean Ferry (1906-1974) made his living as a screenwriter for such filmmakers as Luis Bunuel and Louis Malle, cowriting such classics as Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Le Quai des orfevres" and script-doctoring Marcel Carne's "Les Enfants du paradis." He was the first serious scholar and exegete of the work of Raymond Roussel (on whom he published three books) and a member of the College de 'Pataphysique.

    . .a nubile young witch who yearns to taste human love. . .an expedition that hunts dinosaurs across the fragile and dangerous chasm of time. . . These strange and wonderful tales of beauty and terror will transport you from the begininng of time to the outermost limits of the future. Selected from his best-selling collections "The Golden Apples Of The Sun" and "R Is For Rocket," here are thirty-two superb stories from one of the master fantastics of our age--the inimitable Ray Bradbury.

    Tales such as a young man seeking the secret of immortality from none other than Bela Lugosi. The tragic story of how the Titanic really sank. The horrifying lengths the people of New York city would go to raise above the Great Depression, rather in seeking fame or trying to feed the city. And many more Fantastic Tales of Terror.Lineup: Introduction by Tony Todd “The Deep Delight of Blood” by Tim Waggoner “Unpretty Monster” by Mercedes Yardley “The Tell-Tale Mind” by Kevin J. Anderson “Topsy-Turvy” by Elizabeth Massie “Ray and the Martian” by Bev Vincent “The Girl with the Death Mask” by Stephanie M. Wytovich “On a Train Bound for Home” by Christopher Golden “The Custer Files” by Richard Chizmar “Red Moon” by Michael Paul Gonzalez “The Prince of Darkness and the Showgirl” by John Palisano “The Secret Engravings” by Lisa Morton “Mutter” by Jess Landry “La Llorona” by Cullen Bunn “The London Encounter” by Vince Liaguno “Bubba Ho-Tep” by Joe R. Lansdale “Gorilla my Dreams” by Jonathan Maberry “Articles of Teleforce” by Michael Bailey “Sic Olim Tyrannis” by David Wellington “The Washingtonians” by Bentley Little “Scent of Flesh” by Jessica Marie Baumgartner “Rotoscoping Toodies” by Mort Castle “Lone Wolves” by Paul Moore “The Great Stone Face vs. the Gargoyles” by Jeff Strand “The Return of the Thin White Duke” by Neil Gaiman Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths. Categories: Horror Anthology Historical Fantasy Horror Short Stories Dark Fiction Anthologies & Collections Horror books Weird Tales Weird Fiction Alternative history Monsters Aliens Supernatural