These are tales of relationships with unearthly domesticity and eeriness: a woman falls in love with a haunted house; a beached mermaid is substituted for a disappeared daughter; the imaginary friend of a murdered young woman stalks the streets of her small town; a mother’s teenage son is afflicted with a disease that causes him to vanish; a father exploits his daughter’s talent for calling ghosts to her; and a wife leaves her husband and children to fulfill her obligations in the world from which she escaped.

    Includes:Jim Shepard’s "Tedford and the Megalodon"Glen David Gold’s "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter"Dan Chaon’s "The Bees"Kelly Link’s "Catskin"Elmore Leonard’s "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman"Carol Emshwiller’s "The General"Neil Gaiman’s "Closing Time"Nick Hornby’s "Otherwise Pandemonium"Stephen King’s "The Tale of Gray Dick"Michael Crichton’s "Blood Doesn’t Come Out"Laurie King’s "Weaving the Dark"Chris Offutt’s "Chuck’s Bucket"Dave Eggers’s "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"Michael Moorcock’s "The Case of the Nazi Canary"Aimee Bender’s "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers"Harlan Ellison’s "Goodbye to All That"Karen Joy Fowler’s "Private Grave 9"Rick Moody’s "The Albertine Notes"Michael Chabon’s "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance"Sherman Alexie’s "Ghost Dance"

    Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.

    Through the forensic diary of Dr. Richard Greville, Deputy Psychiatric Adviser to the London Metropolitan Police, the brutal details of the massacre that has baffled the entire police department unfold.

    Two lonely schoolboys at the end of childhood are forced into an unwanted companionship. One of them is terrified of what the future holds.Does music have its ghosts? Its victims? Something is stirring in the cathedral that both echoes an ancient tragedy and seems to offer a chance of future happiness. One thing is certain. Broken voices make false promises. And their lies may prove fatal.

    She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life. Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together.

    Brought to America at the age of two. Eighteen or 20 books of prose and poetry. Bukowski, after publishing prose in Story and Portfolio stopped writing for ten years. He arrived in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, hemorrhaging as a climax of a ten-year drinking bout. Some say he didn't die. After leaving the hospital he got a tyewriter and began writing again - this time, poetry. He later returned to prose and gained some fame with his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, which he wrote mainly for the paper, Open City. After 14 years in the Post Office he resigned at age 50, he says, to keep from going insane. He now claims to be unemployable and eats typewriter ribbons. Once married, once divorced, many times shacked, he has a seven-year-old daughter.These dirty and immortal stories appeared mainly in Underground newspapers, with Open City and Nola Express leading in the publication of them. Others have appeared in Evergreen Review, Knight, Pix, Berkeley Barb, Adam, and Adam Reader.With Bukowski, the votes are still coming in. There seems to be no middle ground - people seem either to love him or hate him. Tales of his own life and doings are as wild and weird as the very stories he writes. In a sense, Bukowski is a legend in his time...a madman, a recluse, a lover...tender, vicious...never the same...these are exceptional stories that come pounding out of his violent and depraved life...horrible and holy...you cannot read them and ever come away the same again.

    They tell of Tom's encounters with Goldberry, with Old Man Willow, who tries to trap Tom inside his trunk, with the Badger-folk, and with the ghostly Barrow-wight, as well as with a princess, trolls, dwarves and legendary beasts.

    Omnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was Bachman"

    This volume includes four fine examples, including The Canterville Ghost, the comical tale of a spirit who terrorized the residents of Canterville Chase for three centuries. When the manor is acquired by a no-nonsense American family with no use for the supernatural, hilarity ensues.Three other stories feature "The Sphinx Without a Secret," a tale of an enigmatic woman who carries a mystery's key to her grave; "The Model Millionaire," recounting the exploits of a "delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession"; and "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," in which an aristocrat learns that he is destined to commit murder. Rounding out the volume are Wilde's lyrical Poems in Prose: "The Artist," "The Doer of Good," "The Disciple," "The Master," "The House of Judgment," and "The Teacher of Wisdom."

    He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. They are wonderful.Now his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

    It is the home of Edmund Stearn and his family – a historian, scholar and land-owner, he's an upstanding member of the local community. But all is not well at Wake's End. Edmund dominates his family tyrannically, in particular daughter Maud. When Maud's mother dies in childbirth and she's left alone with her strict, disciplinarian father, Maud's isolation drives her to her father's study, where she happens upon his diary.During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund spots an eye in the undergrowth. His terror is only briefly abated when he discovers its actually a painting, a 'doom', taken from the church. It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. The stench of the Fen permeates the house, even with the windows closed. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound – like claws on the wooden floor...Wakenhyrst is a terrifying ghost story, an atmospheric slice of gothic, a brilliant exploration of the boundaries between the real and the supernatural, and a descent into the mind of a psychopath.

    The absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. And in "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precursor story to Fight Club.Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk. They have all the impact of a sharp blow to the solar plexus, with considerable collateral damage to the funny bone.

    He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop. Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action. Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.

    P. Lovecraft’s shocking, terrifying, and eerily prescient Cthulhu Mythos. In twenty-one dark visions, a host of outstanding contemporary writers tap into our innermost fears, with tales set in a misbegotten new world that could have been spawned only by the master of the macabre himself, H. P. Lovecraft. Inside you’ll find:DETAILS by China Miéville: A curious boy discovers that within the splinters of cracked wood or the tangle of tree branches, the devil is in the details.VISITATION by James Robert Smith: When Edgar Allan Poe arrives, a callow man finally gets what he always wanted—and what he may eternally despise. MEET ME ON THE OTHER SIDE by Yvonne Navarro: A couple in love with terror travels beyond their wildest dreams—and into their nightmares.A FATAL EXCEPTION HAS OCCURRED AT . . . by Alan Dean Foster: Internet terrorism extends far beyond transmitting threats of evil.AND SEVENTEEN MORE HARROWING TALESFrom the Trade Paperback edition.vii • Introduction: The Call of Lovecraft • essay by Benjamin Adams and John Pelan1 • Details • short story by China Miéville21 • Visitation • short story by James Robert Smith33 • The Invisible Empire • novelette by James Van Pelt57 • A Victorian Pot Dresser • novelette by L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims85 • The Cabin in the Woods • novelette by Richard Laymon109 • The Stuff of the Stars, Leaking • short story by Tim Lebbon125 • Sour Places • short story by Mark Chadbourn141 • Meet Me on the Other Side • short story by Yvonne Navarro161 • That's the Story of My Life • short story by Benjamin Adams and John Pelan181 • Long Meg and Her Daughters • novella by Paul Finch243 • A Fatal Exception Has Occurred At ... • short story by Alan Dean Foster261 • Dark of the Moon • short story by James S. Dorr275 • Red Clay • short story by Michael Reaves [as by J. Michael Reaves]291 • Principles and Parameters • novelette by Meredith L. Patterson325 • Are You Loathsome Tonight? • (1998) • short story by Poppy Z. Brite331 • The Serenade of Starlight • short story by W. H. Pugmire (variant of Serenade of Starlight) [as by W. H. Pugmire, Esq.]345 • Outside • short story by Steve Rasnic Tem355 • Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea • [Dandridge Cycle] • short story by Caitlín R. Kiernan371 • A Spectacle of a Man • short story by Weston Ochse389 • The Firebrand Symphony • (2001) • novelette by Brian Hodge437 • Teeth • novelette by Matt Cardin463 • Notes on the Contributors (Children of Cthulhu: Chilling New Tales Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft) • essay by Benjamin Adams and John Pelan